Sarah Fejfar
I was shocked when I heard CJ had been hosting virtual events since 1992. Mind blown, I cannot wait for you to hear all the tips that she has on using virtual events to build your business quickly. You're going to love this. She is so experienced. Inquiring minds want to know, how are entrepreneurs like us daring bravely to build a stage ditch the sweat pants and step up to the mic? How do we create our own transformative events? So we can get our message out into the world in a bigger way. It's not only profitable, but it's actually something we can be proud. That's the question. And the answers are inside this podcast. My name is Sarah Faye for welcome to Green Room Central.
Sarah Fejfar
Hey, it's Sarah, I have an invitation for you right now. You can join entrepreneurs from across the globe who share a passion for hosting their own events become part of the community that inspires and cheers Elon over at greenroom central.com.
Sarah Fejfar
Today, I brought into greenroom central studios, CJ Hayden, author of get clients now, since 1992, she spent helping self employed professionals to survive and thrive as a business coach, a writing mentor and a virtual event host. She hosts virtual writing retreats, bringing self employed professionals from across the globe together to learn to write.
Sarah Fejfar
I'm so excited. You're here today. Welcome, CJ. I think I can speak for linchpin nation, when I say we're thrilled you're here, tell us why do you think virtual events are so darn powerful for business building,
C.J. Hayden
you know, just like any event, a virtual event gives your audience a chance to see you in action and get a feel for who you are. Events, they build that know like and trust factor that make people want to do business with you. But virtual events in particular, one of the things that's great about those is that participants can take action immediately. Right when they're in the session with you. Let's say it's an event that you're doing for promotional purposes, rather than a paid event. In a live situation, if you wanted to ask folks to register for something or make a purchase, you'd have to send them to the back of the room during a break or ask them to fill out a form that you'd collect later. But with a virtual event, they're already at the keyboard, they're already online, you can send them to a landing page and have them sign up right then in there while you're talking to them. You can even walk them through it. So that makes it really powerful for promotional events. Another reason I think they work so well whether they're promo events or paid events is it they remove some of the biggest barriers that keep people away from events, your participants, they don't have to travel from another city, they don't have to drive through urban traffic and find parking, they don't even have to get dressed. virtual events just make it so easy for someone to decide to participate because they take away a lot of that overhead cost for the participants. If someone decides they're not getting value from your event, they know they're not trapped there, they can just just connect. And that makes it a bunch easier. Yes, because there's such lower risk for them to get them to sign up in the first place.
Sarah Fejfar
I love everything about what you just said. But I love that tip, especially about walking them through, you know, if you're using your event is a promotional event to be able to, in real time, walk through the sign up or whatever you're painting is that that's super powerful. Yeah. Now, I know that you got started hosting virtual events before the pandemic, in fact, quite a bit before everyone jumped on the virtual events bandwagon. Tell us about how you got started. And when that was too
C.J. Hayden
well. I've been holding virtual events longer than almost anyone I know. I started in 1993 hosting events by teleconference. Wow. I would use a telephone bridge line that people would call into and conduct classes and discussion groups. And in the beginning, I send them materials at a time by mail or by fax member fax machine.
Sarah Fejfar
Oh my gosh. But
C.J. Hayden
a couple of years most folks had email so then I could send materials that way. And using that approach, we could do just about anything that you could do in person. So I conducted programs like that offer the 90s. And, you know, the reason I started doing this, it was twofold. First, I had networking contract contacts who were literally all over the English speaking world, people I've met at conferences, people I've met, volunteering for a professional association. And I really, really wanted to be able to draw from that international pool. And doing virtual events made that possible. Right away, I had people who were participating from Europe, which was just so amazing at that time, when people weren't really doing this. The other thing is that it allowed me to have event format, that didn't mean we've all got to get together and do this in a block of time. Because that's the only way it's going to be worth your while I came up with a format that involved having people spend half an hour, twice a week with me, you couldn't do that with a live event. But with a virtual event, it was completely possible. And it enabled me to come up with formats for working with people that were so different than what otherwise would have been possible. And now, with video, you can do literally anything, the sky's the limit, I just love being able to be independent of restrictions and figuring out, okay, how do we want to do this? What would make the learning best? What would make the experience the best?
Sarah Fejfar
Ah, absolutely, it's, it's almost as if we removed the box around events when we introduce this virtual space. And yeah, like, like you're describing time, you're no longer time bound or day bound. And, and so you can get together with groups of people in smaller chunks. And, and it's so neat how innovative you were. So early on, and just thinking outside the box and using events that were virtual in a way that you could reach more people across the pond, you could be a little bit more flexible, because you guys teach writing. And so there might be like a longer application time, right between group sessions, where you're live and live with people. And I bet that's been helpful,
C.J. Hayden
completely helpful. Plus, it enables us as writers to actually do the work while we are together. So I do co working sessions with writers. Well, there we are, we are on Zoom. And we are writing. It's not just we learn stuff, and then we go away, and we do it. And we come back and talk about it. No, we're doing the thing. Right there.
Sarah Fejfar
Sure. Sure. The that. So how can someone make use of the virtual events to build their business, in your opinion.
C.J. Hayden
So for many years, what I primarily taught was business building, and then I segwayed, into business building through writing, and I still teach that, but I also now teach getting the writing itself done. And there's really two categories, I think that our our people need to be looking at. And they're very different categories, that it's important to maintain the distinctions around. So one is promotional events, holding virtual promotional events in order to get people in the door for whatever the real thing is, whether that's consulting, or coaching, or a training program, or art classes, or whatever that thing is. And the other is having the events themselves be paid events. And I really noticed sometimes that when people start thinking about events, they don't always think through why am I doing this thing. So with a promotional event, what you're doing very specifically is you're trying to attract people who are going to be willing and able to do whatever your paid thing is. So you don't want to just fill the room with anybody. You want to fill the room with prospective clients, right? People who have the ability to become paid participants in whatever you're offering. With the paid events, you want the thing itself to pay for itself and therefore become a core offering Your business. So you keep the distinction straight. Either one of them can be a way to build your business, you can either use a virtual event as a way to recruit people in and get them to know you and like you and therefore want to do more with you. Or you can do a paid virtual event that allows you to build your business outside of your local area, with contacts around the world, if you can make those contacts. And it allows you to grow your business beyond the possibilities, not only in your, let's say, urban area, but you can be anywhere, you can be doing events. If you're on vacation in Hawaii, as I have done many times, you can do an event, and then step away and back into your holiday with your family. Right? There's there's no restrictions on you having to be present in a specific place at a specific time, with only the group of people who can travel to you within a reasonable length of time. So it raises the bar on what's possible in terms of building your business.
Sarah Fejfar
Oh, yes. Now, is any part of that stressful though, for you?
C.J. Hayden
You know, honestly, I find virtual events so much less stressful than live events, it in in the first place, you can use the event to do what you do best. So if you consultant if you facilitate if you speech, if you speak, if you teach if you are somebody who does something, hands on, I used the example of teaching art a minute ago, and I'm a member of a virtual community where what we do is we create art together, right? So it allows you to do those things without having to worry about simultaneously running the room. When I used to do live events, oh my God, so many logistical details. You got to worry about sure the obvious, getting dressed, getting to the site, being there, before people get there, you need to have somebody to help you because you can't possibly handle the room all by yourself. Because of all the logistical stuff, you have to physically have things present in the room, people have to be fed, they need beverages, there needs to be restrooms, there's just on and on. And I used to have a checklist, right? That was so long for doing live events. And I am so happy to now no longer have to deal with all those things. It makes things so much less stressful. And because you don't have the physical space, you also don't have the risk of putting up a bunch of money. And then having at the last possible moment, something get in the way. You know, I just moved to Philadelphia from San Francisco. Earthquakes, you have to worry, what do I do if all of a sudden there's an earthquake an hour before my event? Right? Right. What's that gonna do to me financially? What am I going to do if it happens while there's people in the room? Right? Yes. Yeah, there's all of those stress factors that you don't have with virtual events.
Sarah Fejfar
Yeah. So let's stay in that vein of stress. And talk about marketing, virtual events and talk about how, if you found it to be less or more stressful to market, a virtual event, because I've heard people can get real stressed about the virtual event marketing, because people are waiting to say yes or no up until the last minute because, you know, they don't have to book a hotel. They don't have to book a flight. And if you were doing an in person event, typically about three weeks out, you would have most of the people would have made their decision. So tell me about what you found.
C.J. Hayden
So the very first time I did a virtual event, I had two people sign up and I ran the event with my two people. Because why not? Really, why not?
Sarah Fejfar
Serve who you serve, serve who's there and worry about that? Yeah,
C.J. Hayden
exactly. And because you don't have all that overhead expense, you don't have to worry about that. So, yeah, I find it so much easier. Now, of course, you don't want to keep going in there trying to run a business. If you're trying to make money or get clients out of events, with just two people showing up, you need to do better at it than that. But I think it's less stressful because you don't have all the pressure on you to make it go or not go. It can go with as many people as you have. And that's fine.
Sarah Fejfar
I absolutely love that mindset, CJ, because not every entrepreneur has that mindset. Some are really, I would say selfish, and they don't want to lose face and they can't fathom doing the event, if they don't get whatever made up number is in their head into the room. And I love how you're telling us just release the number and serve who's there and love on who's in the room and then do it again and get your marketing better. And yeah, so tell me what, what other mistakes are you seeing folks making with their virtual events.
C.J. Hayden
I think that very often somebody who's new to this really doesn't understand that the level of planning that it takes to fill it that to have a full room to think out, I say six weeks in advance, right from the date when you actually want to hold the thing. And plan starting from six weeks back everything that you're going to do in order to make sure that you're getting the word out about that event. You know, sometimes people will look at what they think someone else who's more successful than they are doing. And they say, Well, you know, I just got an email, and then I signed up. So that's all I have to do, right? I just send out an email, and people will sign up? Well, no, actually, it's usually a little bit more than that. So you have to look at all of the ways in which you should be reaching out to your prospective audience and the order those things need to happen in and what needs to be in place in order for all of that to occur. And over time, you can build out a whole checklist for yourself, like I have that you can refer to and say okay, I do this at six, I do this at five weeks, I do this for weeks. But the first time you do it, even if you're working off somebody else's template, it's really difficult to actually get all of those pieces in place. So that's the one first mistake. The other was about the event itself. You know, think about how when you were in school, how boring lectures were right, the worst possible thing is just sit there and listen to somebody talk and maybe show some visuals that are basically just outlines of what they're saying. That's not interesting. Make it interactive, make it fun, very what you're doing. That's the other thing that I think people really don't get about events is it's just not a talking head and a few words on a slide. You have to have more than that to engage people and to keep them from disconnecting and leaving.
Sarah Fejfar
So CJ, on that note, what is one of your best tricks for keeping people engaged?
C.J. Hayden
Get them to talk immediately. I don't like giving events where people can OTT cannot speak where they can only type. So I deliberately do not give events that are so large that people cannot speak. If you get them to start talking from the very first moment, let's hear from three people. Why are you here today? Right really simple way to get people talking and get some space into the virtual room other than just you.
Sarah Fejfar
Hey, I don't want you to miss out. Did you know that this conversation always continues inside the linchpin nation community. It's a free modern discussion forum exclusively for greenroom central listeners that will have a profound impact on the way you look at events in your business. Get answers to your biggest questions here behind the scenes nuggets from event leaders and get access to helpful templates, guides and checklists. As you start and scale events in your business, be part of the daily discussion with entrepreneurs just like you You can join for free over at greenlam central.com. I'll see you inside. That was an awesome tip CJ linchpin nation, I hope you're writing that one down, get your guests talking immediately, hugely valuable engagement tip. And if your event is larger, you can always use Zoom breakouts to get the whole room talking right away. I love it, I want to circle back to the first mistake that you said event leaders were making is how, you know, they're not making a plan to market it and kind of following it, and I and what I heard is that, you just give yourself the permission, the first time for it to be a hot mess, and you kind of create it, you know, and work off a template and then make it your own for how to go to market your event in the future, allow it to be a hot mess, and it's okay, it's even expected and then the next time it's gonna get better. And it might still be a mess, but it's going to be less of a hot mess than it was the first time and you'll learn and you're iterating. And is that what happened for you?
C.J. Hayden
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And make sure that, oh, for example, that you're not planning your six weeks, starting with Thanksgiving in order to have your event happened like January 3, right? Think about what else is going on at that same time, both out in the world and in your own calendar so that you don't drop the ball on your great plan.
Sarah Fejfar
Yeah, I absolutely always, always recommend people take a look at a calendar with holidays on it. But not only holidays that are major that you know, like everyone in your market is going to be observing. But then I think about what are things specific to the group of your guests. So like I use, I like to use the example for of parenting conference. So you know, like, mid September is probably not a bad time, from the holidays perspective to be hosting an event. But what's happening for those parents? Well, they just got their kids into school. And they're still ironing out, like all the back to school rituals in the process and all the things that come with that. And so that probably wouldn't be the best time to be hosting a parenting conference. So I think there's kind of a mix when you're looking at choosing the date for your event, and then backing into the marketing process for it, of not only the holidays, but also just the stuff that's unique to your guests. Now, I want to move on and talk about the pandemic. And in, in how that shifted things for you in terms of like, the landscape of virtual events that you're playing on in, in your particular style of events. Well, first, I
C.J. Hayden
think the pandemic and the fact that Zoom has become ubiquitous. It's made it so much easier to convince people that a virtual event can be worth their while. Even though I've been doing this for a really long time, I would still run up against people who would say, oh, but it's all happening online. It's all happening by video. I don't know, I'm not really sure that's going to give me what I'm looking for. I don't run into that anymore. That's one thing. And the other thing that it's gotten folks over the imagined, technical hurdle of participating. Hit that all the time, you know, my audience tends to be in a non tech group, they also tend to be in an older age group. They also tend to be in a more female age group. And what I would encounter, given that trifecta of three different things is people who would say, Oh, I have to install something. And so that would be the deal killer, right there, even though I tell them oh, no, it's really easy. You just click and it just and they're like, oh, no, no, no, no, I've been there before. That didn't work for me. And now everybody's had to get over that hurdle. And so people are just, of course, of course, easy. No problem. Shift.
Sarah Fejfar
I love that. I felt the same too. And I'm such a big fan of it. And then I think back to just maybe five years ago, when we would be hosting all these events, like meetings on a conference line or a phone conference sign in. And you know, it would be so hard to hear if you were the one who was on the phone versus the people in the conference room. And, you know, some people were gathered together and some people were remote and on the phone and I, I just think about how much farther we've come now. The we're able to see everybody so clearly and feel the emotion in the room of it. And I love it. And I love the innovation that's come from the past couple years. And and yeah, I think that's definitely been a gift for me of the pandemic. So tell me, what virtual events are you hosting right now.
C.J. Hayden
So I hold monthly virtual writing retreat for self employed professionals. It's a day long writing retreat, and we gather on Zoom, and we do a kickoff. And I give some tips and tricks for making the most out of the day. And then everybody says what they're going to be writing on. And then we go off, and we write for 90 minutes, and then we come back and we check in. It keeps people writing all day long, much longer than they ordinarily bite, and they become just so productive. I've got a regular group of people who come and do that all self employed professionals, and, yeah, they really enjoy it. And then I also have an online community with interspersed live events called get it written village, where again, it's self employed professionals who write whether it's blogs, or articles or books or home study courses. And what we do is gather together to learn stuff to share about what it is that we're working on. I give them a challenges and I award prizes. And it's really something that people look forward to because writing can be such a solitary activity. And it's a way to do it it community.
Sarah Fejfar
Oh, that's so interesting. Now, tell me, do you use the zoom breakout functionality at all to coach people one on one, I'm, I'm just picturing myself like writing and I kind of wouldn't want to be interrupted, right? So do you give people permission to either go off camera or put the whole thing on mute? Tell me a little bit more.
C.J. Hayden
So what I actually do is years, here's the trick for people who's looking, who are looking to make their events earn a little bit more, is I offer laser coaching sessions throughout the day at an extra cost. So if what somebody wants to do is they want to do a coaching session in the middle of the day, we go off into another Zoom Room, and I'll spend half an hour with them, helping them get past whatever their block is, or doing planning for their next project or whatever they feel like their need is. And so I can be doing two things at once. It's a way of leveraging your time I can be hosting this day long retreat and within the same timeframe be offering laser coaching sessions.
Sarah Fejfar
Hmm. So it's a paid event. And then the VIP upsell, if you will, is this private coaching with you during that same timeframe,
C.J. Hayden
during the same timeframe instead of happening at another time or end of the day or whatever? Yeah,
Sarah Fejfar
oh, sure. super productive use of your and their time. Yes, I've been talking a lot about upsells. Lately, and because people get confused about what they should they should be. And I talked about this kind of expected versus unexpected concept where the tickets for the event should include everything that's expected. But then the things that you can put in the VIP bucket are things that are unexpected, like you would be unexpected to expect one on one time at links with you CJ during the event. And so I love how how you're just using that philosophy that I have exactly as I was thinking it to be used. So I want to shift gears and I want to move into a little bit of a rapid fire session before we wrap up. So my first question is, what do you say to yourself backstage and then on stage, you know, a lot of people have mindset as the biggest hurdle to doing this work live in front of people. And CJ, you've clearly gotten over that since 1992 quite easily, which I want to know like, what are you telling yourself to be brave enough to do this type of work?
C.J. Hayden
So I think of what I'm going to be doing as a conversation rather than a performance. I really run my events exactly that way. And sometimes I'm conversing With a whole bunch of people at once, but other times, I'm conversing one on one with somebody that has a question or an issue. And if I think about it that way, there's no cause for performance anxiety, or wondering, will they like me? Right? I can think about it just as if I might think about sitting down to have coffee with a bunch of people. And we're going to talk about these specific topics. And we'll keep it really informal. To the extent that we can within this formally set aside a period of time, you can still make your way through an outline and give people the value that they came for, but do it in a conversational way.
Sarah Fejfar
And that goes back to your best tip for engagement, which was getting get people talking. And I just want to ask one follow up on that, because I'm hearing linchpin nation save it, Sarah, but CJ, like, what if I unmute somebody? And I quickly find out that they should not have been unmuted? What's her what's your trick for that?
C.J. Hayden
Really depends a lot on the reason they shouldn't have been unmuted, but the room is yours. You're in control. And so you can simply keep in mind the group rather than just the person. So if what's happening is you're going down a rabbit hole of them, guess, buddy, whatever you're saying, you could always make the clock the bad guy and saying, I'd love to talk with you about this more, but we don't have any more time. Let's move on to the next person. Boom, done.
Sarah Fejfar
Oh, brilliant. Make the clock the bad guy. And yes, it's gonna help a lot of us get out of sticky situations. Alright, Siri, your best tip for filling events with linchpin nation,
C.J. Hayden
invite people, personally, don't just put something up on your website and send out emails with terrific copy and post things on social media. actually invite people personally, call them on the phone, remember that we used to call them on the phone, send a text, send an email that's clearly personally aimed at that individual, not just some generic thing that's going out to hundreds, put a postcard in the postal mail. Imagine their surprise and actually getting a piece of paper with a stamp on it. personal invitations, absolutely do wonders to get people to come to events.
Sarah Fejfar
That's beautiful. CJs see the humanity and each and every person that's gonna end up in the room and be personal with your invitation. I love that. What would you say is your favorite moment at events that you host?
C.J. Hayden
It's when people in the room have one of those aha moments, when you've said something or you've taught them something or you've completed an exercise, and they have a realization that they would not have had. If they did not come to your event. I can think of one where I had answered a question from somebody in the room. And then one of the other people in the room responded. That was worth the peace of price of admission right there. Yeah, that that's what I love about it is instantaneous learning from the people who are there.
Sarah Fejfar
You have never and also never underestimate the power of when you're laser coaching somebody in front of an audience that the AHA will probably come from the person you're working with, but also from somebody who's in the audience listening. So good. Tell me what is the best thing about hosting your own events? Is it is it that travel piece that we talked about earlier, you could be on a beach in Hawaii and and hosting your own own event?
C.J. Hayden
Well, there's that but really, it's acquiring those loyal fans, those people who really enjoy what you're doing and are getting value from it enough so that when you do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, they come back and they bring their friends with them and it just gets easier as time goes on because you do build up this this core Are the group of people who are like, Oh, CJ is doing it? Oh, definitely, I'm going to go. That's got so much value to it not because, you know, I need to have people, I don't know, think of a guru or something. No, actually, that. But it's really that I have people who are immediately going to understand that I'm offering something of value, and they're going to show up in the room with that being their perspective. And even if they don't even say anything, it's as if the other people there consensus that oh, wait, people think this is valuable. I better listen closely.
Sarah Fejfar
Yes. Yes. 100%. Agree. So I would absolutely love to know what you're reading right now. Especially because you're a writer.
C.J. Hayden
You know, I'm always looking for for new tips to help my audience of self employed professionals who write to build their businesses. So what I'm reading right now is a book called Seven Steps to confident writing by Alan gild. Lots of great tips in there to help people get over their fear about writing and about publishing.
Sarah Fejfar
Hmm, I might have to check that out. So what have you got going on right now that linchpin nation should know about and where can they find you?
C.J. Hayden
So anybody who's interested should visit my website, CJ hayden.com. Hey, Miss Ha, yd en. And take a look at my books, my courses, my groups. And if you like, you can also get a free copy of my e book blueprint for a thriving mission based business.
Sarah Fejfar
Hmm, wonderful. We'll link that all up in the show notes for everybody. CJ, this has been such a fabulous conversation. I've learned a lot. And I think linchpin nation has to thank you so much for being here.
C.J. Hayden
Thank you for having me.
Sarah Fejfar
Thank you for listening to the green room central podcast today. If you loved this episode, then please take a screenshot on your phone and post it to Instagram. And be sure to tag at therapy for and let me know why you liked it and what you like to hear or who you'd like to hear from in the future. That'll help me know what to create for you.
Sarah Fejfar
Also, if it's on your heart to host your first or next event in 2022, and you need a little jumpstart, let's connect for a strategy session. Just go to green room central.com. In a two hour intensive, private session, I can help you pivot scale or start your event vision from scratch. Together, we'll build an actionable plan so that you feel confident and clear on your next steps. I want you to go to Green Room central calm right now to sign up.
Sarah Fejfar
And in case you're curious, this podcast is built on Kajabi. I am absolutely loving how easy it's been to get things set up. But more so I'm thrilled that my entire business is run within one platform, from my emails to my pages to my course. And now to my podcast. It's all under one roof. If you love simplicity and scalability as much as I do, then go to green and central.com to get a free 14 day trial from Kajabi.
Sarah Fejfar
I appreciate your commitment to leveling up and learning the mindset and strategies of live events. Keep going, keep learning. If you want more, head over to green room central.com For show notes and all the links from today's episode.
