Sarah Fejfar (00:00.13)
fun. It'll be fun. I'm going to press record so I don't forget and then let's see here.
Sarah Fejfar (00:11.394)
What questions or any questions you have for me about just recording in general. Can you hear me? Okay, let me actually I'm gonna change my mic okay, I can hear you and
Katie Walter (00:16.032)
I don't think so. Yeah, I can hear you.
Sarah Fejfar (00:29.146)
Oh, I don't know if I've told you this before, but I, I refer to my community as Lynchpin Nation. So when I start, I'll just, I'll say hello and then I'll ask you to say hello to them. And that's why I'll be saying the word Lynchpin Nation. This has been a.
Katie Walter (00:41.654)
Okay.
Katie Walter (00:46.28)
because they're the linchpin of the whole event.
Sarah Fejfar (00:49.054)
They bring people together. Yeah. OK. This is not for your business, right? This is something you do on the side.
Katie Walter (00:58.697)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (01:05.902)
We'll get started.
Sarah Fejfar (01:11.138)
Katie, welcome to Green Room Central Studios. Say hello to Lynchpin Nation.
Katie Walter (01:15.508)
Hello?
Sarah Fejfar (01:18.822)
Goodness, and the dog. Wait, we'll try that again. Max, out. Yeah, go with Paige.
like but no it looks like more fun in here. Max treat! Here I'm gonna throw this and you're not gonna eat it but you're gonna go get it. Max go!
Sarah Fejfar (01:48.606)
Hey Paige, could you close the door? I don't think I was able to do it. Thank you. This is a circus today. Right? Katie, welcome to Greenroom Central Studios. Say hello to Lynchpin Nation.
Katie Walter (01:54.792)
Maybe you'll keep her home all the time.
Katie Walter (02:04.172)
Hello, Linchpin Nation.
Sarah Fejfar (02:06.066)
I'm excited to have you on today because first we haven't gotten to talk in a while so selfishly. I'm thrilled to be able to catch up. And second, you've got an exciting event you're planning and you came on for a coaching call today and I always love doing coaching call episodes. So give it to me. What are you working on and how can I help?
Katie Walter (02:25.932)
Awesome. Yeah. So I am working on the second annual Fractional Conference in Minneapolis in October. And the first year we did it, that was 2023, we had 200 people, the idea and it came together like lightning fast from the idea happened in April.
The planning started in earnest in August and we had 200 people and 16 different sessions across a day and a half by the end of October. So we jammed a lot of planning into a very short window and we just ran with it.
And we ran with it with volunteers. We paid our keynote speakers very little and our panelists and breakout sessions, we didn't pay at all. Um, we sort of had a handful of ideas of what we would want the sessions to be about, but we let the cream rise to the top from in terms of conversations we had with potential speakers. So we had, uh, um, we had a, you know, just get crap done attitude about it.
event and I led the programming committee for the event and had a great time loved it and I've signed on to do that again for 2024.
And the thing is we're thinking, you know, 2024, we'd love to have instead of 200 people there, we'd love to have 500 people there. And instead of relying on volunteers to put this thing together, we'd like to compensate the speakers, we'd like to compensate the planning committee. Like, we're sort of trying to think of this from a more professional versus grassroots perspective.
Katie Walter (04:13.02)
And I think the question I came to you with initially was how do I think about knowing that we're still only in our second year, what's a sort of fair and effective way to think about compensating speakers and planning out speakers and kind of budgeting for the labor that was free last year. But then I'd love to range beyond that into programming in general and event planning in general if we get to it.
Sarah Fejfar (04:39.918)
Tell me more about what kind of speakers you're, well, actually, first question. I always like to ask, like when I have conversations with entrepreneurs like yourself who are planning events, like to start with kind of the picture it phase, which is.
why times two is the first thing. So why are you hosting this for the business or in this case, the kind of it's what is it a non community? Yeah. And then why are you hosting it for the people who are coming? And so from the standpoint of the conference,
Katie Walter (05:05.516)
community.
Katie Walter (05:15.124)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Fejfar (05:23.494)
And is this a bunch of fractional CMOs coming together wanting to who's in the room?
Katie Walter (05:30.716)
Yeah, great question. So it's, it's fractional is generally so you've got COOs, chief marketing officers, finance professionals, leadership or HR professionals. We have a chief community officer on our leadership team. So there's a sort of this expanding notion of what fractional can be. And we talk about it as a permanent seat on a leadership team at a part time.
basis. So, you know, it's a more senior position. It doesn't have to be C level to be fractional. But
but more you have real responsibility, you're there on an ongoing basis and it's not a 40 hour a week kind of job, it's a fraction of that. And so that can fit a lot of different disciplines and it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And the reason that we pulled the conference together last year was to create a space, an in-person space for fractionals who are either considering going fractional or like I've been in it for five years now,
connection and learn and continue to grow professionally. So we had speakers, we had motivational speakers, so people, you know, you go to a corporate event and you get all kinds of great.
people talking about how to take care of yourself in stressful situations or how to be your best self. And as consultants, we don't necessarily get that kind of content. So it was Tiffany Maddock from who used to work at Thomson Reuters back when you and I were both there was one of our opening speakers. She was amazing and she talked about thriving as your business keeps changing and like staying grounded even as the ground underneath you shifts.
Katie Walter (07:22.116)
We had a couple of, we had three different small business owners talk about their journey as small business owners and how, to some extent, how Fractionals informed that journey or informed their work and then supported their work.
That was more like an entrepreneur story to build empathy for our end client, but it was like, those were fantastic speakers. And then we had a lot of workshop or panel type sessions around business development, operations. Um, those were the two biggest topics. I think business development and operations are the things that people were most wanting from a content perspective, their own market, how to do their own marketing. Um,
Sarah Fejfar (08:03.642)
So when we're talking about picturing it, we've got the who, which is people who are their entrepreneurs, they own their own businesses, and they are fractional senior leadership at other small business, probably small businesses, right? And because if the business was larger, they would hire them on full time. Okay, so we've got the who. Now the why times two. The why for.
Katie Walter (08:19.52)
Yep.
Katie Walter (08:27.264)
Full time.
Sarah Fejfar (08:33.218)
the people who are attending is kind of that continuing education piece that I'm hearing. Right on.
Katie Walter (08:39.772)
It's continuing education and it's community. There are a lot of there are online communities for Fractionals, fantastic ones that we are really closely aligned with and work with. We're not trying to build a separate community from what Fractionals United is doing. Instead, we're kind of working with them. But but that in person experience is so valuable, and we're able to kind of create a gathering space.
Sarah Fejfar (09:07.315)
Okay, so...
Katie Walter (09:08.064)
And that's why people attended. I think from an attendee perspective, it was let me just feel less alone than sort of living in the vacuum of my home office. There are other people like me doing the same thing I'm doing. And a lot of our content, our programming last year and this year was focused on helping people make very intentional connections across the...
Sarah Fejfar (09:14.094)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Walter (09:30.64)
across functional areas or geographic areas. So we had a lot of time where people were put at small groups to work through the content that they had just heard. They could sit down and process it with other people and start to build meaningful connection and dialogue.
Sarah Fejfar (09:44.654)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Walter (09:46.3)
So I think community and learning are the big reasons that people showed up for that. The reason that we put it on, I think all the volunteers have a sense of gratitude for the people who have helped us get from the idea of being a solopreneur or a fractional executive to realizing the benefits of it in our own life. And you just want to give back and help other people sort of find their way. If that's the path.
that's meant for them. So it was, and then we start, I think we saw the magic of it last year and said like this is, this benefits me too to do this. Like I get so much, we all get so much energy out of creating that space that there's a lot of heart that goes into creating the container for these connections to happen in.
Sarah Fejfar (10:38.17)
This beautiful. So I'm hearing that for the volunteer army, I usually like to ask people if it's an enrollment event or if it's a fulfillment event. And I think that in this case, you're not making an offer at the event, right? The event is the fulfillment of the offer. And so we're going to call this a fulfillment event where
Katie Walter (10:58.728)
Right. Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (11:07.446)
there's, it's not leading to anything else because this is just like a volunteer group putting this on for your community. And so I'm guessing that the revenue that you bring in from ticket sales is what you want to use for paying for all the things and that breaking even is the goal here is, was that be a safe assumption?
Katie Walter (11:14.942)
Yeah.
Katie Walter (11:34.34)
No, I think that we're looking longer term at this being a revenue opportunity for, for the leadership team. So I guess last year it was definitely like all heart. This year, it's, I love doing this and I want to do this, but in order to sustain, to make it sustainable within my kind of, within my business or within.
my life. Like we need, there needs to be compensation for the organizers. There needs, and we need people who are, we need to rely less on a volunteer army and more on sort of dedicated resources.
Sarah Fejfar (12:10.238)
Yeah, have you considered making an offer at the event?
Katie Walter (12:15.7)
So the things that we could offer, the different partners have paid offerings, whether it's leveling up within the Fractionals United community, or our founder has a fractional training organization that's separate from the conference. So he makes offers there, but there's not an enrollment into an ongoing paid community that's just a fractional conference.
Sarah Fejfar (12:45.422)
Okay. That could be a way to monetize at a higher level and be able to drive some revenue so that it's a little bit more sustainable for this currently volunteer group. Because it is, it does tend to be hard to drive a lot of...
Katie Walter (13:00.937)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (13:08.978)
shall we say, profit from an event that's solely based on like the revenue is solely based on ticket sales. Did you do sponsorship and I mean, I can picture a community I can picture a membership very easily coming off the back of this and, and kind of only and also serving to sustain the appetite to come back together.
Katie Walter (13:16.669)
Yeah.
Katie Walter (13:23.657)
Yep.
Sarah Fejfar (13:33.658)
know, the following year and like tighten making that community feel more tight knit. Are you or even a small group coaching program that's a higher ticket than a membership? So we've got ticket sales. Are you did you do sponsors last year? Is that up for consideration this year? Okay.
Katie Walter (13:36.509)
Yep.
Katie Walter (13:53.82)
We did. We had a small sponsorship income stream and we're looking to start earlier this year so that we can get to people before their budgets are set.
Sarah Fejfar (14:09.582)
So all right, that helps me understand. So it really potentially could be an enrollment event, but we're gonna put the lens on that this is purely fulfillment and people are paying to attend. So you talked about your main question being compensating the planners and speakers.
Sarah Fejfar (14:34.762)
And I'm wondering, do you have a number in mind for compensation of the planners that you're targeting that so that you know, like, hey, if we were able to drive this amount of profit and be able to distribute it to all of the planners on this kind of volunteer, currently volunteer army.
Katie Walter (14:59.092)
Right.
Sarah Fejfar (15:00.69)
it would make us feel like we could continue to do this without resentment and it would be worth our time. Do you already have a number put to that?
Katie Walter (15:12.273)
We have levels of numbers. Like there's one number, I would say, if you're sitting in the leadership team and taking full responsibility for one realm of the conference, that's one number. There's a sort of second tier and then there's an advisory tier. So we have numbers in mind for that.
Sarah Fejfar (15:32.686)
Okay, good. I think that's a good place to start so that you can back into, like I have a break-even point formula that I like to give my students that helps them understand at what point do we get there. And if you don't have the vision for what that is, it's hard to know if you've arrived. So.
Katie Walter (15:49.022)
Yeah.
Katie Walter (15:56.)
Well, and we've talked to about what are the levels of, is there a base compensation that gets factored into the costs? And then there's a separate, like there's profit sharing after like we don't want the planners compensation to be solely calculated on profits. Like we want a fully loaded view of how much this event costs to produce including all the labor that goes into it.
Sarah Fejfar (16:20.886)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (16:24.958)
Yeah, I was just doing that work for a couple clients yesterday on a couple different events, putting together the budget, kind of all the categories. And I think for, well, actually, I think for both of them, there was eye opening the conversations that we had afterwards. Like, wait, what? I thought that was going to be like, I thought it was going to be like this amount, but it's really like this amount, which is much higher than I thought. Well, well, everything that you said that you wanted, this is what in real numbers that costs and, and they were able to look at it and go, well, yeah, I guess that does make sense.
Katie Walter (16:40.141)
We have to pay for the ad.
Sarah Fejfar (16:55.052)
it would be all that. And so I do.
And perhaps I could share my budget template with you, but you have such a great probably jumping off point from last year, you already know. But I like to make sure people have gone through all the categories and really flushed out. What's their, and that's part of the whole kind of picture it phases like, what's the vision that you have for the type of experience that you wanna deliver to these guests of yours who come and then do the work of pricing that out so that you know. And in this case, you're gonna be putting in
that base compensation for your currently volunteer army. And then I like what you said then about a profit sharing model above that. So that's good. So that would be my first piece of advice is really flushed out if there's all of your wishlist items so that you really have a
flush out the vision so that you can then price it. I always like people to price it before they decide what their budget is for the event, because I think there's like just always resentment that happens if you get to a thing and you're not able to do it, because you didn't plan for where the revenue was gonna come in to pay for the thing. So we've talked about compensation for planners. You said you have a number in mind and then it would be profit sharing above that.
Katie Walter (17:59.349)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (18:20.554)
Let's talk about speakers and what your vision is there. Are you thinking that because in where I initially go is, wouldn't it be great if you were able to bring in a paid big name speaker? And maybe that would be in that anywhere from 15,000 to 75,000 range to get someone.
Katie Walter (18:39.912)
Right.
Sarah Fejfar (18:50.794)
a bigger name and kind of with a really powerful strong message specific for this group. And then, but my head goes, gosh, you've got so much talent in the room. And the type of people coming to this conference are probably all
heart centered entrepreneurs who have ideas to share and you could definitely crowd source all of the rest of the speaking needs that you have and I don't know that they would need anything in return and perhaps that's naive of me but yeah.
Katie Walter (19:30.092)
Well, I think that's what I'm trying to get my head around is, you know, not asking people to give away their expertise versus.
this heart centered entrepreneur idea. And I don't know, we want to be fair and we want to, but I guess I've heard so much backlash against saying, would you come speak? It'll be great for your exposure. And people don't like that as in return for cash money. And what are the dynamics around that? Cause it gets awkward.
Sarah Fejfar (19:59.026)
Yeah, so, well, so that works really well when the audience is their target audience. And then it becomes a win-win. Especially if they're have permission to share how people can get in touch with them afterwards. I mean, I never advocate for a pitch fest where every speaker has an opportunity to share an offer. That's not good for the audience. But in this case, I don't think for the most part, I mean, you might
Katie Walter (20:14.685)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (20:28.254)
you might have some connections being made in the audience. Like, hey, you know, you're, you Katie are a CMO, and you might be privy to the fact that your audit your, your business owner that you work with currently needs a CFO. And you could be making that connection at the conference and able to bring them in and like start that conversation. And that could be a win. I could see that happening, but I don't
Sarah Fejfar (21:00.88)
I don't know that it's that type of a win-win for a speaker to set aside the time. But what I think you could do that isn't quite cash money, but is say, like, your entrance into the conference is completely free and we're paying for your hotel and travel to get here. And that seems like... And...
Katie Walter (21:21.576)
Right.
Sarah Fejfar (21:25.91)
perhaps like a networking dinner just for speakers the night before and it's nice.
Katie Walter (21:35.753)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (21:35.774)
or the night after. Something like that feels...
And then perhaps a gift card on top of that they weren't expecting, but just like as a nice gift. That feels...
Katie Walter (21:49.6)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (21:54.826)
I mean, you could kind of feel that out with your board, but that feels very, I mean, that's not cheap, what I just described. But I think for someone who's an entrepreneur, who's typically doing like a lone wolf type of gig in their own home office, that is does feel like a pretty generous offer. And you might be having people who are applying to and you could do that on an application.
Katie Walter (22:02.982)
No.
Katie Walter (22:16.929)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (22:23.358)
I'd recommend that of apply if you'd like to be a speaker and what topics would be a right fit for you and know that this is what we're able to offer. And then people are volunteering and applying and saying, raising their hand.
Katie Walter (22:32.417)
Yeah.
Katie Walter (22:36.792)
Well, let me just have an answer from the get go. Like we figured out ahead of time, this is what we're offering. Yeah, I like that.
Sarah Fejfar (22:47.458)
Yeah. And then if you get nobody, you realize, well, I guess that wasn't the right idea. And so, you don't have to advertise that it didn't work and nobody applied. And then you just try another route. But I have a hunch that could be.
Really good. Because I think it might be a little bit much to ask all of you on the kind of like the executive planning committee to be speaking and doing the planning work. If that's the route you decide to go, you could also just outsource the planning and then your board can be the speakers. But I wouldn't probably combine the two. I think it's kind of a big lift.
Katie Walter (23:07.424)
Good.
Katie Walter (23:17.117)
Right.
Katie Walter (23:32.396)
Got it. And how, so last year, I'll tell you how we went about finding speakers and session topics last year. We had a list of people who had, at some point, said to the founder or one of the other board members, I would love to speak at this thing. And then I went and talked one on one with all of them, looked at a bunch of feedback and survey results from our prospective audience, and then sort of crafted an agenda based on that.
Sarah Fejfar (23:33.122)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (23:48.43)
Mm.
Katie Walter (24:00.776)
which was a lot of work, but it paid off. Like it was really good. Is there a, the sessions were really good. What's the best way to streamline that so that we're still getting the magic, but we're putting more of the onus on the potential speakers?
Sarah Fejfar (24:16.566)
Mm hmm. I do advocate for meeting one on one with if you can with every speaker. I've seen to kind of make it the best you know, session it can be. I do I have seen where
Katie Walter (24:30.825)
Yep.
Sarah Fejfar (24:37.518)
there's a recorded video message that goes out to all of the speakers and they have to watch it before they have. And then so they have to watch that. And maybe that's from your leadership team or something. And then maybe someone else who isn't as strapped for time then has a call, like as a group with all the speakers to kind of flush out, takes more of a team approach.
Katie Walter (25:05.368)
I guess I'm talking about topic selection. Like even before they're appointed, they've been put in a speaker seat. Like how do you go about researching the universe of potential speakers?
Sarah Fejfar (25:08.246)
Mm.
Sarah Fejfar (25:17.886)
Yeah, so I like to use I like to use the phrase people support what they create. And so you already know who your people are who are going to come and to and part of the job of running a conference is to build the hype for the conference. And there's a lot of ways to do that.
If you haven't already downloaded that guide that's on my website, the 107 ways to filling an event, there's a lot of like hype building ways in there. And one of the ways is going out to them and asking, well, what do you want to learn about? And just tell us kind of the top three topics that you want to hear about. And if you want to make it work for yourself, you could a lot of work, you could just give three open text boxes.
And that makes it really hard to call through all the results. But you get some.
I love hearing directly from the horse's mouth, because that's great marketing language too. What are the words? What's the story that's already going on in their head? Because we never want to start a new one as marketers, right? And so it's marketing gold for the conference itself if you have those open text boxes, but I will caveat, that's a lot of work to go read through all of them. Or you could put a list of 25, 50 topics, whatever, and have people select their top.
Katie Walter (26:27.135)
Right.
Sarah Fejfar (26:44.17)
choices and go from there. But I would do that because that does build hype for the conference and starts the conversation like, oh, there's going to be another one and I get to help decide what it's going to be. So I would try that and then whittle it down and then you could even go out to them again after you've made a smaller list. And I imagine that and then what you could do
Katie Walter (26:54.069)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (27:12.634)
is when you do that application fit and then you could do it. Yeah, actually, you could do the first one where you ask for topics. And then you could, if you need to have a second round where you're like, okay, now that was open text box. And then the second one is a list of actual topics that you've kind of whittled down from those open text boxes. You go out to your audience again, and you ask them, all right, now, now what are your top three to five? And then now you've got
and you go out a third time, you say, okay, now what we're needing from you is we're hearing that these are the topics that we need to have on the agenda for the 2024 conference. And we are now opening this up for applications for speakers. And here's what we can offer you in return for speaking. And what I'd like you to do now is submit an application.
on and tell us which topic that you would speak on and then a few kind of sub points that kind of put your own personal twist on it and share that application with us if you're interested. And I think that or whatever you in that application put more of what you would have more of the questions that you would have had in that one-on-one zoom call with the presenter with the potential presenter.
Katie Walter (28:34.952)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (28:38.846)
in the past. So just kind of try and automate as much of that. Think back to what you did in that conversation. And how could you scale that and automate it? Yeah.
Katie Walter (28:52.08)
I love that. Yeah, because then it gives us something to talk to the whole. We have a LinkedIn group for this of attendees. So we already kind of have an avenue to get back to our attendees. It's not just email. And it gives us a reason to talk to them every few weeks for the next couple of months before we open up registration. Oh, I love that.
Sarah Fejfar (29:00.664)
Perfect.
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Fejfar (29:21.458)
Yeah. And then in all of those calls, what I love to do is don't just open up registration, open up a way list. Because then you're collecting more names and emails that you may not have already. And then tell them that you're going to, and that could even be on the thank you page of each of these surveys.
Katie Walter (29:31.79)
Oh yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (29:48.534)
and with a share link to the people that they want to come with because it's going to be more fun to come to the Fractional Conference with a friend.
I would be adding people to a waitlist and then telling them the reason why is because you're going to open up priority access. It's sold out the first time. It will sell out this time. We're opening up even more spots this year, but it will sell out again. And we're going to give two, three days of priority access to the waitlist to secure your spot before we open up to the general public.
And you know how much fun the first one was. I don't want you to miss this next one because to be honest, the first one we just kind of like threw together and this one we're spending a whole year on and it's going to be absolutely incredible. So that's the process I would take in this lead up is driving people to a wait list and having them share it with the people that they know should be.
Katie Walter (30:40.244)
Yeah.
Katie Walter (30:48.404)
Love that. We do already have, I think the registration page is actually open already because we did a immediate post-conference sale last year, right after the conference. But I feel like it's not getting any activity right now. So we could shut it down, close it, yep.
Sarah Fejfar (30:57.394)
Okay.
Sarah Fejfar (31:01.988)
Mmm.
Sarah Fejfar (31:07.626)
Yeah, close it. Yep. And if anybody is thinking of doing that in the future, I highly recommend selling next year's at the current one for the earliest bird best price ever, but then shut it down. And then you have another reason, you know, just gives you another reason to talk about it again when it's gonna open up, open up. Yeah.
Katie Walter (31:20.233)
Yeah.
Katie Walter (31:31.472)
Yeah. What about formats of sessions? So last year we had, there were two different types of sessions. There was one that was, you just have a single speaker, a keynote speaker, or one person on stage for 45 minutes, or we had panels. It was like four or five people on stage, but they were all, you know,
person or people talking at the audience and then the session ended and the audience left and then they went to another session that was more information coming at them. Do you have suggestions for other types of session formats that can still feel like content rich but not be so much people consuming content?
Sarah Fejfar (32:17.726)
Yeah, so I think the environment that you and I come from, why we know each other, is an environment that back in corporate, our corporate days, is an environment that does not have what's typical in a entrepreneurship or a personal development conference. And it's like 100% content delivery and leaves no space for purposeful networking and integration.
and workshopping. And that's the kind of stuff that makes people feel seen, heard, and celebrated, and makes people feel like they got value out of what they just went to and they weren't just kind of like thrown up on for four days. So what I like to recommend is that see if you can, see if you can pull out.
like 30% of the time. And it's not going to happen in a big chunk. It's going to happen at little bitty chunks. So love for you to deliver the content and then say, okay, now what's going to happen is
you're going to when I tell you go, you're gonna stand up and you're gonna get in groups of five. And what you're gonna do is you're going to share one thing you learned from this last session and one thing you need help with. And I... And like, and tell us your...
Sometimes I don't even like to do this, but you could, I have like a whole list of the types of questions you could ask in these, like, but I would pick two to three things for them to share. It could be like your name and where you're from and what type of fractional you are. But you do that and everyone gets three minutes and...
Katie Walter (34:24.416)
turn.
Sarah Fejfar (34:33.114)
you would be so, so you tell them like, you tell them what they're going to do, what question, like what questions they're going to answer, like everyone's job. And then you tell them how much time each person's gets. And then just like, as if you were in a virtual, in a zoom, you would also then be prescriptive and say, okay, and the person with like the darkest shirt is the
Sarah Fejfar (35:02.751)
or does it timekeeper and.
I think that's it. And then sometimes we would put the time on the big screen in the room. Then you say, all right, ready, go. And now we've just said like groups of five, right? So, and we said three minutes each. So now we've got 15 minutes. And that sounds absolutely absurd to say, I'm going to take a 15 minute chunk out of my agenda right here before I go move on to the next panel or the next keynote.
I'll tell you, there is so much magic in there when they're integrating what they just heard by sharing, okay, what did you just learn in that thing? And then what's one thing you need help with? And that kind of like instantly takes anybody who's kind of an introvert or...
doesn't know came without knowing anybody and puts them into this place of power and gives them the opportunity to like talk and feel seen heard celebrated and the conversations that happen where when you when you I just saw this post on Instagram's a teacher said this is a perfect example of why this works in a conference is a teacher had gave every student a balloons blow it up.
Katie Walter (36:11.724)
I'll make a few minutes on that anyway. We'll get into it as we start this program.
Sarah Fejfar (36:28.342)
write your name on it, throw it out in the hallway. And so imagine, and there's just like tons of classrooms and like just the hallway just filled with balloons. And I said, okay, enough five minute timer, go out and find your balloon. And so everyone goes out in the hallway, and no one finds their balloon in five minutes. And then I said, okay, go back in your classrooms. All right, now I'm missing another five minute timer. And I want everyone to go in that hallway and pick up a balloon. And the...
whoever's like name it is, go find that person. And so then everyone starts, like talking to each other, because they're helping someone else find their balloon. Right? And that's what we're in less than five minutes, they were all like reunited with their person. And that's what we're doing here is like we're advocating, activating people to advocate for each other. Because if I say, Katie, there's some, after hearing that topic, it's really like,
Katie Walter (37:10.652)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (37:28.018)
what really spoke to me was this, like I learned this thing. But I'm also feeling like now I need help like, doing this and I don't know what to do. And it's not about finding the answers like right there in the moment. Because there's only two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, whatever we decide is the time per person. But it gets these conversations going and starts planting seeds in other people's heads of what other people are looking for or needing. And it might not even be in relation to the topic, but it might just be a light bulb that went off in that session.
But if you do enough of those, maybe a couple in the morning and a couple in the afternoon, wow, people just feel like they met so many people. And like you could also say like you can't be in the same group like, as you were before, like go find new people. And that is magic to that that's just one idea of ways that you can get people to be like not just sitting there listening and being active. But also it's training your
Katie Walter (38:11.669)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (38:26.89)
your presenters to have like active listening kind of tactics, like woven throughout their presentations. So those are two.
Katie Walter (38:40.384)
Those are great. I love that.
Sarah Fejfar (38:42.602)
Have you ever gone to a personal development seminar like a Tony Robbins or a Brendan Breschard or even an Aspire Tour? Yeah, I would highly recommend it because you'll see different...
Katie Walter (38:51.37)
No.
Sarah Fejfar (39:02.29)
The world that we came from is so different from the world of entrepreneurial conferences and
There's, I think that is, you know, I had somebody ask me, I was, someone asked me once about kind of the difference between being an entrepreneur versus being in corporate. And it's like there's such a type, there's such a way of doing things in corporate. And the only thing I could, the way I could describe it, it was when you're,
an entrepreneur, it's like anything goes. But it's hard to know what anything goes, looks and feels and sounds like if you haven't gone. For me, I'm like a really visual learner and seen it and been like, oh my gosh, this is so different. But I think the ticket is getting people talking to each other, but it has to be...
Katie Walter (39:47.445)
I'm sorry.
Katie Walter (40:03.442)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Fejfar (40:13.822)
It has to have... So what you always have to remember is like the person on stage is in charge of leading the room. And there's like a sense of chaos and like unease when they're not taking charge and being prescriptive. And so that's why I said the person on stage is going to share, okay, here's what's going to happen when the buzzer goes off. You're going to find five people.
Katie Walter (40:32.437)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (40:41.302)
you're going to get yourself into a group, you're going to be standing, there's going to be three minutes per person. You're going to answer these three questions when the buzzer goes off. It's it is the next person's turn and. Go like, but you're telling them what to do. People love people don't want structure. They don't think they don't think they don't want structure, but actually structure is what gives us that sense of peace and calm and ease, knowing that like the world isn't in chaos.
Katie Walter (41:06.665)
Right.
Sarah Fejfar (41:11.07)
So people don't actually want, they will not get as much out of like, okay, now we've got a happy hour for an hour and just like network with each other. You'll have a very large segment that will just talk to the same group, right? And then you'll have a big segment that will be like me, who's so introverted that I will not get anything out of it because I will just stand by the side of the room unless somebody comes and talks to me.
And so I found that all types, all walks of people really thrive when there's specific, like a box put around the networking time or the workshopping time. That is something like most people read books, but they don't take the time to do the journaling exercise. And that's a nice thing for a presenter to do. If you're gonna do one of those segments that I just described, you know, you have five people, three minutes each.
answer these questions. Well, right before that, what you could do is play some journaling music and have the presenter ask them to answer those same questions. They don't know it's going to be the same. They don't know what's happening next, but like answer these specific questions about the topic. And so they're really workshopping like in the moment just by themselves thinking through processing what they just learned.
and these, you know, answering these specific questions. And then that maybe that's five minutes, maybe that's 10 minutes. And then you go into what I just described and have those same questions be the questions that you're sharing the answers. And it's really powerful because now they've had workshop time and then now we're like integrating that and meeting new people and getting support.
Yeah.
Katie Walter (43:11.252)
Yeah, I love that.
Sarah Fejfar (43:13.47)
And imagine if you did that X number of times in the conference, even if it was like four times in one day, you've now met. And if you did in groups of five, you could do it groups of three. It's kind of all flexible. But let's say it was groups of five. I've now met. What? Eight, 16 new people in a really deep, meaningful way.
because you're now orchestrating conversations that are not surface level. How is the weather? Isn't Minneapolis fabulous today? Love being here in June. And not even strategic, like how's business, but more values-based, like what do you want out of life and your business and where are you really going and what are you dreaming about? If you're asking questions at that level,
Katie Walter (43:53.214)
Thank you.
Sarah Fejfar (44:11.178)
and then you're having people talk about that, that's where the magic happens. That's where people feel like I just left Disneyland. I just left a campfire with my best friends where we were just having deep, meaningful conversations and I just had the best time.
Katie Walter (44:20.158)
Yeah.
Katie Walter (44:30.836)
That's awesome. I love that. So what device would you have taking an event from 200 to 500 attendees?
Sarah Fejfar (44:41.104)
Mm. That's a big jump. And first, celebrate you for getting 200 in the room the first time because that is like a rare unicorn thing. So that's awesome. And...
Katie Walter (44:50.292)
Thank you.
Sarah Fejfar (44:56.346)
know it's obviously more than doubling and so logistics are your friend here and also
Sarah Fejfar (45:07.646)
Uh, yeah, you're going to need more infrastructure on the planning side on the ground, like during the event than you did before. And you might do kind of volunteer army there and pay for people's tickets in return for staffing registration desk or helping.
Katie Walter (45:25.274)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Fejfar (45:35.042)
pass out stuff or helping people find their seats or whatever your list of jobs are. I think that might be a good idea.
But I think from a marketing standpoint, you just, you know what you did in order to get 200 and you're going to have to do much more in order to get 500. And so, but you're a marketer. I know you'll figure that out, but it's just that be prepared for that like level of more that is going to be required because you're not.
Katie Walter (46:04.268)
Thanks.
Sarah Fejfar (46:13.71)
Do you have an existing community that is larger than the attendee body from last year?
Katie Walter (46:22.717)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (46:23.404)
Okay.
Sarah Fejfar (46:27.439)
I would encourage a bring a friend campaign of some sort because I do think this could be a good candidate for that. You might consider listening to the episode on that. I think it's called Why Your Event Needs a Pre-Launched Runway with Ashley.
Sarah Fejfar (46:51.73)
Stanford, I believe. And she does talk about there's some, you could do it manually. There's also software that you can buy and plug into your thank you page that allows for people to almost like build an affiliate army for you.
Katie Walter (47:07.54)
Yeah, well, because some of our speakers asked about that last year if they could get an affiliate link. And we just didn't we weren't set up for it. But that's something we're thinking about for this year too.
Sarah Fejfar (47:20.15)
Yeah, yeah, you could create an affiliate program where people are getting compensated. That that is a thing. Yeah.
Katie Walter (47:29.832)
Or at least have a link they can give away to their network. Like instead of them getting compensated, they were saying, can we give a 10% discount to my network?
Sarah Fejfar (47:37.47)
Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't love discounts. I love bonuses. So because, and we're just like undercutting the value that's in the room. I love it when, and this is another potentially thing you could throw in for speakers is if they want to be.
Katie Walter (47:45.482)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (48:04.542)
a speaker and be an affiliate, you could offer them the opportunity to.
get so I have you do you pay attention to funnel hacking live with Russell Brunson so the way he because he's getting like 5 000 people in a room and the way he does it masterfully is he does have a quite a lineup of speakers that are already decided that once they're decided then he'll have something like a live stream
Katie Walter (48:17.532)
No.
Sarah Fejfar (48:39.41)
with that speaker and they'll talk for a half hour, an hour, the whole time. They'll be weaving in that person is going to be a main stage or side stage presenter at Funnel Hacking Live. Everyone knows that's a huge deal that's in the funnel hacking community. It's ClickFunnels. It's a software. And they will usually share a bonus in that live.
that's available that the speaker is providing for people who sign up. And that gives, it's a way of a little bit of a promotion of that speaker and what they do and how they help people. And...
Sarah Fejfar (49:30.594)
and it could help activate their community of friends or community members because they're like, oh, I do want that thing from that person. They've never offered that before. I want it. So I'm going to go get a ticket to Final Hacking Live because I want that thing. And that starts to stack and then it's all the more reason for other attendees, potential attendees to sign up. And then they're polled.
know, they're time sensitive. And that stack goes away. So that could be a way of, it could be another carrot for a potential speaker. And a way you could build the hype by having those conversations. Starting whenever you've nailed down a speaker. Yeah, and then they could have their own affiliate link. Yeah, yeah.
Katie Walter (49:59.624)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Fejfar (50:27.43)
see if there's some sort of creative way you can do it without discounts but
by adding bonuses that are just for.
Uh, yeah.
Katie Walter (50:41.9)
And that's like bonus content from the speaker.
Sarah Fejfar (50:44.79)
Yeah, it could be like, I would probably like a bonus digital something. So it's like, there's no cost to fulfill. Mm hmm. You know, you could also another random, but another way to drive revenue would be to add, um, a VIP ticket. Do you just have one ticket level right now? Yeah. Add a VIP and usually you can charge like, like double or triple.
Katie Walter (50:50.965)
Yeah.
Katie Walter (51:05.94)
Right now, yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (51:13.322)
what you were charging for the other one.
you know, there's a portion of every audience that sees themselves as VIP and would like priority seating and would like access to maybe it's a special speaker in a private Q&A or just even in this case, there isn't like branded. I usually like to offer three things in the VIP package and have them be different. Like for example, one could be priority seating. One could be some sort of digital product.
Katie Walter (51:22.976)
Yeah.
Sarah Fejfar (51:46.45)
and one could be swag or it could be a Q&A like lunch. If you're not providing food, then the VIP gets lunch and perhaps private Q&A during that time with speakers.
But it's a great way to make more money. Yeah.
Katie Walter (52:04.425)
Yeah.
Katie Walter (52:09.056)
That's a great idea.
Sarah Fejfar (52:10.594)
Mm hmm. And then I would, I do always recommend that you have four tiers of pricing and they go, you know, start at early bird and they go up. And that gives you four reasons to or actually eight reasons to go out to your audience and be like, okay, the we're at early bird right now, but it's only for this long. And then early birds almost closing, get in and okay. And then you raise it again.
Yeah, so just, it's all about excuse. You have that amount of time, yeah. Yeah, you can do, I have.
Katie Walter (52:42.068)
You give like a month for each of those periods. Like.
Katie Walter (52:50.432)
But how much do you need to have the agenda set before you raise the, no.
Sarah Fejfar (52:55.85)
You don't know, you never have to give an away agenda. Yeah, so many of the events I've gone to, we've, I've never known the agenda other than the start time and potentially the end time of the day, but usually not even that. Like we're just, it's an all day thing, block your calendar and it starts to be in the room at 9.30. Yeah, and that's it, that's all I know. And I'm still all in and super excited. Yeah.
Katie Walter (53:17.622)
Yeah.
Katie Walter (53:24.14)
fun.
Sarah Fejfar (53:27.266)
I just realized we're already at time and I can't even believe that happened because I feel like we could go keep talking. Is there anything else that you want to ask me? Because I know you've got a day to get to. I don't want to keep you too long. Is there anything else that you want to ask me?
Katie Walter (53:30.868)
That went so fast.
Katie Walter (53:41.076)
No, this has been great.
Katie Walter (53:44.988)
Not, not yet. Okay. Yeah. Thank you so much.
Sarah Fejfar (53:46.142)
Okay, well, you know how to find me. Oh, you're welcome. This has been a pleasure. I appreciate you coming on today.
Okay, we did it. Thank you. Yeah, feel free to yeah, email me questions. I'm wondering, would you I'm happy to give you access to my course on all of these things. And you're you could it's just in Kajabi and self guided and has all of my it's basically anything I ever learned while at
Katie Walter (53:59.508)
Yay! Super fun.
Sarah Fejfar (54:27.346)
TR organized and packaged up. And I try not to say that, but yeah, I try to be kind. But like, there's, I can't, I can't underscore enough how.
Katie Walter (54:29.64)
and then the stuff you had to unlearn.
Sarah Fejfar (54:45.398)
Yeah, how it really effed me up. But so much gratitude for that time and what I did learn. And then, yeah, there was this.