You know, it's easy to feel anxious about hosting a successful event. Because you’re already deeply invested. You invest your money, time, and effort into promotion, and then you worry if enough people will show up. But you shouldn't stress too much because you don't really need a large crowd to have a great event. 

In fact, if you approach it authentically, the entertainment will naturally emerge. The momentum will build around you – and hearing positive feedback from a few people about the energy is always pretty good.

I recently attended the Fyre Nation Cypher in Little 5 Points, loved every minute of it. Holding an event during the winter can be challenging,  most people prefer to stay indoors. But if you have just 10 individuals who genuinely care about what you're doing and are willing to get cold and get wet and not care about it, you already have a 30% advantage over your competition. 

While they're inside, you're making new connections, and preparing for new locations. 

Your work doesn't have to be as mainstream as Minecraft to be interesting and attract a room.

Forget about the quest for a thousand distant online fans. Instead, focus on finding your first ten real-life allies. They might not always be the outspoken type-A personalities or natural leaders, but they are don’t really need to be.

A couple of things stand out to me about this whole situation. 

First, you need to identify where your potential supporters already are—whether it's events, forums, or social media groups. 

It's not worth trying to create a new audience for your business or organization. 

Instead, go to the places where people who care already are at. Take your time, give a damn, be a contributer.

An Event Is The Psyche Of The Planner

Waiting for an ideal community to just walk through the door is like waiting for a bus in a town that doesn't have buses. It's not going to happen. You're never going to meet a perfect group of people, and the flaws that are in the people that you meet are just reflections of flaws in your own outreach.

That's a very weird way to phrase it, but I'll simply tell you that the longer you're doing this, the clearer you'll understand what I mean. 

An event is the psyche of a planner, in the same way that a business is the psyche of the business owner. You can see the flaws, strengths, and weaknesses just as plain as day.

A well-organized event is great because it's like a narrative. It has a beginning, it has a middle, it has an end. This is all based on how you joined, what you did or saw while you were there, and what kind of action you took. Really, the action you take is you choosing to interact with the story that's being presented to you.

So, when we think about that, we try to make events a more holistic experience. We want to know all these details, like what it's like when someone arrives, what they'll see, how they'll leave, and what they'll be asked to do while they're there. 

So, when we plan events, we aim to create a more holistic experience. We consider all the details, like what it's like when someone arrives, what they'll see, how they'll leave, and what they'll be asked to do while they're there. 

Start having conversations with people that share these values, and you'll also be able to talk to people about what you're seeing in these conversations with other people. And you'll find that it's not so much some innate value that you have, but your ability to have those three or four conversations and facilitate what's going on that will help you naturally stand out and add value.

How did we do this? We took our existing creative output and made a PDF. There are a couple of ways to do this, you can do a webinar, or you can just show people the PDF and see if they show up to see other people who've read the same thing.

Collateral is key, it just is. Honestly, one of the first things we did after we started a business was put together a slideshow and a video presentation. We knew that, number one, we needed that to explain to our core what we're doing and what our goals were. So, if your story is all in your head, if your pitch is all in your head, try to get it into a number one handout. That's not an advertising handout, but it's like a vision handout and has everything that's really important to what you're doing. It should really fit into two or three beats, you know? 

Cold Outreach. Or, Talking To People.

Cold outreach might seem a little bit weird or ineffective when it comes to business, but for anything where you're trying to talk to real human beings, it's just a fact of what you're doing. Now you have sort of the benefit of number one, you're not really selling anything. And if you've done a good job of the prep work of starting your organization, you should have a lot of free stuff to give.

You should have assets like videos, you should have handouts, you should have a set of emails so that whenever someone asks what you've got going on, you already have something to hand them. 

So now that you've made those things, you really want to get into giving them what you've got. And it's not really about sending out a ton of messages and hoping for the best, because really you're following up with people who hopefully you've at least seen and made eye contact with in real life.

So you're going to send specific things you know about the person that you're contacting. 

And you might be a power player and do 10 of these a day, but maybe you just do five. Don't worry about having like a perfect website, landing page, this and that.

Just send the messages and make sure that there's something that's going in the inbox each day. 

Are you making people feel noticed and valued? And maybe just as important, is it operationalized?

Really, there's not a system that's a substitute for having a conversation, at least that I've found yet. There are tools like SendSpark that will kind of keep them in line. For example, you can record one message and it can go to a large group of people. But, there's just nothing as specific as you and a person. 

Find Some Balance In Your Social Connections

You got to go out there because they are your test runs, they're your practice sessions. You can test your ideas, you can mess with your agenda, you can improve your approach.

Each of these individual elements that go into holding an event like your tabling and your handouts and your messaging, you're improving all of those in an iterative way. 

The more that you're speaking on behalf of your organization and maybe more than that, you're also improving when it comes to your, not just tabling at events, but just going out in the real world and talking about what you're working on and what you're doing. And of course, if you can get in an environment where it's good for you to do that, then that's even better.

But you can't underestimate who you might meet. So keep track of those events. Maybe they're on Meetup in your town.

Maybe they're on Instagram. 

I don't know what scene you're most comfortable with. 

But you're always going to have to find some balance because it's got to be large enough for there to be people and for you to make connections.

You don't want to be going to some place where the scene is worse off than you are, right? But you also want somewhere where you can stand out. This is really just a matter of, you've got to find a little time during the week.

Maybe that's a couple of meetings a week and that you're really following up with people there. And set a date. Show people what it is you're doing and what it is you're working on.

Really, you don't have to worry about poaching. Even the idea seems a little bit silly because, at a given event, there might be one or two people that are the exact right buy for you. Right? And while I can tell you a lot about setting up things like a CRM, landing page, emails, and blah, blah, blah. That’s all great.

However, my advice has its limits. It’s a fact that you can only cheat the game to a certain extent. Eventually, it's you and a person. Collateral makes it a lot easier, though. 

Social Media Is A Lot Easier With Collateral. So Make That First.

Once you've actually done some of this groundwork stuff – if you've done the work of setting up your CRMs, your spreadsheets, your landing pages, and your assets – now when you go and talk to people, social media shouldn't seem so overwhelming. This is because you've done a lot of the prep work when it comes to explaining what it is you do in so many different formats. Once you've done a lot of that work, which can be a little tedious, everything else just becomes easier.

When I think about what makes social media easy, part of it is doing events, being in interesting places, having stuff on a calendar, and having your editorial ideas ready in advance. But a certain amount of it is the confidence that comes with just being prepped – having your editorial ideas ready in advance, having documents to present to people when they ask, and having calls to action – things that you ask for and want.

It's like being at a party. You wouldn't only talk about yourself – but now you're able to talk about yourself in such a packaged and understandable way that you can spend more time listening, talking, and connecting with others. So, choose the platforms where your audience is most active, where you are, and just post there.

Who Are Local Influencers, Really?

These are the storytellers at the groups that you’re going to.

Don't worry about follower counts. That's not real. Most of social media is fake.

Companies spend money to get a farm of people to like a brand, and it doesn't have any correlation to what's actually interesting. 

What you’re hearing and seeing is not really happening! 

And the things that are interesting in social media are the same as the things in people that are interesting in real life. 

It's stuff that you can add. Really, reach out to the people who are telling the interesting stories, and they'll vet you for themselves!

It's really, you're going to find someone who shares your values if you reach out and talk about what you're doing. 

And you only need a one pager in these situations. One page of information that shares what you've got going on, and it'll be, there's not much else you need.

Pages That Turn Casual Interest Into Strong Support

This is what turns casual interest into strong support. It's a landing page.

It's your flyer. It's the benefits of working with you. It's some follow up emails.

That's what we've been talking about all week. And all of that guides people through the different stages of involvement with your cause. And you wouldn't rush a relationship.

The same goes for support for your organization. Don't try to ask people about this and that and that and this just because you need help every week.

Instead, you take some initiative. Build out the systems, the messaging, the talking, the storytelling, all of that stuff. And then just ask people to be plugged into it.

And that makes everything much more simple. It's what draws people in. It's what keeps people interested.

It's what makes your impact grow over time. Again, you can see a little of this on our own network page – there's a headline, there's a PDF, there's a form that gives a lot of information and context.