Chris Do: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, Chris here. We're trying something a little bit different than what we normally do for the podcast. We're doing solo episodes. These are shorter, more contained, built around certain themes and questions I think are very relevant for us to be talking about. So wherever you're listening to this, however, you're seeing this, let us know in the comments and the feedback, what you think, and we'll make some adjustments.

In this episode, I'm talking about scarcity and how you can use scarcity to help you boost an event that you're trying to promote. Professor Galloway, Professor G, talks about what you can learn from luxury brands, which is something they've mastered to create artificial scarcity. In a mass produced, mass consumption world, how is it that we can create scarcity around things that are easily [00:01:00] accessible?

You gotta control supply and demand. Now you can't control demand necessarily, but you can control supply. So if you're putting on an event under sell the event, meaning like limit the capacity. So if you think you can sell a hundred seats to workshop limited to 60 or 70, cause it's better for you to sell out, have people on the wait list and say, you've had to expand capacity or.

Just say, you know what, it's a hard stop at 60 and next time people will learn. If you do this consistently enough, what will happen is people will be kind of jump on top of something that you're doing. So now we can employ the second principle of scarcity, which is to make an announcement to signal to the market that you're thinking about doing something so that they can express interest and signal back to you that they want to be a part of this.

So you're not even selling tickets. You're not even saying that something is definitely going to happen. You're saying I'm. And if you want to be the first in line to be first notified of when it's going to happen, add your name to the list. And what you can do is then you can [00:02:00] show people, this is a Daniel Priestly concept, by the way, you can show people the line.

If you will, you put them in a public forum where they can see each other and say, look, there's 300 of us in this room and there are only 60 tickets to the next workshop. So when the tickets go on sale at midnight. or whatever date and time that you propose, then they're going to be ready. And I like this idea a lot, especially for mid to high ticket events, because people can't always whip out their credit card and make a spur of the moment decision.

It's not a spontaneous buy. So if it's, And the thousands of dollars definitely give them time to prepare, to have a conversation with their partner, their business partner, their life partner. And I'm thinking about going to this workshop. I think this is good for us. They can do their due diligence so that when you're ready to announce, hopefully you'll sell out immediately.

And that's the goal of anything, whether or not you're putting on a concert or workshop or some kind of course that you're doing, you want to sell out as quickly as possible. And then you want to add dates on the tour. If you will, comedians do this really well. There's a guy, his [00:03:00] name is Morgan J and his crowds are usually pretty small because of the style comedy that he does and just singing comedy better than most people.

Very likable Brazilian guy. And you can see at the end of his piece, he'll show you the tour dates and it just, he adds more tour dates. So what that signals to you as a consumer is like, my God, I missed him when he was in LA, when's the next time he's going to come to LA. So that might force me to do one of two things, fly to a city that he's going to be doing his comedy routine, or be just on the lookout for as soon as he announces he's going to be in LA, I'm going to jump on top of it.

I'm going to give you a real example of something that we've done ourselves in terms of marketing an event that was just an idea at first. Some of you may know that last year we did a European tour where we toured, I think, eight or nine cities throughout Europe. Something crazy like that. And initially it was really spurred on by my friend Annalee Hanson, who was like, I would really like for you to come to Stockholm, and can we just chain a bunch of cities together so that it would be worth a while to come out here?

I said, well, I don't know. Let's see what [00:04:00] the appetite is for something like this. So I make a little poster and it's like a cool graphic poster and I say, Hey, I'm thinking about coming back to Europe to do a workshop on one of the two things, a business clinic or the personal branding workshop. Are there people who are interested in where do you think we should go?

So I'm having a dialogue with them because I'm not sure what cities we should go because until they speak up, until they buy tickets, it's all speculative for me. One that could wind up being a financial disaster. You book the venue, you make all your travel arrangements and then no one shows up. You're, it's, it's a bloodbath and we don't, we're trying to avoid that.

So what you get are a bunch of people chiming in now saying, Oh, come to Berlin, come to Barcelona, come to these cities. And depending on how many people say what, we then can make a decision. So we're, we're going to design and plan the event. With people, not for them. And I think that's a big concept that I think a lot of corporations and producers do not take into consideration.

After all, you exist to serve the community and if the community isn't ever asked [00:05:00] about their opinion, they never give you feedback on anything that you're looking for, on dates and timing and cities, then you're just making a wild guess. And what happens is now they have something that, which is powerful, is the need to be consistent with themselves.

So when they comment on your thread, I'm not sure what the math is, there's got to be some percentage higher that they're more likely to buy a ticket because they say, If you come to Paris, I will be there. And then you announce that you're going to be in Paris, they don't show up. It's like, That's something that eats away at you.

So if they're solicited for their opinion and they say, I want to be a part of it and they don't follow through. Well, that's one of these like human factors that really drive what we do. So I want to design with them. So next thing is, okay, now you've announced that you're thinking about doing something.

Then you do another poll and you say, okay, of the cities that we're considering, these are the top six cities. And if we do this now, you can start to give us some details. So here's what I'm thinking. It's an eight hour workshop. Here are the learning outcomes. Here's the [00:06:00] price point. Are y'all still interested?

If you are comment with this keyword and I'll add you to the list. And of course, then the ones who are now they have details. So at first it was like, I'm committed to nothing. It's just an idea. Now what we do is it's like peeling back an onion. It's like one layer at a time. We're going to get to the core.

It's becoming more tangible. Now we have specific dates. We know what the city is going to be. We know what the curriculum is going to be in the price. Now they can make a decision. So hopefully by the time in which you actually open up the Eventbrite page or the sales page for your event, then they will just swarm in and buy the tickets.

So you'll hopefully be 70 80 percent sold just on the first 24 hours.

The Futur: It's time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

Chris Do: Want to make the most of the opportunities coming your way this year? I'd like to invite you to join me inside the Future Pro membership, your ace in the hole for [00:07:00] 2024. With expert guidance and a supportive community, the Future Pro membership was created as your ultimate business lifeline. And we have years of testimonials from members to prove it.

Check it out at thefuture. com slash pro.

The Futur: And we're back. Welcome back to our conversation.

Chris Do: Let's get into logistics. Now, there's other things you can do. Say, for example, you do this and there was initial interest, but it's not translating into conversions on the sales page. What I like to do is to incorporate that same community who's so fervent about bringing you and find local influencers or people who connect you.

Or find people who can connect you to other people so that you can be interviewed on podcasts so they can announce it because they're boots on the ground and you need boots on the ground to help you promote and find out the logistics and the nuances of each city. One thing that I want to just put out there if you're thinking about doing this internationally, is that Is that every city has a culture and a mindset and belief system that you need to incorporate.

Because if you [00:08:00] go and do the exact same workshop from city to city, you're going to run into all kinds of problems. It's something we had to learn the hard way. Two or three cities in, we're like, Oh my gosh, we're not reading the pulse of the city. And I'm having to react in real time to adjust when in fact I could have done some of this beforehand.

So for example, don't quote me on this if I didn't get this right, but when we went to Bucharest, There was a different mindset and there was, this is like former communist, they're still developing countries. So they have really hard relationships with the clients, clients who don't want to pay them, say like in the West, like in America or the UK.

So we have totally different problems, totally different mindset. And we had to work through that. We noticed differences in Warsaw, Poland, when we were there, different attitude, different mindset, but you know what, this is where also some of your assumptions can be challenged because I thought, okay, I've been to Poland before.

It's going to be a little tight, but that room was so fun and they exploded and they're making all kinds of inappropriate jokes and they, they drew me into a pool. I say [00:09:00] accessible, but I went, I swam right in there with them. And sometimes you can make assumptions about they'll get this concept and they won't, or you think they're really uptight and they're not.

So the best thing that you can do is check in with locals. But one thing that we did was we used chat GPT and we asked it, I'm going to be doing a workshop in Poland. What are their belief systems around money? What are their client relationships like? And use as up to date information as you can. And it actually told us a lot about who was going to be there and their perceptions and belief systems, which then allowed me to adjust some of the prompts.

And at least now I was going into the battlefield prepared for what was going to happen. A couple of the things that you might want to consider if you're an event producer, which is to try to find someone who's got a space, a creative space, a co working space, that you can collaborate with, so that they're going to give you the space and kind, you pay for food, and you mention them, you thank them, and it works out for everybody.

Because it turns out, a lot of these spaces, that's what they got. They got space and no humans. [00:10:00] And they want people in there because otherwise it's not being utilized. They're still paying the exact same amount of money with or without you. So we're very fortunate that many people, locals were able to do that hustle work to, to call up people and introduce us because to them, we're like an unknown entity.

So we need a middle person to kind of have that conversation. So there was a lot of work that was done behind the scenes to be able to get us the venues and a lot of accommodations. And so that was really cool. I just want to give a quick shout out to my friend, Joanna Galvao. Joanna had us move the workshop, which we already sold tickets for from Lisbon to Porto, where she's from.

She says, Chris, you don't want to be there. All the tourists go to Lisbon, but the designers, the creative community, the pulse is in Porto. And you know what she did? She's like, how many tickets have you sold? I'm like eight. She goes, I've just bought eight tickets. Cancel it. And I did that. So Joanna, she's a baller.

So she had her friends who opened up their space to us. It was amazing, creative workspace. It was awesome to be able to do the workshop in a very intimate space that was like super hyper creative. Cause it was the design [00:11:00] studio. And I thought that was an amazing thing. So wonderful things like that can happen for you.

If you learn to reach out and to activate the community that exists and they want to help you too, which is really cool. Now, one of the neat things that we discovered too, was a lot of these spaces. Because we, we treat them with respect. We thank them. We mentioned them on social that they say, Hey, next time you want to do something, you just let us know our space is yours.

And that to me is a home run. It's a win win for everybody. Let's set some expectations. Let's say you're just a master marketer. You're designing and thinking in public. You've signaled to the market. They've signaled back to you. There's an incredible wait list and you're doing a lot of free things. And then ultimately when it comes time to buy, they just don't show up.

I just want to be real, real here. People will sign up for things that are free, for sure, because they see value and they want to kick the tires and financially, they're just not in a great place, so probably didn't have the intention to buy, but that's okay, because no one's forced to buy anything. And if you're in a situation like this, and you've done everything you [00:12:00] can to activate the local community, you've done as many guest appearances on local podcasts to make the announcement, you've carpet bombed everything, you've made it so painfully obvious to anybody who's in the city that you're coming, and still people don't show up.

That's okay. And I think if we took to heart, the first thing that I said, which is really undersell your event, meaning reduce capacity down to way below what you think you can sell. So if you think you can do 40 sell 20, if you think you need 20 sell 10, just keep reducing the capacity down because it makes it much more enticing, believe it or not.

If someone who's going to buy a workshop with you thinks, you mean you're going to do a workshop for the same price and 10 people get to show up. I'm going to be one of 10. So the odds of you seeing me addressing my individual needs and concerns is going to be 10 times better. I think that's more valuable for me as an attendee.

So I want you to think about that. So I did a workshop early on in my career where literally two people paid. This is very early on. I'm thinking like [00:13:00] 2016, like the future is not even like a real concept yet. You know who showed up? I can't remember the other person, but Rodrigo showed up. This is before I know him from Jack.

He shows up and he said, Hey guys, we can cancel this or you guys will just do the workshop for two people. And they're both thrilled. They're like workshop for two people. Let's go. So literally I spent hours with each of them while we're doing the workshop together. And it was a really unique, special moment.

And you know how the rest of the story goes with Rodrigo. And he's been to my house. We've traveled the world together. It's a pretty cool thing to be able to do. So in case it's a much smaller event, Give the person. The option, and I consider that a benefit to them. They might not consider that, but at least give them the option.

As you may or may not know, I'm kind of a geek when it comes to events. So I have a perspective of both the speaker and organizer. If you want to talk more about this, hit me up with the questions in the DM or in the comments below.

The Futur: Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show [00:14:00] podcasting app and get new insightful episodes from us every week, the future podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced and edited by Rich Cardona Media. Thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple podcasts.

It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit the future. com and you'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and the creative business. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

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