Heeey! How you doing?

Let’s start this email with a good milestone: The Wide Event is officially sold out! We sold our 150 tickets! 🤩

So for those who have a ticket, see you in Paris! 🇫🇷

For those who didn’t have one or couldn’t attend, don’t worry—we’ll organize more events in the future.

In today’s email we’re going to talk about:

• How to organize a Shopify Partners event like The Wide Event

Let’s go! 🔥

How to organize a Shopify Partners event like The Wide Event?

Organizing an event isn’t easy, but it allows you to build trust, find partners, and grow as an entrepreneur.

There are 3 key components: Speakers, Sponsors, and Attendees.

The problem is that if you don’t have one, the others won’t come—the “chicken or the egg” problem.

So, usually, you have to start with the most complicated and assume you already have them: the attendees and the speakers.

The sponsors will come if there are attendees. Same for the speakers.

But the attendees will come if there are good speakers.

1) Starting with the attendees

For each event, I will think about how many people I can bring to that event.

To start, I list all the places where I can promote my event:

• My Shopify App Founders group

• My partners sharing with their network

• Friends in the same industry sharing with their network

• My newsletter

• Ads

• Twitter/Linkedin/Instagram

• Mailing list

And based on that I will take a number I think I can reach. For your first event, start with a small number. It’s better to aim lower.

For my first event a few years ago, we aimed for 50 people. We did 35.

Once I know how many people can come, and how it’s going, I can increase the number of attendees.

That’s why, for this event, I was able to say we were going to reach 150. And we did! But I needed a few events before to be sure.

Once you have your number, you can look for sponsors and speakers.

2) Finding Sponsors

Think about who your attendees are. Merchants? Developers?

Then, based on that, you can list the businesses that target these people.

And for each business list all the companies you know about it.

Then you can attract them by:

• Cold contacting these businesses

• Finding them using the places where you can promote your event.

And then you can share the details about your event:

• What is the event about?

• How many people will attend?

• Who will be the speakers? (at least, what they do if you don’t have names yet)

The number of sponsors usually depends on the cost of the event and the number of people attending (and also the quality of the attendees). I try to do 1 sponsor for every 40 attendees (based on the type of my event)

You don’t need to find all the sponsors before looking for the speakers and attendees. Announcement of the number of attendees is enough to get everyone at once.

The price to ask depends on how much you need for the event. The best is when the sponsors cover all (or almost) the cost of the event.

So that the attendees will be a bonus or you will have extra money for everything that wasn’t expected: ads, etc.

If you’re scared that you won’t get the attendees, start without a sponsor and do a small event (you don’t need to bring food)

Now let’s go with the speakers.

3) Finding speakers

It works pretty much the same way as sponsors:

• List the people you know that could bring value to your audience and contact them

• Ask online if someone wants to talk (give the number of attendees) or ask people to refer someone.

For example, at my very first event, there were 3 speakers. I was the first one, and I co-hosted the event with 2 other people who were also the speakers. It’s a good way to start.

As soon as you have them you can announce them to attract even more attendees.

4) Food/People/Organization/Sound

Find a company that handles events. It’s the best way to organize an event when you’re alone.

I have a friend who works at an event company (he’s not doing any discount so you can do it too) so I work with them.

We talk together to figure out everything:

• Where should be the venue? (we compare prices)

• How many people will attend?

• What is the date of the event?

• What is the schedule (talks, etc…)

• What’s the food and drinks?

And then they will handle everything on the day of the event: sound, image, food, waiters, etc.

They’re trained for that; that’s why I work with professionals. I just need to handle the bigger picture

5) What are the problems you can face?

There are a few problems that will definitely happen. And you need to be prepared to handle them:

a) You can’t reach the number of people you expected

Here are some things you can do:

• Make the tickets free, refund the attendees and ask them to bring 1 more person. (if you know it’s enough to bring the people)

• Tell the sponsors you won’t reach the target and ask them if they’re ok with it or if they need a refund

• Cancel the event (I know it can hurt the ego, but don’t worry, you can try again later!)

b) A speaker has to cancel

Prepare backups. People you can contact if something goes wrong. You can even be a speaker (prepare your slides just in case)

c) Some attendees can’t join

Just refund them. It’s okay; not everyone will cancel.

Thanks for reading this email. Feel free to share it with a friend, a partner, or a customer.

In the next one, I’ll share how to find App Ideas once you have found a problem and validated it! Stay tuned!

So see you in the next email!

Mat 😁