PP012 | James Schramko | How To Plan A Business Event
James Schramko gave up a $300,000 a year job at Mercedes Benz to start his own business! He now earns millions. He does this by helping people everyday, who listen to his podcasts and are members of his Super Fast Business online community. He has meet ups running globally and once a year he puts on an event in Australia. In this episode James talks about the value of live events and how he gets people to fly from all corners of the world, to a beach in Australia, to hear him and his guest speakers talk!
In this episode you will discover:
What you need to put on a successful business event.
How you can make your event live on into the future.
Why profit isn’t the number one concern for James’ business events.
Links
If you are interested in how to plan a business event please visit : SuperFastBusiness Live
Infographic
James-Schramko-superfastbusiness
Transcript
ames Schramko: You can’t please everyone all the time, don’t try to. In fact, if you’re not polarizing people a bit, then you’re really not meaning anything to the people who do resonate – or should resonate – with you. So, you have to stand for something, and that means, by default, you’re not going to be popular with everyone.Narrator: Toby and James are involved in amazing events all over the world. You’re listening to The Planner’s Planner Podcast, where top event professionals share real world experiences and cutting-edge ideas. Sponsored by MetropolisProductions.co.uk.Toby Goodman: Hello, and welcome to The Planner’s Planner Podcast. I’m Toby Goodman, back again with James Eager. How are you, James?James Eager: I’m really, really well, Toby. It’s Friday night, and I can’t think of a better place to be spending it than with you.Toby: That’s right, thanks very much. Now, listen. As a result of listening to this very interview and having conversations we’ve had in the past, we are now going to officially stop calling it “The Planner’s Planner Podcast,” because it’s ridiculous and hard to say, so we’re going for Planner’s Pod from now on. Is that right?Eager: That is right. So, Toby, is this the last ever Planner’s Pod – or, Planner’s Planner, even?Toby: [laughs] The first every Planner’s Pod, the last ever... you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, the point is, the website is plannerspod.com anyway, so let’s just call it that and you won’t sound like as much of an idiot as you do when you try and say, “Welcome to the Planner’s Planner Podcast,” every time you interview, which I don’t do. Anyway, let’s move on, James.Eager: Only on the beginning of every single episode, Toby.Toby: That’s right, that’s true. But not to the interviewee.Eager: Alright, then, I’ll take that one on the chin.Toby: Thank you very much!Eager: Anyway, I’m going to leave this abuse behind now, and thank you all for all the amazing feedback on the podcast. We really do enjoy it, so thank you, please do keep it coming. Particular thank you to Mr. STC127, who has left us a review on iTunes, which says, “Great pod from informed and knowledgeable professionals.” So, thank you for that. If you could whip over to iTunes, join the party, and leave us a review, we’d really, really love it. And, also, we just made our first milestone, in a little over three months or so, of a thousand unique downloads, which is absolutely great. And, also, last piece of news, we are going to rebrand Metropolis soon, so please do whip over to our new site in about a month or two’s time, we’ll be rolling the three things we do into one – that is: live music, event solutions, and of course, podcast and new media. So, if you’re ready to take your event business to the next level, we’d love to hear from you. I’m going to hand you back now to Toby Goodman.Toby: That’s right! So, today it’s all about James – plural. So James Eager talks with James Schramko from SuperFastBusiness about putting on events. Specifically, we’ll discover how James Schramko cleverly repurposes his time and content from SuperFastBusiness to feed into his business Mastermind Events, and then back again into SuperFastBusiness, and so it continues. So, it’s a real and amazing fruitful way of doing business, and, yeah, I hope you enjoy the interview. Here’s James Eager’s chat with James Schramko. See you at the end for a chat, James.Eager: See you at the end.Narrator: The Planner’s Planner Podcast is sponsored by MetropolisProductions.co.uk and Metropolis-Live.com.Eager: James Schramko, welcome to The Planner’s Planner Podcast.Schramko: Good. That’s a tough one to say quickly, isn’t it?Eager: Indeed, indeed. Okay, it’s become a tongue twister, so we’re abbreviating to Planner’s Pod, at the moment. So, anyway, as I understand it, the early part of your career was spent working at a very high level at Mercedes Benz in Australia. Now, you own a company specializing in two areas: products for the web – like website development and search engine optimization – and, secondly, coaching and helping entrepreneurs grow their own business. A central part of your program is coaching and is an event, SuperfastbusinessLive. Can you briefly take us through how you went from a pretty major job in the car industry to flying in many of the world’s highest-thinking business experts to speak at your events?Schramko: Yeah, well, really it was just driven around wanting to have my own business, and I thought that it’d be good to base my business around my skillset, and by the time I had reached the pinnacle of my career I possessed some really good sort of general experiences all the way from selling, managing, marketing, leadership, accounting, credit, finance, service, all sorts of things – inventory management. I knew all this stuff. And then I realized that a lot of the online marketers are struggling with basic business fundamentals. They don’t know how to track numbers, they’re not really good with strategy, they don’t know about benchmarking or setting KPIs or key resolved areas they wanted to achieve, or building out a team, managing their cash flow – basically, all the fundamentals were missing. They were really focused on making offers and trying to drive people to those offers, and then after that there was really nothing behind it. So, I set up my coaching to help people go to the next stage, especially after start up, through that growth phase, and, in particular, people wanted to take a small business in that sort of five to six-figure region up to a mature six figures, or seven figures, or even eight-figure business.Eager: So, did you always want to put on a live event? Was that always part of your, I guess, journey?Schramko: It wasn’t something I thought I’d be doing, because when you think about an online business you’re really thinking about the internet, and the idea that you can just be behind your laptop, in your hammock, in some tropical paradise, and running a live event is not something I’d thought of, and the first live event that I ran was actually a suggestion from a Mastermind group that I attended. I was sitting there in the middle of the desert in Mexico, and we’re on a rally trip, and I’d actually been invited to speak at someone’s event, and I said to this group of Mastermind experts, “What should I sell?” Because it was a sales event, and they said, “You should run a workshop.” And that’s how my first workshop was born.Eager: Can you tell me a little bit about that first workshop?Schramko: Um, it was chaos. I thought I might get 20 or 30 people, and I thought it would be a good idea to have laptops in the room, and hook them up to the internet and show them how to select a niche, buy a domain name, build a website, write the sales copy, hook up their auto-responder, and publish it online, and I was going to do this in two days. It ended up having over 120 people in the room.Eager: Wow.Schramko: I somehow managed to get Wi-Fi to all of them, and by lunchtime on day two they all published their own website. It was really some kind of a miracle. We recorded it, I lost half the recording of it – the audio dropped out. Luckily for me, somebody breached the filming agreement and actually recorded on their little Live Scribe pen the audio, and I was able to have to video editor synchronize the audio back to the video track, and then I had my first DVD information product.Eager: And, so, what year would have this been?Schramko: We’re talking about 2009, I think.Eager: Right. And how many of these SuperFastBusiness events have you done so far now?Schramko: So, I’ve ran about ten large events, and by large I mean 100-plus people, typically there’s 200 to 300 people. And I’ve run seven small Masterminds, which I call “intensives,” which would typically have two to 30 people. And 30 is sort of a larger one these days, but I’ve often had, you know, six people, five or six people, which is a really nice small group workshop thing which we’ve done over two days, and in some cases one day.Eager: Right. So going back to that first event, can you tell me who came, where it was, how low the event was?Schramko: First event was in the Gold Coast, in Queensland, Australia, and I’d spoken at an event in the Gold Coast, so I decided to hold the event a couple of weeks after the main event that I spoke at, so it was convenient – geographically removed objections from attendees of the workshop – and, it was predominantly for people who wanted to learn what I knew about online marketing and to replicate my success, and that’s why I really dealt with people who were starting with virtually nothing, or not getting any success with all the various things they’d purchased over the years. Because the type of the seminar that I spoke at was what they call a “Dreamer’s Seminar,” where a lot of “want-trepreneurs” go – people who like the idea of a lifestyle business and want to spend some money on a course or program that gets them somewhere, and I would say I was one of the few people who actually delivered something of substance, so that’s why it got over-subscribed, and it was also too cheap, I sold it a little bit lower in price than what other people were selling packages for.Eager: Brilliant, well, looking at that first event and now to – I believe you’re now on SuperFastBusiness 10, am I right there?Schramko: The next one will be 11, so I’d done number 10 just recently, and I’m all geared up for next event, number 11.Eager: How has that event evolved?Schramko: Dramatically. It’s like a completely different event. Now it’s based on the community. A lot of people have been to many, if not all, of the events, so they really bond with each other. They converse and exchange ideas. So, it’s a lot more strategic and high-level thinking. There’s really actionable information that they can go and plug into their existing business. So, I’m not targeting start-ups or brand new markets. I’m evolved with my community – and that was a conscious choice, is to attract intermediates, I really like working with intermediates and advanced, and hyper advanced customers, because those people are already in motion. And, as one of my mentors used to tell me, “You can’t steer a parked car.” So, rather than put all this effort into start-ups, I love working with existing business. So it’s a more advanced knowledge event, it’s a super high calibre event where you can learn things that you will not find out about in other places for quite some time. It’s definitely ahead of its time.Eager: Right. So, to actually put this event on, do you use an event company?Schramko: No, I actually do it myself.Eager: Wow, so what are the major areas that you have to consider when you’re putting this event on?Schramko: Well, you’ve got to come up with a theme for the event, got to work out, you know, what’s the message, what you want to focus on – it might be traffic and conversions, it might be an economist type thing – you know, work out what your main theme is. Then you have to set a date. You’ve got to figure out what talent you want, who are your experts – and I’ve tried everything from just me, one person, through to about 15 experts. And you might want to decide is a half-day, one day, two days, three days – so the duration of the event. Then you’ve got to come up with a talent brief so you really make sure they match the theme and deliver. You have to come up with a schedule, so you work out who’s going to speak in what spot and then make sure that it’s sequenced and makes sense. Then you have to, obviously, get a venue, and go through the contract and hire them, and work out all the little clauses they try and trap you with, like locking in rooms, et cetera. Then you have to work out staging, which is curtains and the lights, and the sound, because without that you’re going to have a pretty ordinary-looking event. And you’ve got catering, you make decisions around tea, coffee, morning tea, afternoon tea, drinks, lunch, dinners, if you want any of that or not. Then you have the video crew, so they can come along and capture it, for eternity. You might have a photographer so you can get some good stills to use in marketing. Then you need your sales page to promote the event, your shopping cart to collect the money, your auto-responder or email system to communicate with people who buy or who are interested in buying but haven’t bought, and then you need your marketing plan to promote your sales page, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got indemnity insurance so that you’re covered for any accidents that happen. You might want to order some merchandise, like hoodies, pens, that sort of thing. You’ll have to get a crew so that you can register people when they arrive and look after people, get them in and out of the room on time, and you’ll need a registration desk, making some sponsorships, and probably some pre-event surveys and post-event follow ups.Eager: Wow, that is a lot. How many people would you say are involved in putting on just one event, then?Schramko: Well, if you talked about all the contractors, there’s probably dozens of people.Eager: Okay. So, what – so, let’s take the tech and the AV side of things. What do you expect from those guys? Is this, I’m assuming, that’s a major part of your event?Schramko: It is. Everything is set up and staged the way we want it. The goal is to record the event. That’s the primary goal. And that means we need a good backdrop, nice curtains, excellent lighting and quality sound. These are the areas that a lot of people get wrong, and they end up with really crappy recordings, or grainy recordings or the wrong format, or the wrong size, or they put it on a little camera on a tripod and people are walking in front of it. So I want high quality output, so we use the same team every year. And with the staging I want to make sure that during all of the basics like sound checks, making sure they replace the batteries, that the microphones are put on properly and not hanging around, or flapping around, or picking up noise, or distorting, the wrong speak settings, and I want the sound to synchronize with the video, and I want the video to be edited on the fly with two screens, so you can have zoom ins, and far away shots, and so you can make it engaging to watch back.Eager: So it sounds like you really endorse having high production values here.Schramko: I think it’s important if you’re doing what I’m doing, and that is capturing the content, and then I’m selling that as information products. In the old days I’d turn them into DVDs and sell them as standalone products, and the new way I sell those is I bring them into my coaching community and release them on an ongoing basis so my members can consume them and develop their knowledge base.Eager: So, it sounds like the actual tech/AV company sort of has, sort of two areas that it’s responsible for. One is actually delivering the content and making sure it can be heard and seen to the delegates there, one is creating future marketing material and content for your business going forward.Schramko: Yes, and there’s two separate teams. The videographers are a separate team to the sort of in-house contractors who are usually responsible for the sound, and they’re the ones making sure the projector screens work, and the computer matches up the right resolution, and that the audience can see the presentation, and that they can hear it, and that the speaker’s well-lit, but most of this is really benefitting the videographer.Eager: Right, I see. So, are you using an in-house tech team at the venue to do this?Schramko: Most venues will have an in-house team, or a preferred contractor, but often you can shop around and get your own supplier if you want. It’s usually beneficial to use the in-house one if you can, because they’re usually based there, and it means that they can go and get extra equipment if it fails, or they can throw in things that you didn’t know you needed until the last minute, occasionally, they will miss something on the brief, and you’ll get there and you’ll do your check-in, and you’ll say, “Hang on, there’s supposed to be a large screen on the floor in front of the stage for the speaker to be able to see their slides,” and they can just go and grab it from the room.Eager: Okay. So, you’ve got – going back to the delegates. I assume you call them delegates. Do you?Schramko: You know, that’s a good…hang on. I guess you could call them delegates, I’d probably just call them customers, because they’re the same customers for the rest of my business. “Attendees,” is probably a word I’d say.Eager: Who are the attendees which are coming to this event?Schramko: Mostly the audience will be people who are members of the SuperFastBusiness membership community. In fact, the stats would be around about 50%. 50% current, existing members of my coaching community, 50% will be not members. Of that 50% a lot of them know me, or are consumers of some of my products.Eager: Right. So, you’re running and on- and an offline business here, so the event works on- and offline as well.Schramko: I guess so. I guess it’s a predominantly online business, and the live event, or the intensive events, are the actual, physical component of my business, it’s the in-person side of it – which is a rare event, once a year, but it still happens.Eager: What do you feel are the benefits of running a live event? We live in this ever globalised world where we’re on Skype and communicating electronically. How do you feel the face-to-face thing is important?Schramko: Well, I think you, firstly the customers demand it. They want to meet, they’re social. We do monthly meetups in most major capital cities, like London, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and some in North America, and they like to come to the master meetup once a year. So they do ask, “When’s the next event? I’d love to come back!” In fact, at the event, they’re like, “Can I book next year’s ticket now?” So, they really drive it. And with most things that I sell, it’s based around customer demand, because I think it’s much easier to sell to a starving crowd – if they want it, and I can provide it, then I might as well do it. Because there are plenty of bad events in industry, and I’m denying customers the opportunity to have this type of event if I don’t run an event, and they end up going to something that’s a substandard experience. Because I want to be able to help them get better results, and to get better results, it really helps for them to come together face to face, because online marketing can be a very lonely business. You’re sitting there at the computer by yourself, and you can feel very isolated, disconnected, you’re not sure what to do, but when you socialise with people and you see other people who actually speak your language and you can interact with them, and find people who you vibe with, then that’s really good. And it also helps retention of my community, so people who come to the event will stay a member of my community because they’re connected to that culture. It also does generate a small profit, by the time I take ticket sales, subtract out the costs, then there is a little profit, so it does pay for itself. And, the other thing is, I end up with an output of an information product, which will help me attract new members to the community, so it’s an ongoing thing. So, it does make sense, from all of those perspectives.Eager: So, the thing that I pulled out of what you just said there, the attendee experience is absolutely paramount for you?Schramko: Oh, I do get a lot of joy from the camaraderie, and the experience that the attendees get from this. I mean, a lot of people are emotional, they have breakthroughs, they are smiling, and laughing, and bonding, and they’re also competing in some of the challenges that get put up. They’re really stretching and coming out of their shell. And it was partly based around the fact that going to a live event really shaped me when I was starting online, and it was one of the fundamental breakthroughs, the difference between doing it as a hobby, and being able to quit my job, all happened around a live event. So, I try and bring the same opportunity to my audience.Eager: Can you tell us a little bit about what actually inspired you at that live event?Schramko: I was running a Mercedes dealership, I had very little annual leave left, I had a family, and I was on holidays in the beginning of the year, in summer in Australia, and my family was at the beach, and I was watching a DVD set that I’d purchased online, an information product – it was the most expensive information product I’ve purchased to date, so I was damn well going to watch it. And –Eager: Can you explain to anybody – sorry to cut you off there – what an information product is?Schramko: Information product is what we call box of DVDs with instruction manuals and how-to checklists. So someone has packaged their ideas and their information into a bundle that you can purchase that you…it’s basically like a richer media version of a book.Eager: Right, okay. So, that’s an information product. Carry on, where were you before? Sorry.Schramko: Well, I just sat there watching the DVDs, and I was thinking, “You know what, I really need to get this information from the coal face. I need to go over to America. I need to go to an event where someone’s presenting this stuff so I can get access to it now.” Because by the time I’d gotten this information product, the information had been around for a few years, and I felt like I was just, you know, doing most of it, but I could’ve found out about this earlier, and gotten a lot further down the tracks, so, I booked myself a ticket to a live event in Los Angeles. I booked the plane ticket, I jammed a few days around a weekend so I could fly there, attend a three-day event, get straight on the plane in Los Angeles at midnight, fly back, come back to Sydney first thing in the morning, go home, have a shower, and then go to work. And this three-day event was such a breakthrough because there was a competition, and of the 380 or 400 people I won the competition. And the competition prize was to join a mastermind, and that meant I got to go back to Las Vegas in six weeks from that event, and mastermind with the real heavy hitters who needed a million dollars just to qualify to be in that mastermind. I wasn’t making a million dollars at that time, however, I won my access to it, sort of like the rookie with talent type prize, and even though it was absolutely the most impossible thing for me to comprehend, was to fly back six weeks later, another airfare, another accommodation, I went and masterminded with those people, and within a few weeks of coming back from that live event I quit my job. I was able to double the amount I was learning online, and hand in my notice, and start my online business full time.Eager: So, that particular event was a life-changing experience, then.Schramko: Every live event was. Even the first live event I went to, which was in Sydney. When I went to that, I realized that I knew most of what the speakers were talking about, and it was very confidence-building. And I managed, somehow, to go to dinner with one of the speakers, in the Hilton in Sydney, and at the time he was making 500-plus thousand dollars per month. And he looked me in the eye, and he said, “You know what, you’re going to be making 100 thousand dollars a month in no time, based on what you’re telling me.” So, I got such inspiration from that I got this inkling that I really could actually do this, that it might be more than just – I think at the time I was making five grand a month. You know, five thousand dollars a month is great, but it’s not quit-your-job money for me, because I was already on 300 thousand dollars a year at my job. And you don’t just hand in the two company cars and 300 grand a year to leave that and just, sort of, earn a maybe-60 thousand.Eager: Right. So, you were obviously prepared to travel to LA to go to this mastermind and live event. Do you find a lot of your attendees are travelling far and wide to come to your events?Schramko: Even more so now than ever. I’ve got a strong contingency from the UK, and also North America. In fact, around about 25% of my audience travelled from somewhere else to get to Sydney, and that’s why I hold it in a resort-style location. Manly Beach here is right on one of Sydney’s best surf breaks, it’s just a short train and ferry ride from the airport, and it’s a destination that many would consider one of the nicest places in the world – and I certainly do, that’s why I live here, and I’m totally biased, I’m Manly’s best advocate. However, you know event location is very important. And even though it’s extremely difficult to deal with the local hotel, they have a complete monopoly on the place, they’re most expensive than the city or the airport, they force the contract…you have to take rooms, and guarantee, and underwrite things, however, it really makes the event, having it in this location. So, event selection is super important, and that’s why people will travel, because if you’re sitting there freezing your butt off in one-degree Celsius in London and you can come to 27- or 30-degree Celsius Sydney summer and get a tax deduction for it, and learn the best information online, that’s a strong emotional reason to come.Eager: So, are people generally taking – using this as a holiday, taking a few days either side, then, for a wider experience, then?Schramko: I think they do, and I think it makes sense when you’re traveling that far, because it can be 20 or 30 hours for some people. We get a lot of east American people coming, and it’s a long trip from Miami, or Florida, or New York, but they do it because it’s a good event. It really it world class, and that’s the positioning I have, and that’s why I don’t run too many, but when I run it, I have certain minimum standard, and many people have said it’s by far the best event they’ve ever attended because I curate the content so heavily and I work very closely with the right speakers, delivering the right message, at the right time, for the right audience. And I’m not interested in having people running to the back of the room so I can make a big profit, I’m interested in creating a customer for life who will never leave my membership because they get so much value from it and they love being a part of that community.Eager: Excellent, so what would you actually say your job title and your job role is within this process?Schramko: Well, I’m the conductor of the orchestra. You know, I’m the one who’s ultimately responsible. I go down there and sign the contract, and I know that I’m going to be spending probably 80 thousand dollars on this event, and then I’m going to be responsible to sell the tickets, and I’m going to be responsible for the experience that everyone gets. So there’s a big responsibility, however, the reward for having a big responsibility is that you get a big reward! You pull it off. You actually get an amazing special feeling that you’re creating something from nothing, it’s really just an idea, and you can, you know… I do really like standing there on stage, delivering my best content, and looking at people writing things down, and smiling, and the wheels turning, I can see the cogs moving, and the, like, “Aha!” And then they go away and they start posting their success stories, and it’s really liberating to see people succeed because of something that I thought of or said, and because of the experts delivering what I’d hoped they had. And, you know, the last event was the best event. I had the most positive feedback I’ve ever had. But, like anything, you’re always thinking, “How can I do even better? How can I lift the bar on myself? How can I make an even better event?” And I start thinking about that. So, it’s sort of exciting, but, there’s no doubt, I’m basically in charge of the whole thing, and I’m not just palming it off onto someone else to run and making it their responsibility. But, because I have a very strong standard operating procedure, I’ve got a meticulous checklist that has to happen for an event, I can easily just go through and tick the boxes and with the support of a few key players who have been to just about every one of my events as crew, we’re able to deliver a world class experience off of very light infrastructure.Eager: Okay. You started alluding towards some pricing earlier. Can you give us an idea of, typically, what some of the elements of the event would cost?Schramko: Yeah. Which elements would you like to know?Eager: The tech, the AV, how much it costs to put up per – I presume the venue would do it on a per attendee basis, wouldn’t they?Schramko: Well, staging they don’t. They just do it on room size. It’s going to cost 10 to 12 thousand dollars in Sydney to have drapes, lights, and sound. Your video crew’s going to cost somewhere around six to 10 thousand dollars to record two days’ worth of content and deliver it on an mp4 stick. and the venue itself, they do charge per person, and it’s going to depend heavily on what sort of contract, or meals, or rooms you need, but you’re not going to get out of it for any less than 35 thousand dollars if you provide some meals, and it could be 50 thousand dollars if you have a few hundred people.Eager: Right, okay. So for 35 thousand dollars, how many people would that be for?Schramko: You might get 135 people and you might be able to give them morning tea, afternoon tea, and lunch for two days.Eager: Okay. Are your delegates, or attendees, actually staying at the hotel as well?Schramko: A lot of them are, but my community are online people, and they tend to be really good at finding airbnb and other accommodations, and that’s one of the challenges. If you want to book a venue in a resort location, you’re almost certainly going to have to underwrite rooms. Generally I’ll have to say, “Yes, I will buy 60 rooms at $250 a night, if no one books them,” so you’re on the string for that. And if you add that up, that’s quite a big commitment, so you hope that your delegates hope that you book through your booking link, so you get the reduction in the liability. At the moment, the main challenge that I’m having is the fact that the hotel don’t have an online booking engine, and most of my people only book online, so there is some to and fro and negotiation.Eager: Right. So, can you give us an outline of how a day would typically run at one of these events?Schramko: Sure. The crew will turn up and will set up the registration desk, and then I will turn up and I’ll make sure that the AV and the video crew are all sorted and they’re usually in position. We have someone manning the door to keep out the audience until just before the event starts. People will mill around and have tea and coffee. We’ll mic up the first speaker or two and have them near the AV setting. We’ll do a sound check, we’ll check the video, people will be ticked off against a list of who’s supposed to be there, given a nametag and some merchandise, and just because we start we’ll open the doors, people will come in. We try and have some classrooms set up, because it’s good for people to be able to write, and we give them water and pads and pens. And we will start on time. And it always starts on time, every single session, and it finishes on time, no matter what. We run it like clockwork, that way you train your audience to be in the room when it starts. You just start on the dot, and you have a time keeper, and you stick to it. The time keeper will sit in the front row with a countdown and signal, so the speaker is told well and truly, “There is no overtime, no matter where you’re up to at the end, that’s when it stops.”Eager: Okay, and what time during the day would the event typically finish?Schramko: Well, usually it will have a morning tea, and then you’ll have lunch, and then you’ll have afternoon tea, and then we stop somewhere around five to six o’clock. And the blocks won’t go for more than 60-minute slots these days. I’ve kept my speaker slots short. The industry standard is probably 90 minutes, you can keep people in a room for probably three or four hours if you really need to, but you really shouldn’t. So, we generally have a couple of blocks of 50 or 60 minutes, and then a break, and then two more blocks of 50 or 60 minutes, and then lunch, and then so on. And I have long lunches, like an hour. We have long morning tea and afternoon tea breaks, and that’s deliberate so that people can talk to each other and communicate about what they’re learning and get to meet more people. Then after the first day’s sessions, I’ll give everyone a coupon to go down to the bar and exchange it for a beer, or a wine, or a soft drink, and they can then socialise. And they’ll typically stick around and break off and go off and find dinner somewhere, and then we start again the next day.Eager: Okay, so you don’t go into the evenings then. You use that as time to socialise.Schramko: Well, I have in the past, a few times I’ve provided events, where we put on dinner. We have cabaret tables, three-course meal, alcohol, entertainment. It really bumps up the price, though. It adds another 18 to 20 thousand dollars to the event. It’s certainly not expected, but it’s definitely appreciated. These days – the main reason I stopped it, is because I really didn’t want to reward the venue for being so difficult, and I wanted to reward the local community and let people break off into smaller groups and put the money back into the local community here and to the lovely restaurants, and not give it to the monopoly. So it was sort of a passionate choice. It also meant the ticket price was able to drop a little bit and I’m not charging people for dinner within the ticket price. And, you know, a few people missed it, but for the most part they really accepted and understood why we did that.Eager: That’s really interesting, ‘cause, us as a business, we’re in the entertainment world providing live music, and so many times we’ve got gala dinners at the end of business events like this, and it’s interesting to hear why you’ve actually chosen not to have that and to support your local community there.Schramko: Yeah, exactly. Now, we’ve tried things like, we’ve had comedy acts, we’ve had magic, we’ve had juggling, we’ve had a few different things – and they’ve all been really well received. So the entertainment is great. We do bring entertainment into the actual day stuff. I’ve had people do boxing to break up the day and to get people off their seat and to move around. I’ve had comedians at pretty much every one of my last few events, because I love comedy, I think that it’s extremely popular with the audience, and it’s good to laugh and have a good, fun experience. I mean, always finish on a comedic high and prize-giving competition results as a bit of drama and tension on the last day, which we release, and then we let people into the wild, and where they go is across the road, and grab a surfboard, and go surfing. So we finish our events with about 60-something people surfing and a bunch of people on the beach watching and participating. And it really is quite a rare thing. And since I’ve been doing that, a lot of other people have incorporated surfing into their events. But it is something that someone who’s travelled from the UK or Europe, or North America, is going to remember for the rest of their life.Eager: It sounds quite a dynamic experience you’ve got going on there. If you ask me to picture a business event, it’s lots of business guys in grey suits. Your event kind of sounds like the opposite.Schramko: Yeah, you’re more likely to see board shorts, flip flops, T-shirts, sunglasses and caps. And, you know, this crew, very switched on, very dynamic, they are definitely not boring. They’re in the most amazingly diverse things, everywhere from Stiletto Stoppers, that stop shoes sinking into the mud, right, to professional article writers. You know, we have the gamut – people in e-commerce, people selling businesses, people who have their own business, in fact. One guy sitting in the room makes somewhere around 35 million dollars a year with his own events business, and he’s there to find out what’s best practice, what he should be doing in his events, so it’s such a treat when someone like that – who’s the guy who ran the first event I went to for online marketing, and he booked, like, seven tickets, or something like that, you know, he sends his whole team there to learn, because it’s known for being where you go to get the information first.Eager: Do you feel that this is a difference in mind-set between, I guess, the entrepreneur and the high end executive?Schramko: Definitely. I know I’ve got a really good friend in the events business who runs them for financial people, financial managers in banks, and, you know, it does sound a little bit drab and boring, and the suits, the stuffy sort of suits, and the meetings, and the type of things he talks about aren’t that exciting. And the business side of the event thing, I really sympathise with that, you know, he’s got to look at his venue overheads, his catering costs, I mean, no one caters anymore, because it’s just too expensive, and he’s got to sell sponsorships, and all this sort of stuff. They’re running it as a business, whereas for me, I’m really not making the commercial thing first and foremost, I’m making the experience first and foremost, and I just don’t want to lose money on it. If I can do that, and end up with recordings and a little bit of pocket change, and my customers are happy, then it’s been a really good experience that I’m able to bring to the market. So, yeah, totally different feel.Eager: The thing that I take away from talking to you now – and listening to many of your podcasts – is that you’re very much into the idea of lifestyle and creating a lifestyle business. And this sounds almost like a lifestyle event, as well.Schramko: It is a lifestyle event, and one of the themes, which we talked about earlier, is that people can come and live a little bit like I live. They can eat in the same places, they can surf in the same beach, they can walk around in the summer, they can have a relaxed schedule – we don’t start too early, we don’t finish too late, we have nice, long breaks – it’s all about the connections, and people being able to catch up with each other, and they definitely stick around a little bit before and a little bit after, so, you know, the people can appreciate this event more than anyone, because they’re not taking Sydney for granted like people who live here might.Eager: Right. So, it sounds like Sydney is very much a focus of the event, too, not just the content you’re delivering.Schramko: It’s really convenient for me, because I get to walk next door to the building, I can stay at home, I can just live normally, so I have actually designed the event to be really low impact for me. I book it a long time in advance, I’ve got a really good checklist that I can tick off, I’ve got automation happening for my marketing, I’ve got someone else making fantastic videos for it, someone else helps me send out the emails by autopilot, so what I have to do is just continue doing my usual stuff, and publishing podcasts, and just mention that I’m running an event, and that sort of sells itself – and I know that sounds overly simplistic, but that’s exactly one of the case studies that we actually presented at the event, is how we sell this event almost by itself, using pretty much the bare minimum in effort, and just using some clever technology and focusing on exactly the right message.Eager: That sounds amazing. What has been your greatest challenge putting this on?Schramko: Well, it’s just that initial resistance of having to actually do it, you know. And then, usually just in the few days prior to the event it’s when the gravity of having an event really hits home, it’s like, “Okay, I’ve really got to get some stuff printed off now, I’ve got to make sure the speakers turn up.” I feel responsible for it, and I don’t mentally spend the money until the last day on the last session when we actually close the event, and people start leaving the room, that’s when I feel like I’ve earned anything from the event, in terms of, you know, I can release that tension and let go. So, it’s like hosting a really big party, and ultimately, like I said, my name’s on the contract, I’m responsible for the experience, and I take that responsibility seriously.Eager: Have you ever had anything go wrong on any of the events?Schramko: Absolutely. Well, I lost the audio from the first one that was pretty challenging. I’ve had obstacles many times, where, you know, we try to play a video and it doesn’t work, someone wants to do an online presentation using their smartphone, and it just doesn’t work properly or the resolution is wrong. I’ve had a speaker pull out at one of my events just in the few days prior. I’ve had a crazy customer who annoyed people. I’ve had one guy try to come to the event and get turned around at Sydney airport ‘cause he had some violation that he hadn’t declared to customs. I’ve had one guy came to the event on the wrong day, after the event, so he missed the event completely. And, you know, I’ve had also several videographer problems. The first two contractors I had messed up, so I got three of the events weren’t recorded very well, and the last few have been amazing.Eager: That sounds brilliant. So, what’s the future of the event, then?Schramko: The future?Eager: Yeah, what do you want to achieve with it, going forward?Schramko: Well, I just take it one at a time, you know, I’ve booked the venue for the next event, I know the dates, I’ve paid my deposit, and I’m just going to work on having the best content for that event. And at some point when the hotel eventually gets the online booking form ready, then I’ll start selling tickets and recoup my deposit, and I’ll make sure that it’s positive cash flow from that point on. But I’m confident that I can sell enough tickets that I can cover my costs.Eager: So, my next two questions kind of lead into each other. How do you constantly keep reinventing an event like this, and what’s in store for Superfast 11?Schramko: The main secret is just to listen to your customers, because they’ll tell you what they like, and what they don’t like, or what they missed, or what they hoped there was more of, and then you have to filter out, well, who’s an idiot, and you shouldn’t listen to their opinion, versus, who should you really pay attention to. I segment my users by interest and by relevance. And the people who really mean something are the ones I listen to the most, and then the ones who are a little bit bitter, or a little bit jealous, I’ll just discount because they’ve got their own agenda. You know, when someone gives you feedback they’re often reflecting themselves, and sometimes… like, every time you’ll get someone say something negative, even if you had the best event in the world. And, I can tell you, if you ever provide food, it’ll always be about the food, because you cannot please everyone with food – it’s too spicy, or there wasn’t enough choice, or the meals weren’t big enough, or whatever. So, you can decide how much you want to take that on, but that’s how you innovate, you have a look at what people liked. I really look to see what’s working and do more of that. So the core won’t really change. I still like the two-day format, I still like having short sessions, I like having some topics that really help my audience get to where they need to get to, so I’ll pay attention to the questions people ask me with coaching, and I make sure that I solve them with the experts that we have. And I also ask them, “Who would you like to see?” You know, “What do you want more of?” And I also pay attention when someone says they don’t like, or they hate, or they’ve seen other events that they didn’t like, and that’s the best way to do it. And I also just tune in, I pay attention to what other people are doing, I do attend other people’s events, and I think about stuff, and I think, “Ah, yeah, that’s interesting, you know, that’s good, that’s bad,” and I work out my own style. But it’ll be pretty much similar to the last one, but I hope to be able to beat it.Eager: Okay, sounds like you need a slightly thick skin at points when you’re dealing with people whinging about food choices, and that kind of thing.Schramko: If you’re going to be an entrepreneur you need to be able to let go when people pull you down. In Australia it’s actually a cultural thing, it’s called Tall Poppy Syndrome. People will pull you down. I get… I know there’s one of two members in my community who are a little bit bitter or sour. They’ve tried to do their own membership or events, and didn’t quite succeed, so they always love to leap in and pull me down when they get a chance – and it’ll be something stupid, I mean, it’s even as simple as they don’t like my website, you know. Like, you can’t please everyone all the time, don’t try to. In fact, if you’re not polarizing people a bit, then you’re really not meaning anything to the people who do resonate – or should resonate – with you. So, you have to stand for something, and that means, by default, you’re not going to be popular with everyone. Some people who are really advanced might want some more advanced content. Some people who are quite basic are going to want it dumbed down. So, already you’ve got some choices to make. But what I’ve found by surveying my audience, and finding out exactly who’s coming and what they expect, then I can actually get the experts to dial in their presentation to the right level, and then after the event, I can survey them about what they liked, what they didn’t, what they got the most value from. and I can find out which speakers they were most looking forward to, and compare it to which speakers delivered on their brief the best, and then I can never invite back a bad speaker, and I can keep inviting back the good ones. And it’s a constant curation process.Eager: What I love about what you do is that it’s such a finely-tuned machine, that you have your forum to give you the inspiration and ideas about what to talk about at the live event, the live event then gives you the content to feed back into the forum, and so it’s just kind of like a circle of life going around.Schramko: It is, it’s a complete ecosystem, and it all works if you have a long-term approach. I’m thinking about how can I serve this person for the next decade, well, I better not piss them off too much, I should see what they want, see if I can deliver that, and if I can, then they’ll stick around. And so, I am listening, I got to put my own ego and ideas to the side sometimes, and just say, “You know what, if people keep asking for this than they must want it, even if I don’t get it, and I don’t understand it, I’ll bring it.” But, the other thing is, I often bring in experts who are people who are people who I’ve either trained, or who I buy services from, or who I want to learn from because it’s relevant to where I’m at with the business, and if it’s relevant to me, then it’s probably relevant to a good portion of my community, or it’s about it be.Eager: Okay, so it’s very much the hunting rather than the farming analogy that you’ve spoken about.Schramko: Uh, explain what you mean.Eager: I mean, about your long term approach that you do here.Schramko: Yeah, well I’d say that’s more farming than hunting.Eager: Meant it the other way around, actually. [laughs]Schramko: That’s why I clarified that. And I actually use that metaphor at the event each year. I give away a bottle of wine that’s valued at about 700 or 800 dollars, and it’s to explain that it’s good to nurture and keep refining that grape vine, because you can turn it into fine wine. And over the long term, it can just keep delivering year after year, a good crop, and you can create an asset worth building, rather than just going out and getting today’s kill. So, I’m not, like, the seminars – and we had some really grubby ones in Australia, and you’ve probably had them in the UK, and they’re not doubt they were born in the USA – the ones where people just pitch and sell stuff, and the contents thin, it’s just a sales letter with a hook, and then the things that are being sold are bordering on scam. That sort of stuff gave the seminar industry a bad name. And there are a few good operators in the country, and I really shy away from the whole seminar scene. For me, it’s just an annual get together of my best customers, and a preview for people who want to be a customer. And the interesting thing is, that of the 50% of people who are not members when they come to the event, 60% of them will be members within 30 days of the event, because they see what they are missing out on, and then I incentivize them to join and get in there and make the most of their learning by re-watching the recordings and asking questions.Eager: Excellent, it sounds amazing. So, SuperFastBusiness 11. What’s anything planned yet that you can let us know about?Schramko: Well, I’ve got the dates, the venue, and I’ll be speaking there, and I think I’ve got one or two speakers who have said yes, they’d like to, and I’ve just got to clarify with them. One of them is Ezra Firestone, and the other one is Jennifer Sheehan, and if I can get them along, it’ll be great, and I’ll probably add another five or six experts, depending on who I bump into, and who makes sense for the event, and we’ll be surfing, for sure.Eager: Have you decided on a narrative for it yet, or a theme?Schramko: I have no, but I’m sure it’ll...it’ll usually always centre around some business strategy models, and some tactics, and often it’ll be around traffic and conversions. Because conversions is really one of the main deals online, and traffic’s a very popular and easy-to-sell topic. So, we’ll bring them in with the traffic, and we’ll educate our attendees on conversions.Eager: Brilliant. Well, I think we’re just about wrapping up there. I mean, but do you have any advice for anybody, who – a fellow entrepreneur – who’d like to put on their own event?Schramko: Well, I’d say do it, if you’d think you’d like to. Don’t be afraid to do it. It seems like a massive, onerous task, and the reality is, it’s not that hard if you just go and book a venue, put up an offer, and sell a few tickets. My main tip would be, “Sell the event before you commit to running it,” because if you don’t sell it, then you don’t have to run it. And, that would be it, just get paid first. And as I mentioned, when I pitched from stage, I didn’t know if I’d sell one ticket, I thought I might get 20 or 30, had 120-something people – I think it was 138 in the room, or something like that, who came, and it blew me away. I had to get a bigger venue. But, get paid first, and then you can run the event. And if you don’t sell any tickets, it’s no big deal to cancel it. But you can usually go and find a venue and check availability for dates, and know what you’re in for in it. Depending on where you are, it can be very inexpensive to hire a room, and I would suggest start small. Run an event for six people, or 10 people, just book a board room for a thousand bucks, or two thousand dollars with catering, and sell tickets for a few hundred dollars, get some people in there. That will force you to come up with a checklist, it’ll force you to come up with content, or experts, and a plan. Once you’ve run one and you’ve got your feet wet, then you’ll find it’s so much easier and it’s easier to scale up.Eager: Fantastic. Such amazing advice. Where can people find out about SuperFastBusiness 11?Schramko: SuperfastBusiness.com/live.Eager: Brilliant. Well, anything else you’d like to add at this point, James?Schramko: No, just thanks for having me, hopefully this information is useful, and I’m happy to field some comments if you post it somewhere where there’s a commenting system, if anything I’ve said needs more clarification, I’m happy to help out.Eager: Brilliant, that’s absolutely amazing. Thank you ever so much for coming on Planner’s Pod, James.Schramko: My pleasure, thanks, James.Eager: Cheers.Narrator: You’re listening to plannerspod.com.Eager: So, Toby, that was my interview with James Schramko. Give us some feedback.Toby: Well, to give you an idea about how highly I rate this chat, I was just as excited about listening to you, James Eager talking with James Schramko, as I would be listening to James Gadson talking with James Brown. And if that makes any sense to anyone, then thanks very much. I thought it was a really, really good chat. Really enjoyed it. So, let me talk about the first thing I took away from the way James behaves around planning this event, and, indeed, planning everything. It comes up quite a lot with him, and it’s a real small thing, but it’s clearly a great system to have checklists. Have a checklist for everything you do. He was talking about checklists to give to the venue, checklists to do, it just keeps coming up, different things, just to know where you are in a process, because once you’ve done it once, if you’ve documented it and you’ve documented that system, and you can turn it around into...that documentation into checklists, then you’re flying, and it’s just easy to just let it kind of naturally happy. When you talk about, “Tell me about the process,” and all that kind of stuff you were talking about, he was just saying, “Well, it’s just kind of part of what I do every day, it just sort of happens,” and you know, a real clever thing, obviously the guy lives in an amazing place, but you know, to have a live event a few meters away from where you live is a pretty amazing from a lack of disruption point for him.Eager: Yep, I would agree with you there. It’s worth mentioning, I think we didn’t actually touch on this in the podcast, but all the team that he mentions that actually helps him with this is all based in the Philippines, so he’s one of those mega outsourcing guys as well. I think it’s a team of something like 50 people he’s got working for him out there. So, that is really cool. The thing that I took away from this, is a couple phrases, and one was, “innovating by taking feedback,” so, he really listens carefully to what his delegates, or, sorry, attendees, have to say for themselves, but he’s also got a thick skin at the same time, so he has to sort of have a filtration system when people are moaning about the food. So, he chooses very carefully what he takes criticism on. So, he says that you can’t please everyone all the time, and there was one phrase in there, which I’ve sort of picked up almost word for word here, which I really loved, which is, “If you’re not polarizing people a bit, then you’re not really meaning anything who you should resonate with,” which I thought was just really, really powerful stuff. How about you, Toby?Toby: Yep, that’s exactly what I’ve – I’ve written, basically my notes say, “Criticism,” and then next to it says, “Alexander O’Neil,” and then it says, “Have a thick skin.” So, you know, 80s music fans around the world love that. But, yeah, totally, totally cool. It’s hard, isn’t it? You’ve got to get feedback, but you’ve also got to find that balance between going, “Hold on a minute,” and literally, using James’ words, “This guy’s an idiot, so I’m not going to listen to those things,” because you just, you know, “Don’t talk to me about the food,” basically – unless it’s really terrible, of course, then you should talk to him about the food. Anyway, cool, right. Last thing, then. Planning events with a long game in mind, for me, just super impressive, love the way he works. Farming, not hunting, James. I love that you’re dyslexic in there, and you didn’t even realise it. Farming, not hunting. So, the whole thing about James Schramko is that he wants to keep these customers for decades, and not just for these little events, and really wants to give real value, and he does give real value. So, the thing that really resonates with me, is that although lots of people put on lots of events that profess to be life-changing, to plan, and pull off a successful business mastermind type of event, you’re going to really have to plan the content of your event, as well, and that, really, for me, is something where James Schramko is king. His content is just all really valuable, and you know, it’s great. So, that was my final thing, really.Eager: Yep, absolutely. So, please, as James said at the end, do check out our website, because he’s very happy to field comments, so, leave a comment at the bottom using the “discuss” feature there, that’s the box at the bottom where you can leave comments. He said he’s more than happy to reply to those. I think we’re just about there. I mean, we’ve discussed 80s music, I’ve got no idea what James Schramko’s taste in music is...Toby: But he likes comedy!Eager: He does indeed, I’m not sure about Alexander O’Neil, though.Toby: Well, he’s a funny guy. We met him in a tent once, didn’t we? He wasn’t that happy.Eager: Yeah. [laughs]Toby: So, more to the point, James. They can leave their feedback on our website, which is...Eager: www.plannerspod.com.Toby: Oh, it sounds so good. And, more on us, obviously we have our Metropolis-Live.co.uk, which is about to change, completely, so please keep an eye on that. Facebook.com/metropolislive, Twitter, /metropolislive1. This podcast is directly available via iTunes and Stitcher, just search for The Planner’s Planner, or Planners Pod, and you can find accompanying notes, media, and links from this podcast all on the Planner’s Pod website. So, that was it. Goodnight, funny, and see you next time, James.Eager: See you next time, Toby. Goodnight.Toby: Cheers! Bye bye! ...GoldNarrator: You’re listening to The Planner’s Planner Podcast with Toby Goodman and James Eager. Visit plannerspod.com.
Show Notes
00:38 – Opening words with Toby & James03:44 - interview with James Schramko.04:05 - What James does and how he got there.05:10 - Where he identified a need for his business idea.06:10 - What happened when James ran his 1st event.07:30 - Why someone's misbehavior at an event helped save it!08:15 - How many live business events James has run to date.08:25 - The types of live event James runs09:00 - The subject of James first event and how he set it up to succeed.10:20 - James explains how his live event has evolved.11:05 - Why you can't steer a parked car11;32 - How James produces his events11:45 - You’ll need to, work out a theme.12:10 - Deciding the duration12:20 - Making sure you have a ‘talent brief’.12:30 - Booking a venue.12:40 - Contracting stage and production.12:55 - Arranging catering.13:00 - Finding professional video production & photographers.13:10 - Organising your online sales page and auto responder.13:20 - Sorting out your marketing.13:30 - Having proper insurances13:40 - Decide if you want merchandise at your event.13:50 - Arranging crew registration, pre survey and post survey follow ups.14:15 - Find out what to expect from tech and av and James’ main goal.14:40 - The benefits of getting it right!15:10 - Why good sound is key.15:20 - The importance and value of video edits in the fly.15:40 - James talks about reselling his product.16:20 - Find out about the teams responsible for audio and video.16:55 - James talks about where to find suppliers.17:20 - The benefit of in house suppliers17:40 - Find out about who comes to James events.18:25 - the offline part of an online business event18:55 - Discover the value of face to face meeting.19:30 - Why selling to a starving crowed is the best way.20:00 - How live events take the loneliness out of online business.20:20 - Find out how you can make a small profit from an event.20:45 - The Eco system of how James works.21:00 - Find out the reactions of attendees.21:35 - James explains his journey from job to own business and the inspiration behind it.22:07 - Find out what an ‘information product’ is.23:25 - What happened when James went to the USA.24:30 - When James quit his job.25:30 - James explains why quitting his job wasn’t on a whim.25:55 - Discover the types of people that attend James’ event and where they come from.26:10 - James explains the reasons why he uses a beech in Sydney to hold his business events.26:50 - James talks about putting the experience of his attendees at the front.28:10 - How James creates customers for life through his style of event.28:40 - James explains his responsibilities and the payoff when he gets it right.29:10 - The joy a live event brings James and why he is always trying to raise the bar..30:10 - James tells us about the benefit of a good check list.30:35 - Discover the various costs associated with putting on a great looking and sounding event with food.31:50 - Why James doesn’t tie his delegates into booking a room at the venue.32:45 - Find out the running order of James events.35:25 - Why James stopped running entertainment.36:40 - The types of entertainment that can work.37:15 - Why having a laugh is an important part of a business event.37:30 - The other special moments James likes to create during an event.38:20 - The types of business people that come to James’ events.39:40 - The differences between James events and traditional business conferences. No loss, but not profit driven.41:05 - The people who appreciate the event are the ones that travel the furthest.41:25 - How James makes sure his big event gives him minimum disruption for his event.42:30 - James discussed the challenges and pressures surrounding the events and when he releases tension!43:20 - Find out what has gone wrong in the past with James’ events.45:20 - Discover how James decides on contact for future events.47:25 - James explains ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’.47:55 - Find out why polarising people is good!48:20 - How James gets experts to ‘dial in’ content and how he filters them.49:15 - James eco system and long term approach.50:00 - James Eager gets hunting and farming the wrong way around. Farming is the way!50:35 - Find out why James gives away a high value bottle of wine at each event.51:30 - Why James will shy away from the ‘seminar scene’ and how James gets the most out of the non-members.52:20 - Find out some of the content and who will be at the next Super Fast Business event.53:25 - The advice James gives to anyone putting on an event!55:20 - How to find James Schramko.55:30 - Closing comments with Toby and James (Eager)!