Episode 10

full
Published on:

27th Feb 2023

Should my event be free?

Is a free conference creating a negative perception of worth? If it's free, will they come? Isaac and Nessa discuss an online event FAQ. Get more at geteventlab.com

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

02:39 What are people actually asking?

04:24 Have you even defined your event's value?

05:22 Quality over quantity and vanity metrics

07:55 The marketing strategy!

08:59 The perception of value from audience to audience

14:34 Just because it's free doesn't mean you don't have a ticket to sell.

18:00 Recap!

Key takeaways

The question is, should my event be free? What people are usually asking is whether the event is actually worth what they're charging for it. Work through those doubts by looking at what outcomes you're delivering and what value you're creating for your audience. Then make a calculated and informed decision on what, if anything, you should be charging for your event.

If you're obsessing over ticket price, you're doing it wrong. Start working out what your audience actually wants from an event. Learn more at geteventlab.com

Next episode: How do you sell tickets without being annoying?



This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy
Transcript
Isaac Watson:

How do you as a leader of a growing community, Truly make a

Isaac Watson:

conference or event that has impact, a gathering with purpose and an attendee

Isaac Watson:

experience that knocks their socks off.

Isaac Watson:

An event that leaves your audience in awe and wondering where you've been

Isaac Watson:

their whole life, Make It Kick Ass is the podcast that explores these questions

Isaac Watson:

by uncovering the strategies, tactics and tools that we use every day to

Isaac Watson:

bring our clients' conferences to life.

Isaac Watson:

I'm Isaac Watson, executive producer of Kickass Conferences, and we are

Isaac Watson:

here to help you Make it Kickass.

Isaac Watson:

Welcome back to another episode of Make it Kickass.

Isaac Watson:

I am your co-host Isaac Watson, executive producer of Kickass

Isaac Watson:

Conferences, and joining me as always, the inimitable Nessa Jimenez.

Isaac Watson:

Hi Nessa

Nessa Jimenez:

Hi, Isaac..

Nessa Jimenez:

Hi everybody.

Isaac Watson:

you're just, I just keep trying to come up with new ways

Isaac Watson:

to introduce you and I'm starting to run out, unfortunately, I'm gonna

Isaac Watson:

have to start brainstorming new.

Nessa Jimenez:

Yeah, you're starting to get too fancy now.

Isaac Watson:

I know.

Isaac Watson:

Using big words, this is a problem.

Isaac Watson:

Nessa is our operations manager, in case you've forgotten.

Isaac Watson:

I hope you have not.

Isaac Watson:

We are here to dive in with an episode focused on one of the most

Isaac Watson:

common questions that we get asked.

Isaac Watson:

That's what this season is all about, and kind of teasing apart what do people

Isaac Watson:

really mean when they ask these questions?

Isaac Watson:

What are the underlying problems that are making these questions

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bubble up to the surface?

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And what are some of the ways that we can solve them and some of the ways

Isaac Watson:

that we do solve them in the work that we do, because we are professionals

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we think we are professionals.

Isaac Watson:

This episode today we're gonna talk about a question.

Isaac Watson:

It's fairly straightforward, but the question that we get asked

Isaac Watson:

often is, Should my event be free?

Nessa Jimenez:

And this is a pandemic question, let's be honest.

Nessa Jimenez:

Yes.

Nessa Jimenez:

Before the pandemic, this wasn't really such an FAQ, a frequently asked question.

Isaac Watson:

Yes.

Isaac Watson:

And I think one of, one of the we'll dig into that, but I

Isaac Watson:

don't wanna get ahead of myself here.

Isaac Watson:

Should, may I event be free?

Isaac Watson:

Is our core question, Nessa, Let's first dive into what people

Isaac Watson:

really mean by this and see if we can pull it apart a little bit.

Nessa Jimenez:

So yeah, the big question is this conference

Nessa Jimenez:

actually worth what we're charging?

Nessa Jimenez:

And we talked a little bit about that earlier this season.

Nessa Jimenez:

The word worth.

Nessa Jimenez:

There, That's a big one that we've gotta explore and do some diving in there.

Nessa Jimenez:

They, what they're also asking is, Can I get away with charging this much?

Nessa Jimenez:

Again as a, as we've talked about before this feeling of they're cheating

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or they're doing something naughty.

Nessa Jimenez:

So they have to phrase it that way.

Nessa Jimenez:

And lastly, how do I get the biggest audience ever?

Nessa Jimenez:

I want as many people as possible to come.

Nessa Jimenez:

So does making this thing free automatically mean that's,

Nessa Jimenez:

I'm gonna achieve that goal?

Isaac Watson:

Yes.

Isaac Watson:

And I would add to this because this is a pandemic induced question

Isaac Watson:

what we started hearing, especially from other conference organizers

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that had been doing in person stuff for years, was this questioning

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of whether an online event, which.

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In a lot of respects is much cheaper to produce than something in person.

Isaac Watson:

If they could get away with.

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Doing it for free or for very low cost.

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As a way to counterbalance both their decreased expenses and to increase

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their audience, to convince people to attend online when they were

Isaac Watson:

used to attending in person before.

Isaac Watson:

And I think that's, to me, what's really interesting is

Isaac Watson:

like how do we balance that?

Isaac Watson:

So let's dive into some of the actual problems.

Isaac Watson:

That caused these questions to come to the surface.

Isaac Watson:

W I think the big one is like not having a well defined value to your

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event or having a little bit of low confidence in having created

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a weak attendee experience, right?

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If you feel like you haven't put in the effort or you're not sure if this

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especially if this online event is gonna deliver the same things that it used to

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deliver in person, for example that.

Isaac Watson:

Raise these questions, these confidence questions around is

Isaac Watson:

this even worth charging for?

Isaac Watson:

Are people gonna pay for this kind of thing?

Nessa Jimenez:

And going back to the word worth from the question, right?

Nessa Jimenez:

Worth implies value.

Nessa Jimenez:

So what they're actually telling us, what is the value of this thing?

Nessa Jimenez:

That's what they're actually asking us to do, to tell them

Nessa Jimenez:

what is the value of the event.

Nessa Jimenez:

Cuz if you don't know the value of your product, you're gonna have a

Nessa Jimenez:

hell of a time trying to sell it.

Isaac Watson:

Another problem I think that, that stems from this is being

Isaac Watson:

a little too worried about quantity over quality of your attendees.

Isaac Watson:

Some people.

Isaac Watson:

Get wrapped up in chasing this numbers game.

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It's Oh if it's free, I could get thousands of registrations

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instead of getting a couple hundred or something like that.

Isaac Watson:

And this, it's just a disingenuous metric to, to think that somehow big

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numbers equal a more successful event without really realizing that when you

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have a free event, especially a free online event, attrition is insane.

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Like it, the attrition of people actually attending is just off the charts.

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And you end up with 20%, 25% who are actually showing up if they haven't paid

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anything cuz there's no skin in the game.

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And what's the first thing we're gonna do when we're not feeling

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like staring at our computers when attending a free online event?

Isaac Watson:

We're just gonna not do it.

Isaac Watson:

Right, Right,

Nessa Jimenez:

yeah.

Nessa Jimenez:

And as humans, like we, we get really impressed with numbers.

Nessa Jimenez:

We love seeing numbers, right?

Nessa Jimenez:

Oh, a thousand people signed up.

Nessa Jimenez:

That's great.

Nessa Jimenez:

Most of those people are not gonna attend cause it was free.

Nessa Jimenez:

And so being free, like you said, no skin in the game, no investment, they

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lose nothing cuz they put in nothing.

Nessa Jimenez:

Especially for an online thing.

Nessa Jimenez:

So yeah.

Nessa Jimenez:

the worry about if I have more people signed up or more

Nessa Jimenez:

people even live, it's better.

Nessa Jimenez:

It's not necessarily if your only goal is to having a lot of people

Nessa Jimenez:

sign up, then yeah, sure you made it.

Nessa Jimenez:

But if we're doing a conference, that's just the beginning.

Nessa Jimenez:

Like selling the tickets, now you have to do the thing.

Isaac Watson:

And think about your engagement too.

Isaac Watson:

If you're doing a free event, sure.

Isaac Watson:

You get 5,000 people signed.

Isaac Watson:

But if only 500 show up and you were planning on 5,000 and you'd

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created activities or ways for that audience to engage with each other,

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that's gonna dramatically change the environment and the experience that

Isaac Watson:

those attendees have if what you had created was for this larger group

Isaac Watson:

and only a fraction of that showed.

Nessa Jimenez:

And then if the 500 people are lurkers who just wanna watch the

Nessa Jimenez:

live stream, but don't wanna click on anything or interact in any way, it can

Nessa Jimenez:

feel like there's nobody at your event.

Nessa Jimenez:

And that's.

Nessa Jimenez:

The worst feeling.

Isaac Watson:

Yes.

Isaac Watson:

I think all of this comes down to me to not having a marketing strategy.

Isaac Watson:

When we're talking about worth, when we're talking about event value, when

Isaac Watson:

we're talking about quality of attendees.

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If you have a solid marketing strategy.

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That can address underlying issues and can help solve them.

Isaac Watson:

But if you don't have a marketing strategy, which most people don't

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have when they come into organizing a conference, that's one of the things

Isaac Watson:

that we do is develop that for them.

Isaac Watson:

It's it's really hard to have that confidence and to have that that I,

Isaac Watson:

it's a lot of it's self-esteem, right?

Isaac Watson:

To actually go out there and sell the tickets and

Isaac Watson:

communicate that value to those.

Isaac Watson:

All right.

Isaac Watson:

So we've talked about some of the problems feeding into these questions.

Isaac Watson:

Let's talk about some of the ways that we can help solve those.

Isaac Watson:

So going back to value and worth it's really about understanding your

Isaac Watson:

audience's perception of value and the value of the content, which comes

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down to understanding your audience.

Isaac Watson:

And maybe we're just a broken record on this Nessa, but understanding

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your audience is everything.

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And again, we start with early on in the process with our clients,

Isaac Watson:

through our event labs through all of the production work that we do.

Isaac Watson:

Because ultimately your Audi-, if you don't have an audience

Isaac Watson:

there, you don't have a conference.

Isaac Watson:

And if you don't understand your audience, you can't create a

Isaac Watson:

conference that they're gonna love.

Nessa Jimenez:

And.

Nessa Jimenez:

We're not saying that the answer is no, you should never have a free event.

Nessa Jimenez:

That's not what we're trying to say.

Nessa Jimenez:

But there are hard costs, so somebody has to pay for it, first of all.

Nessa Jimenez:

Yeah.

Nessa Jimenez:

And second of all, this assumption.

Nessa Jimenez:

because you're, cuz you're walking in already with the assumption that people

Nessa Jimenez:

are not gonna wanna pay for this, right?

Nessa Jimenez:

So you have to explore like, why, what what's wrong with it?

Nessa Jimenez:

Because that's not true.

Nessa Jimenez:

If you're giving people value and something that adds value

Nessa Jimenez:

to their lives or be it entertainment, education, access.

Nessa Jimenez:

Like people will pay for that.

Nessa Jimenez:

It's just understanding what is valuable to that audience.

Nessa Jimenez:

Some people care about certain things and then other people don't

Nessa Jimenez:

give a crap about that same thing.

Nessa Jimenez:

So if you're not exploring that you're never gonna find.

Nessa Jimenez:

A confident answer.

Nessa Jimenez:

You'll never be confident with whatever number, even with free you'll never

Nessa Jimenez:

truly be confident in that if you're not doing your homework, of understanding

Nessa Jimenez:

the audience and then understanding the value that you're giving to that audience.

Isaac Watson:

Yeah.

Isaac Watson:

And one of the ways that we do that is by helping you understand

Isaac Watson:

what outcomes you're delivering.

Isaac Watson:

For that audience.

Isaac Watson:

Many times we work with speakers on developing their topics if they need help.

Isaac Watson:

And one of the questions that That we get asked a lot from speakers is like

Isaac Watson:

how I feel like this is a little rambly, or I'm trying to cover too much here.

Isaac Watson:

And we always counter that with saying what do you want

Isaac Watson:

people to take away from this?

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What is the outcome?

Isaac Watson:

What do you want them to do?

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With what you're telling them.

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And if you can focus on the outcomes, whether that's in a talk you're

Isaac Watson:

preparing, or when we're talking about the conference more broadly

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as a whole, then you can use those outcomes to then build into that.

Isaac Watson:

And that helps define your value.

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If you can say in your marketing, we will help you do X, Y, Z or

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you're gonna come out of this having learned, fill in the blank.

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That's gonna come across much stronger in delivering that value

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and communicating that to them.

Isaac Watson:

And under all of that is understanding why you're doing this in the first place.

Isaac Watson:

What are your motivations?

Isaac Watson:

Why are you even hosting a conference?

Isaac Watson:

That's another thing that comes out of our event lab, is we ask

Isaac Watson:

these questions like, why now?

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Why like really questioning.

Isaac Watson:

The relevancy of your intentions in a way that we hope will help

Isaac Watson:

solidify those and help you feel more confident about them.

Nessa Jimenez:

At some point down the line, you decided that.

Nessa Jimenez:

Whatever this thing you're doing had to be a conference, had to be an event, right?

Nessa Jimenez:

That, that's a decision that's made.

Nessa Jimenez:

So we ha we explore why does this have to be an event?

Nessa Jimenez:

Why can't this just be a video that you stick on YouTube

Nessa Jimenez:

or why does it have to be this?

Nessa Jimenez:

And from there we help people build on top of that through event lab, right?

Nessa Jimenez:

Through the strategy of, okay, if this is your why, What are the

Nessa Jimenez:

outcomes that you're tying to that?

Nessa Jimenez:

Because if it has to be a conference, it has to be a conference for the central

Nessa Jimenez:

reason, which is, the outcomes can only be achieved by this format, right?

Nessa Jimenez:

Yes.

Nessa Jimenez:

Yeah.

Nessa Jimenez:

That's me cheating.

Nessa Jimenez:

That's me spoiling giving the answers, but yeah.

Nessa Jimenez:

At the core of it, you decided that it had to be a conference, it had

Nessa Jimenez:

to be an event because you could only achieve your goals through that.

Nessa Jimenez:

Okay, But what are those?

Nessa Jimenez:

And how does that tie to the audience that you're presenting this to?

Nessa Jimenez:

And from there, from these conversations, it that, that's

Nessa Jimenez:

where we can build towards pricing.

Nessa Jimenez:

Pricing is not a number that you just decide on day one.

Nessa Jimenez:

You go from there.

Nessa Jimenez:

So when people ask this, should my event be free, like with most

Nessa Jimenez:

of the questions people ask?

Nessa Jimenez:

It depends.

Isaac Watson:

Yeah.

Isaac Watson:

And I'm gonna harp on it just because that's what we do.

Isaac Watson:

But it re it all comes back to understanding your audience whether

Isaac Watson:

that's their socioeconomic status what can they afford to pay for the

Isaac Watson:

outcome that you're gonna deliver.

Isaac Watson:

What are they willing to pay?

Isaac Watson:

What resources do they have?

Isaac Watson:

What resources do you have as an organizer?

Isaac Watson:

How we will question Why are you even doing this?

Isaac Watson:

Is there anybody else out there that does, Are there any other

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ways that we can possibly do this?

Isaac Watson:

Not because we don't want to produce conferences, cuz that's what, of

Isaac Watson:

course we want to do that, but we wanna do them the right way.

Isaac Watson:

We wanna do them intelligently and intentionally, and

Isaac Watson:

we wanna make sure that.

Isaac Watson:

Whatever we're creating with our clients is something that is going to meet both

Isaac Watson:

their goals and their audience goals.

Isaac Watson:

So that's partially why we keep coming down to this question or this notion

Isaac Watson:

of understanding your audience because that is core to everything that we do.

Nessa Jimenez:

And even if the ticket is free, you still have to do all this

Nessa Jimenez:

homework because you need to be confident.

Nessa Jimenez:

Because even if it's free, you still gotta sell the ticket.

Nessa Jimenez:

They're not trading money, but you gotta get them to the website.

Nessa Jimenez:

You gotta get them to register and then you gotta get 'em to show up

Isaac Watson:

Exactly.

Isaac Watson:

Yeah.

Isaac Watson:

Honestly, that's harder if it's free.

Nessa Jimenez:

Yes.

Isaac Watson:

Because there's, there is no skin in the game, there's no commitment

Isaac Watson:

from them to do that, other than giving you some registration information.

Isaac Watson:

And related to all of this, and another question that comes

Isaac Watson:

up in our event lab process.

Isaac Watson:

Is who isn't this for?

Isaac Watson:

It's really easy for people to say, Oh I want everybody and

Isaac Watson:

their moms to show up, yeah.

Isaac Watson:

Yeah.

Isaac Watson:

Cool.

Isaac Watson:

But Moms don't care about Yeah.

Isaac Watson:

X or Y.

Isaac Watson:

Yeah.

Isaac Watson:

And so by identifying who is not invited, who doesn't belong here who

Isaac Watson:

are you intentionally excluding, which is another thing that, that comes

Isaac Watson:

from Prya Parker when talking about setting your gathering's purpose.

Isaac Watson:

That, that is a really key question to answer because that helps you identify.

Isaac Watson:

Who your audience actually is, what their needs are, what their goals are, and then

Isaac Watson:

how you can craft something specifically for them instead of trying to be a super

Isaac Watson:

generalist and hit everybody right.

Nessa Jimenez:

And it'll actually bring them in because again, even

Nessa Jimenez:

if it's free, you still gotta convince them to cut to come in.

Nessa Jimenez:

You still gotta convince them to attend.

Nessa Jimenez:

Doing all of that homework that we do with people at the beginning, it.

Nessa Jimenez:

The decision easier, whether free or not free, right?

Nessa Jimenez:

Yeah.

Nessa Jimenez:

Like it just helps.

Nessa Jimenez:

And then move into the marketing with a lot of confidence cuz there's

Nessa Jimenez:

always gonna be marketing . Yes.

Nessa Jimenez:

Even if it's free.

Nessa Jimenez:

Even if it's, So don't think that just cuz you're doing it for free, that you

Nessa Jimenez:

get to escape the marketing work.

Nessa Jimenez:

That's not how this works.

Nessa Jimenez:

. Isaac Watson: Yeah.

Nessa Jimenez:

I would also add that I think that post pandemic or in this.

Nessa Jimenez:

Limbo that we're in right now with it.

Nessa Jimenez:

A lot of people have become really wary and cynical about free events and have

Nessa Jimenez:

been much less likely to just sign up.

Nessa Jimenez:

I think early on it was a lot easier to be like, Oh yeah, I wanna go to that.

Nessa Jimenez:

Oh, I wanna go there.

Nessa Jimenez:

I'm starved for social connection.

Nessa Jimenez:

Cause we have all been so isolated.

Nessa Jimenez:

But now as things are equalizing, people are much more critical

Nessa Jimenez:

about what they're committing to, even if it's going to be a free event.

Nessa Jimenez:

So the answer to the question is, it depends, of course,

Nessa Jimenez:

because it always does.

Nessa Jimenez:

Because at the core of thing, of everything that we do, it's about

Nessa Jimenez:

understanding what your audience is and how you can deliver

Nessa Jimenez:

something specifically for them.

Nessa Jimenez:

And then determining if that's through a free event or a paid event.

Nessa Jimenez:

So let's do a little recap.

Nessa Jimenez:

The core question is, should my event be free?

Nessa Jimenez:

What people are usually asking is this actually worth what we're charging for it?

Nessa Jimenez:

A little crisis of confidence there.

Nessa Jimenez:

Can we get away with charging this much?

Nessa Jimenez:

I feel like I'm pulling the wool over my audience's eyes a little bit.

Nessa Jimenez:

Or on the flip side, how can I get the biggest audience ever and, we will help

Nessa Jimenez:

you work through those things by looking at what outcomes you're delivering,

Nessa Jimenez:

what value you're creating for your audience through your conference.

Nessa Jimenez:

Understanding their demographics, socioeconomic status, what resources they

Nessa Jimenez:

have, what they're looking for, and all the different ways that you can do that.

Nessa Jimenez:

And through that you can then, A calculated and informed decision

Nessa Jimenez:

on what, if anything, you should be charging for your event.

Nessa Jimenez:

Thanks for listening to Make it Kickass.

Nessa Jimenez:

We know that setting ticket prices can feel difficult and overwhelming at

Nessa Jimenez:

times, but we hope that you walk away from today's conversation and thinking

Nessa Jimenez:

about the value that you're providing your audience first and foremost.

Nessa Jimenez:

And if you wanna dig deeper into this topic, you can grab a free copy of

Nessa Jimenez:

the tool that we use with our clients to help them set ticket prices.

Nessa Jimenez:

And you can find that@geteventlab.com and I will see you all next time.

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About the Podcast

Make It Kickass
Community Event Mastery
Make It Kickass explores how leaders of growing communities can make conferences with impact, gatherings with purpose, and an attendee experience that knocks their socks off. We uncover the strategies, tactics, and tools we use every day to bring our clients’ conferences to life. If you've ever wanted to host a life-changing conference, this podcast is for you.

Find us at kickassconf.com or geteventlab.com

About your hosts

Isaac Watson

Profile picture for Isaac Watson
Isaac Watson is the founder and Executive Producer at Kickass Conferences, an event strategy and production studio based in the Pacific Northwest. Isaac helps community leaders develop and deliver transformative events for their audiences and inspire them to build a better world.

A maker and introvert at heart, when he’s not working his magic behind the scenes in event strategy and production, he’s usually at home in Vancouver, Washington working on remodeling projects, gardening, cooking, learning to sew, and building LEGO.

Nessa Jimenez

Profile picture for Nessa Jimenez
Nessa Jimenez is the Operations Manager at Kickass Conferences, an event strategy and production studio based in the Pacific Northwest. She coordinates the day to day work with our clients and vendors, keeps all of our projects rolling on time and now edits and produces the podcast.

Nessa lives in and works from Puerto Rico. When she's not working, you can find her reading a book or trying to figure out how to keep her plants alive.