Ups and downs - Things I learnt from my first 2 events continued...

Ups and downs - Things I learnt from my first 2 events continued...

I hope you all had a nice Christmas break and enjoyed some downtime ( if you got any!), I think Christmas is a great time to reflect on things and enjoy hopeless amounts of food in the process!

I thought I would add some extra bits I are learnt from running my first 2 Live Sport Talks events, if you haven't already, check out my previous post where I give my opinion on things such as Facebook ads and Google Adwords. Here are a few other things that I picked up that you may find of use ( if you don't know them already)

Don't be afraid to pivot, but stay true to your concept.

So the heading above may be a bit confusing, so let me explain. It is important to have a good balance with your original idea and the logistics of getting the idea working. When I came up with Live Sport Talks, I had all sorts of bright ideas on how I could run the event and attract sponsors, but the reality is that things don't necessarily always work out the way you would have liked. When things like this happen, it is important to explore opportunities to pivot. I learnt about the term 'pivot' from a great book called the The Lean Start Up by Eric Ries. Eric explains how sometimes for a business to survive, it may have to pivot from the original idea. Ideas where to pivot normally come from early experiences, so I have certainly picked up a few ways that I can change a few things to make the events better and more sustainable. A good example of a large company performing a  pivot is Starbucks. Before Starbucks became a public coffee house and the biggest in the world, they used to sell coffee beans and espresso machines. Current Chairman Howard Schultz decided he loved the concept of selling fresh coffee in a European style coffee house. I would urge you to try and stay true to the original concept though, and not let the external influences take away your idea! 

You don't ask, you don't get! 

So my full time job is a sales officer at a University, where we sell the Universities estate. I have dealt with many clients, from large corporations to start ups to charities. Everyone has their background story and it is rare that they don't try to get a bit of a deal. It a funny way, it put me off asking for discounts or deals when starting up Live Sport Talks. I wanted to be taken seriously and wanted to do everything correctly. It soon dawned on me, it was more about the way you approach a venue, a supplier or an agency that will dictate whether they would be willing to negotiate. When I am working with a company that are looking to get a deal with a University venue, I would be rather work with a client that is honest and open about their situation, then someone who is trying to 'get one up on you' so to speak and isn't being fully truthful about their intentions. I managed to get a bit of a deal with a venue for one of my talks, I was honest about really liking the venue but the cost was too much for me at that time. I looked at another venue, which was cheaper but not as professional looking but was cheaper. I told the preferred venue what I had, and they were happy to match that cost to get the event in. It was very basic negotiation, was really barely any however it was a success! Here is a great article about negotiation with some great examples - http://lifehacker.com/five-tips-to-negotiate-better-with-just-about-anyone-493106085 . It is worth asking if there is any wiggle room with costs, as the worse they can say is no. It may not be worth going to the Ritz and asking from a free lunch for 300 people though, unless you are a complete pro!

So there are a couple more pointers for you, I hope it has been of some use. Will be putting some more togehter as well in this reflection period too!

Enjoy your new year everyone and thanks for reading! 

Ups and downs of a start- up – what the first 2 events have taught me.

It has been a while since I have wrote in this blog, so I thought I would give an update on how my first 2 events went and big and little things I have picked up. I have read and listened to a lot of different business people about what to expect when starting a business, and how you REALLY learn about starting a business once you have started. I have read a lot about event promotion and things to try and endless blog posts from so called experts on how to really create a buzz about your event. I am going to share a few insights I have since starting this venture. I want to be clear that being a start up, I am certainly no expert and I am still learning the ropes, so please feel free to share your insights with me too!

Facebook ads – great tool if used correctly

As we all know, Facebook is a big part of modern day society and we are all guilty of maybe spending too much time strolling through our feeds. Facebook make BILLIONS through advertising revenue, so when you see these groups which say ‘sign here to keep Facebook free’, pay no attention to them. Why would Facebook cut their user base, which they make so much revenue advertising to via big brands? And even if they did start charging people, a competitor would snap all the users that would refuse to pay. You probably notice all sorts of stuff coming up on our feeds, such as an exciting event happening near you or the new pair of Adidas trainers or even showing you that a cool new indie band are playing a gig near you. Facebook have a wealth of information on every single user, such as things they ‘like’, things they ‘share’ and even pages you look at. We used Facebook ads to promote the event with an Olympic gymnast Beth Tweddle. To set up your advert, you choose your audience, this includes: location, age, pages you like and things you have shown interest in. Our advert targeting all ages in the Manchester area who are interested in gymnastics, sports and the Olympics. In theory it is a marketers dream, unlike the old days where you would have to put in a great deal of research to find this market it is literally at your fingertips with Facebook. Facebook are very good at budgeting, you can set a budget (as little as £10 ) and put the amount of days you want it to run within that budget. I ran quite a few different campaigns and got some good response as you pay per clicks. I did find that you can exhaust the advert a bit; I mean you may notice that you get the same ad in your feed every day so it isn’t the set if new people you are advertising to. To counter that, there is a theory that people on average need 3 interactions with a brand before purchasing from them, so maybe repeating the ad to the same people eventually will lead to ticket sales. I found the key thing about a Facebook ad is that your ad needs to stand out from the rest. We are in a situation where we can be overwhelmed with information through the internet so some things do get lost in translation. For future events, I think I will look at doing shorter bursts leading up to the event to create awareness.

Google Adwords

You have probably noticed when you google things, you get suggestions at the top and on the side. This is Google Adwords, where companies basically pay Google to show people their businesses when putting in keywords. It is clever business, if you google ‘Italian restaurants in Cambridge’, then it is in the interest of an Italian restaurant in Cambridge to have their ad on show. It really helps if your website isn’t very high up at rankings in Google. It shows that 91.25% of Google traffic goes to first page results, so it imperative to get your website to the first page, so Google Adwords is a good idea to assist with that. You do pay per click, which naturally doesn’t always equal to sales so doesn’t guarantee sales. It is very important to make sure your ad sticks out though, as just like Facebook ads will get lost with all the other ads. If copyrighting isn’t your thing, may be worth trying out FIVER, to see if someone with more experience can write something up for you.

Press releases

A great way to get information about your event is sending press releases to local, regional and even national ( depending on size) newspapers, news websites and radio stations. A few pointers I have from my experience with dealing with the press. So you work hard writing up a well worded press release, ready to send out to all sorts of publications. Here are a few things to bear in mind:

      Don’t send an attachment, put the press release in the body of the email. Seems simple, however something I didn’t think of. When you think about it, some editors may not like to open an attachment from an email address they don’t recognise.

            Make it stand out. Stats show that 1,759 press releases are distributed daily, that is a lot of information to get through for editors. Make yours stand out, maybe put an image in the flyer too.                  

F    Follow up with a phone call. Emails are great of course, however are easily ignored. I also found that my emails were going into people junk boxes, even if you have interacted with them previously.  It is worth picking up the phone to check if they received the press release or offer them more information. You may get response along the lines of ‘we aren’t interested’, which happens. Don’t take it personally, just a part of it!

So just a few pointers for you, again not an expert and always learning but if any of it helps you on your venture then it’s a good thing!

Will upload some more later this week too!

Ups and downs of a start up - The importance of partnerships in business….

So I haven’t posted on this blog for a while, working on my next event with Beth Tweddle has taken up a lot of my time. After running one event, I have already picked up some valuable experience in running (or attempting!) to run an events company. Here are a few little bits, which may help you if you are starting up like me.

The importance of partnerships

So for my first event I worked with some great companies who put some social media posts about the event, which was very helpful. I really didn’t value or understand the importance of having partners in running these events. The key is to try and work out what organisations would be interested in your event. There is a wealth of information online about the benefits of partnerships and some examples. For this event I decided to go with a different approach, I sent an invite to a local sports partnership to the event. I had a good response, with a few of their staff members contacted me showing interest. This led to a dialogue about potentially working with the partnership and an organised phone call. I listed all of the things we could do for them, such as free tickets for staff and exposure on the night, they will also have a former Olympian at an event they are involved in. The benefits for us could be huge, such as the partnership promoting the event to their huge social media followers as well as giving us access to their corporate clients. We are still finalising the arrangement, but it is exciting times for Live Sport Talks. Another decent arrangement is a little guest appearance on the local radio station. After making a phone call and offering press passes, the station have offered to promote the event along with me making a guess appearance!

Press releases

So I read online that sending mass press releases is a great way to get the word out there about your event, which it does to a certain degree. I sent out my press release to lots of different publications from local radio stations, magazines and even the BBC ( worth a try!). I had some replies, some asking for press passes to the event and also some asking for more information which was great. I went to a networking event and got chatting to someone quite senior in their company. I told them about the promotion and what I have been up to, including the press releases which I was feeling pretty proud about. The gentleman then made me aware that editors can receive around 250 different press releases a DAY; then asked what I done to make mine different. This made me realise that I should probably follow up these press releases with offerings of press passes and some more information about why my event stands out. Something to think about in the future!

It is easy to ignore an email, phone too!

In my day job I am a pretty accessible guy, very rarely would I not respond to an email. In my original plan, I thought sending emails to people that may be interested would lead to potential clients. The trouble is an email is easy to ignore, doesn’t matter how many times you resend it! This is when you have to really put the hours in, making sales calls and leaving messages. Like me, some people find sales calls awkward and you will get a mixed response from people. In this country particularly, people don’t like to be sold to. If you was running a business in the USA, then I am convinced people are more outgoing and these conversations are easier. To be honest, in the UK we are peppered with PPI calls and car accident claims calls, so you can understand why people don’t like these calls. The difference is that what you are selling can be beneficial to them (that’s why you are calling!), so this means you are offering them a great opportunity. My first talk was with an Olympian swimmer in London. I contacted the local clubs to offer them the chance to come along and hear from an Olympian swimmer, to me that is a great opportunity being offered to them for less than a price of a cinema ticket. I have recently included sending letters to clients with flyers, I felt the personal touch may appeal to people. Some people may say that sending a letter is a waste of time due to new technology, however I believe there is still a place for traditional marketing. Remember not everyone are slaves to their iPhones and iPads and may appreciate a letter.

So that is about it for this blog post. One last thing, just to add in to the post about something else I picked up from a career coach at a networking event. The coach said that it is very important not to allow the fear of failing completely absorb you. While the desperate side of wanting to make the company work plays a part, don’t let that side of you affect the creative side, if that make sense! 

Our next Live Sport Talks is at the AJ Bell Stadium with Britain's most successful female gymnast Beth Tweddle on Thursday 24th November! Tickets available at www.livesporttalks.com  

First event done, now time to reflect...

So it has been a while since I updated this blog, organising the event took a lot of my time up. The first Live Sport Talks event was overall a success. Ticket sales were pretty low, I learnt a lot about the importance of marketing properly. I think the hardest bit was starting from scratch and trying to getting the word out there about the series. It took endless emails and phone calls, so it was disappointing to struggle with the ticket sales. I am hopeful, now we have done one event, we can use the photos and videos to really show what Live Sport Talks is all about.

We had 3 time Olympian Joanne Jackson as our guest, so was great to finally meet her and to get the event off to a start. I worked very hard to make sure the content of the event was up to scratch, and put in a lot of research. Joanne was a great talker, and made it pretty easy for me to ask her questions and to really engage the crowd. She shared some fascinating stories about her career as an Olympic swimmer, and gave the audience a real insight into life as a swimmer, The Q & A provided some great questions for Joanne to answer too, she even bought her Olympic medal for guests to try on and take photos!

It had been a hectic evening, one I enjoyed and was happy with my hosting skills. I was even more happy with Joanne's answers and really think it was a successful night. It was exactly what I wanted Live Sport Talks to be, so putting ticket sales to one side, I do think it was a success.

By next event is just 4 weeks away, so not long to really refocus and push the live talk with Paralympian Dan Greaves.

Check out photos of the event at www.livesporttalks.com!

Bit of networking

So good news, we have sold our first batch of tickets for our first event in September. I contacted several different swimming clubs about the event, so it was good to see some good results from this. It is a funny time of year, people are rightly so are on holiday and enjoying the sunshine ( well occasional bit of sunshine!), so it is a good feeling to have some ticket sales under my belt. We also had some good news from BUCS, who kindly have offered to promote the event to the incoming students in the area. I offered them some free tickets in exchange for this piece of free advertising. There is a sense of pride when people do purchase tickets; like people want to take time of their busy schedule to attend my event. As previously stated in my blog posts, I know we will provide a great event so it is encouraging that ticket buyers agree.

My mentor has given me some great tips; and one that has really stuck with me is how business owners have to think different. I understand I have to build the company brand as well as my own brand. I decided that I need to network more. I understand the importance of networking, however never really fully got the concept. I am a pretty reserved guy, so knew maybe I had to be more outgoing when attending these events. I went to a great event, where there was a ‘speed networking’ element as well as a talk from a specialist in the field. I went along, with plenty of business cards and flyers in my bag ready for a night of networking. It was a success, I chatted to some really interesting people, who liked my business idea which is always encouraging to hear. I gave out a few cards and even got some pointers from people about marketing etc. If you are keen to network, meetup.com is a great platform. Basically you sign up (for free) and you pick and choose what groups you want to join. You can join anything from 5 aside football society to business owners to a salsa dancing group. You can also set up groups, which you have to pay a monthly fee for. I set one up called Live Sport Talks, which I have to spend some more time on learning how to use effectively!

So that’s it for this post, so if you are starting out like me, make sure you network and get yourself out there. You have a great message to spread about your business so make sure people hear it!

And remember folks, check out my website www.livesporttalks.com and let me know what you think. I got into the ‘studio’ and recorded a short piece of audio for it, so check it out!

#LiveSportTalks 

Building a brand..

It has been 3 to 4 weeks since I published the website and tickets have gone on sale. So far tickets are slow; which I am not too concerned about at this stage as there is a good few weeks before the event date. After a session with my mentor as well as research, I realised that I had to ‘build the live sport talks’ brand to attract ticket sales. Naturally I believe in the product and know others will to, but how will people know if it isn’t marketed correctly?

Stage one – Getting British Swimming on board with the event

Our first talker is former Olympian swimmer Joanne Jackson. Joanne, who is now retired and has a wealth of experience from competing at the age of 17 as well as competing at London 2012. Let’s not forget the world record she held too!

I decided to contact British swimming to see if they could run a story on the event with Joanne on their website as well as on their various social media outlets. We decided that we would run a competition for 5 free tickets for their followers. Their media person, who is very helpful forecasted some tweets and Facebook posts to encourage people to retweet and like etc. to get the word out there. It was great to see such god feedback, with people genuinely showing an interest in the event. So we have a few more posts scheduled in until the event in September!

Stage two – Working with a charity

Another regular practice for organising events is pairing up with a charity. So the plan is, the charity helps promote the event via their website and social media and in exchange have an opportunity to fundraise at the event or acts as good PR for them to be supporting this type of event. Joanne Jackson is an ambassador for the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust, so I decided it would be a good idea to contact them.  Like British Swimming, they were also very helpful and are keen to work with live sport talks, which was great news. We are scheduled to appear on their website next week, which is very exciting!

We have also had another opportunity to work with ‘Delete Blood Cancer’ for the first set of events.

Stage three – More social media presence

Social media is a great tool to use to build brand awareness. Gaining new followers is a long and hard process. It can be quite disheartening when you spend time posting and sharing, to all 25 followers, with the majority of them being suspect accounts. So I was encouraged to follow more accounts, who I feel would be interested in the events. This included swimming clubs and well known athletes. I did the same on the Facebook, adding more friends and sharing the page to encourage likers and engagement. I found that increasing my activity on social media, naturally the account will get more followers which it has.

So that’s it for this blog post. If you are also starting a business, I hope that you find these posts useful. 

Check out the other posts too if you haven’t already. Finally also check out our website www.livesporttalks.com and let me know what you think! 

Website building and selling tickets tips as well as finding a sponsor tip!

So it took a few days for the start up loan to hit my account. When I checked my account and saw it, that's when the real work started. So many things to do: build a website, book the talkers, find the venue, do a marketing plan, set up a business account and extra bits just keep being added to the list. Building the website was the first thing I had to start. A tip for other start ups, don't waste your start up money on a fancy website designer just yet. I opened a 'WIX' account to build www.livesporttalks.com. It gives you tons of templates, and then you replace their text with your text and photos etc. You can move bits around to suit you and what you feel looks good. I am pretty limited when it comes to that sort of thing, so if I can then I am sure you all can! You can add links in, a blog, a contact form and also you can design a newsletter to send to subscribers ( very similar to MailChimp). You can also link up google analytics as well, which is a nice extra. It is worth having a go, before committing to a designer.

TIP on bounce rate - So I was shocked by my very high bounce rate after a few days. I realised what didn't help, was that my mobile website was all over the place. On Wix, you can amend the mobile site separately, I spent some time on the site, moving bits around and making sure all links worked. They say that you should give your website a check every few days to make sure all buttons go to the right section etc. According to reports, visitors will only wait 6 SECONDS before clicking off your page if it hasn't loaded up, so make sure it works by checking.

For selling tickets, I decided to use the popular 'EVENTBRITE' website, which for those who don't know is a dedicated events site where you can browse different events. Naturally they charge for processing payments ( 6.5%) I believe. They do cool widgets too, so you could sell tickets on your website using their software. If you are running free events, then Eventbrite don't charge anything. They also offer stats too, such as what source are most of your visitors are coming from ( website widget, Eventbrite search directory etc.), which is also useful. I would recommend having the widgets on your website for buying tickets and not just linking people straight to the Eventbrite page, as it increases the time people spend on your website.

I also thought that sponsorship would be a great income stream for the event. There are some great websites now where you can list your event, and potential sponsors can find it. It is worth sending a well written email pitching your idea if you event is quite a niche to a compnay, but these websites are worth using too. I currently have my event on www.sponsormyevent.com and the UK sponsorship website. You have to pay £15 to £30 for the latter site, or pay sponsor my event 10% of the monies if you do get a sponsor.

So as you know, I am also a start up so I am trying out all these tools. If you have any golden nuggets of information, feel free to pass these on to me! Also happy to share any further details about these tools I have come across.

Thanks for reading my 3rd blog post, and if you haven't yet then check out my first 2!

And lastly, of course make sure you check out my events website www.livesporttalks.com!

#LiveSportTalks #Inspiringsportstories

The leap of faith...

So the idea is in place and I have spent many evenings working out the break even points, marketing plans, cash flow and how much capital I will need to get this venture off the ground. I decided to use 'startup.com' to apply for a small start up loan. It is a good package, you get a low APR, discounts on several products and several hours of free mentoring. So the application was sent off and I was left to wait to see if my 'plan' was deemed good enough. I got booked in for a face to face panel meeting to get the final green tick. The meeting was set up quickly, naturally the provider are keen to turnover the applications. It all became very real in the panel meeting, with the lady being very honest about my plan and how the business would work. Overall the meeting went well, I must have made a good impression as my loan got approved!

I was under no illusions that the application was going to be the 'hard bit' of starting this business. All the companies that I got my quotes off, ( agencies, venues and t-shirt printers) took me a bit more seriously when I came back to them with capital behind me. So it officially started, Live Sport Talks was launched. I have gone from having a full time job, to running my own business and becoming an accountant, web designer, t shirt designer ( they came out pretty well!), a marketeer, date administrator, still having my full time job and much more.

Thank you for reading my blog post. Stay tuned for more posts about my venture and feel free to offer advice or ask me for advice to! One last thing, check out www.livesporttalks.com for see what great events we have on offer!

Starting out...

So I thought I would create a blog to document my daunting journey of starting a business. So my 'business idea' is called Live Sport Talks. Basically from the start, I was looking to conquer the highly competitive world of sport journalism. So my current job is OK, at times quite interesting but generally I find myself yearning for 5pm. I decided to take action and research how to be a sport journalist. So works out I don't have £9,000.00 knocking around for a masters degree (typical), so I took the cheaper route of taking a questionable freelance journalism course online. From my research, it was clear that experience was key for this industry, which made sense. I started writing for a few different online newspapers, which was basically covering games of Basketball and Hockey which their writers I imagine weren't keen to attend themselves for free.It was ok though, I enjoyed the buzz of having a media pass and rushing over to get soundbites from the players. I finished the course and got my media pass, ( still not sure if it holds any real value), and continued to write for these publications. I wanted to learn more about sport writers and these sport professionals. I attended a few events to hear from these people, such as the sport writing festival in London which was a highlight. I found that there wasn't as many of these talks out there as I hoped. That's when I got my idea of Live Sport Talks. So why don't I host these events myself? Work with different agencies to provide these athletes, and charge people to hear them talk about how they became a professional sports star or broke that world record in Beijing. So that was decided, I had the idea and now I just had to think HOW I was going to make it happen!

Follow my journey of trying to make 'Live Sport Talks' work as a profit making business ( wish me luck!)