Jasmine Shares the Real Story Behind Summit

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World Podcast. It's Jasmine Garnsworthy. I am the host of the show and I'm the founder and the CEO of Female Founder World. Today's episode is a deep dive into Female Founder World Summit and exactly how we pulled this off last weekend. You are now entering Female Founder World with your host, Jasmine Garnsworthy. If you're listening to this a little bit late, we held a massive 700 person event in New York City on the 2nd of November and it was wild like wild and I've had a lot of questions come through in the group chat on Instagram all the places asking how we did this and I'm going to dive into everything from how much it costs and like what we do around spending and where we spend and and how we make money how we get sponsors how we pick our speakers the team and what's required to do something like this.

0:58If you're listening to me talk through this and you're thinking I'm not answering the questions that you have, first of all, sorry, but second of all, I'm going to jump in the group chat and do a call where you can actually ask very specific questions about this event, event about building female founder world community and specific questions about community events and your business. And that's going to be for our paid business bestie members inside the group chat, please go to the link in the show notes. And if you aren't in the group chat, you can go there and sign up to the group chat and then sign up to the call.

1:31Some of the big learnings I've had along the way as well that just, I think, apply to anyone who's building any kind of business and also ticket sales. I'm going to kick off with that because how do we sell through, you know, how do we sell through so many tickets and sell out of these events, I'm going to tell you exactly what that looks like as well. And I want to kick off just by saying like, I loved this event. I loved seeing you all so much. Thank you for coming. Thank you for flying in. People flew in from all over the world and all over the country. And like, I don't know, it's just really special to be in a room with you all, especially with the election and everything that's kind of happening in the world and particularly in the US at the moment, I find a lot of comfort in the energy and the people and the shared mission that I experienced in real life on the 2nd of November at Female Founder World Summit.

2:28And I'm really holding onto that going into the new year. Summit's something that like fuels me for months and months. It feels like, first of all, like as a business owner, this is just like massive milestone to hit. It's something that I've been wanting to do at this scale since we started. And so it does feel like we hit a really big milestone, but I also like, I'm not going to bullshit you guys. I'm going to keep this really real. And your business owners, like you would, you know, I know, you know, but this was really hard. Um, it was, it was a lot, like it was pretty much all I thought about for the last few months.

3:01It, I asked a lot from the team and like, that's something that I find hard to do as well. Everyone worked really hard leading up to this and I personally feel like I was just super distracted like even the time that I got with you know Sebi and Steve and if you're new around here that's my toddler and my husband like even then when I was with them I feel like I was distracted I was like checking ticket sales or answering things questions in slack because I didn't want to hold people up or posting something to Instagram or making sure our email flows are working for the event tickets all that kind of stuff and it just like took so much time and energy for me personally and like really everything else in my life just had to kind of wait I was definitely like not the best like wife mother friend like all of those things just really took a took a beat while I was focused on this event and also like it took so much cash to put this on and while Summit is profitable anyone who's tried to manage cash flow before you know we have to pay for all this stuff up front and we don't get ticket sales until later we don't get a lot of our invoices by our big sponsors like they might not get paid till later so you know we nearly drained the business bank account like I put in my own money I literally sold shares to like to put money into the business for this event and like thank god it was worth it it all worked out we're profitable like I can repay myself the business is you know back in a good position but it took a big commitment and a big leap of faith to do this and one of the reasons that we're able to do that is because we've done smaller events for years leading up to this like we've practiced we've built the team I've built that like trust muscle I know what area is going to be difficult what's not going to be difficult but you know even with all of that experience and like an experienced team behind the event now there were still things that we ran into that were surprises and there were things especially around like some costs that were pretty unexpected as well.

4:57So I'm going to get into all of that. But I just wanted to, to put that right up front in the episode, because I'm going to be talking a lot about all the amazing stuff that we did and how incredible it was, which it was. And we're definitely doing this again next year. And we have more events coming up, but you know, I need to put that there so you guys know, yeah, they're, they're real like story behind this as well. Rather than just like the 30 second, like TikTok videos that you're seeing online about this beautiful glossy event and this like big success. So don't ask me as well, like when we're doing our next event, it feels like, you know, when it literally feels like I'm holding a newborn baby and someone has just come up to me and said, when are you having your next child?

5:36That's what it feels like when someone says, when are you doing it again? We're definitely doing another event like soon, but not at this scale. And we will put on another huge summit at the end of next year. So just that question is answered. By the time I, you know, like I got on stage to welcome everyone at 1130 in the morning on the 2nd of November, I was so exhausted. I'd barely slept probably the, I was going to say the night before, but like genuinely week, the week before, maybe a couple of weeks. And I was like pretty disappointed with how I was on stage. I don't think my stage presence was exactly what I wanted.

6:15It didn't give the energy I wanted. you guys have been really sweet I've mentioned this in the chat and like people have been DMing saying totally didn't notice it was great all of that thank you I do appreciate that that's just that's just a learning for me that you can't be back of house in front of house at the same time like you I need to like conserve that energy to be able to like be the version of myself that I want as this forward-facing person in the business on the day of these big events and that's just a lesson. Okay, let's get into exactly how we pulled this off. And in case you weren't there, like, let me just explain to you the vision and what the team put together.

6:52So 2023, last year, we held our first VMA Founder World Summit. It was in this space that I found in Brooklyn that I picked, like, it was a bit out of the way, to be honest, it was an industry city. But I kind of thought like, okay, we fit 500 people in here. I'm pretty confident that we can sell 500 tickets. And the venue gave us a pretty good deal. And it was like, you know, it had electricity and lighting and like all of that stuff. So it was like pretty plug and play, ready to go. But the space was small. Like we couldn't have a separate space really for networking and lots of brand activations.

7:24There was like a bit of noise disruption with the panels and the people trying to network. And it was not perfect for an event of our size. And so I knew this year for 2024, we needed to really step up. And if I wanted this to be the event for entrepreneurial women and like the best event that you have ever been to as a business owner, that was going to be hard to do. And we were going to need to really intentionally invest in and pick a space that was going to let us create that and create that for like 700 or more people. And so we picked a venue called South Street Seaport. I've been to an event there before, and that's how I heard about it.

8:03And we picked it after probably doing like virtual tours and calls and getting pricing for like six spaces, I think, in New York City. There are lots of venues in New York, but a lot of them are just like really expensive. Seaport, we managed to negotiate the price a little bit, but it still cost tens of thousands of dollars. Plus it was a totally raw space. So we're bringing in power, we're bringing in lighting, every single chair, every single light fixture, like everything we're bringing in. If you were there, you saw we had this like beautiful draping all through the space to like break out the different areas all of that we had to install and all of that requires permitting so it was really expensive there was a lot of extra work that went into it it was a really raw blank space but it was perfect to be able to bring this idea of an a true like female founder world like an experience that you walk into and it's you're in a new space.

9:02We needed the flexibility to be able to customize something raw to be able to do that. So that's why we went to Seaport. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about how we think about our profit for an event like this and the sponsors that we work with and how we kind of like execute on it. But the big question I get again and again is how do you sell through so many tickets? Because we sold out this year, we also sold out last year and that's not easy to do. And I'd say like the big reason we're able to do that is because we're talking about Summit all year. Like we don't just turn on our, like our comms around this event in, you know, like Q4.

9:40Like we're talking about this all year. We're speaking about it on the podcast. We are, you know, planting the seed with potential speakers after they come on the podcast. Maybe I mentioned, hey, we've got this event. Would you be interested in talking? We are posting like videos from last year's event. we're constantly speaking about it and we're doing smaller events all year leading up to this one big moment so it really just like helps you guys think about us as you know this is our tagline like the place to meet your business besties online and in real life and so we want to keep that in real life portion like front of mind and not just at the end of the year for summit so we're doing other events through the year we do content camp in LA in the middle of the year we do an International Women's Day event.

10:27And we do these like really small informal meetups for our members all year. Okay, business besties. I want to just pause for a second. I've got Natalie here on the Female Founder World team. I'm going to ask, Nat, are you ready for the holidays? Honestly, no. And I feel like it's coming up so quickly. It's coming up so quickly. And that's why I wanted to take a second to chat about this season's presenting sponsor, Vistaprint. It's honestly the best place to start holiday shopping. And right now, Vistaprint is giving all female Founderboard listeners an early holiday gift, up to 50 % off holiday cards, wall calendars, and more.

11:03Oh, wow. 50 % is a pretty good deal. How do you even have time though for all this holiday shopping? I know, honestly, like I'm usually pretty disorganized, but I've been quite on it this year. And we've also been sending out these really cute thank you packs to different founders who have been on the podcast, speakers who have been at the events. We've printed really cute like little fleece blankets. We have embroidered caps and also stuff for my family as well because you know everyone's going to be wearing the female founder world merch. Oh, of course. You got to bring the family into it. And I personally love a branded tote bag, but I also didn't know that they did embroidery.

11:40That's pretty cool. The embroidered caps are particularly cute. Oh, I love that. Highly recommend. So everyone go and get your holiday shopping buttoned up with up to 50 % off custom holiday cards, wall calendars, and more at vistaprint.com. Use the code HOLIDAY50 at checkout. Okay, let's get back into the show. The next thing that we do is build that waitlist again all year. Like if you go onto the Female Founder World website right now, the first thing you'll see is not like us trying to sell a course on membership or direct you to the podcast. It is an email capture form and it says something like, we're kind of famous for our events or something like that, a sign up to get on the wait list for the next or get notified for the next event in your city, something like that.

12:23So we're dedicating that like prime real estate all year to building the wait list for in-person events. And then those folks get on our like newsletter list, they get engaged throughout the year and they are amongst the first to hear about when we actually put tickets on sale for in-person events, including obviously Summit. And I would say like the actual date when tickets go on sale is it's there's a fine line because you want it to be early enough that you have enough time to sell all of the tickets and to know if you need to like dial up your marketing if things aren't selling very well like if you only put tickets on sale two weeks before an event and they weren't selling well you wouldn't have enough time to like really dial things up so I would I know that other events are putting tickets on sale at quite a few months ahead we usually look at like five or six weeks as being a good sweet spot because I know our tickets are going to sell because you guys love coming to our events and so we were looking at around that time frame this year we went I would say exactly six weeks which is earlier than we did last year and we went up with a ticket website that was literally just like our event artwork and you could buy a ticket and we had a couple of the speakers up there but I didn't have the full schedule yet.

13:40But the reason why I wanted to get that up is because I heard that there were two big competing events happening on the same day. I was just like, bloody hell, my God, classic. There was Dear Media IRL happening in New York City. So Dear Media, obviously like, maybe not obviously, but they're a really big podcasting company. They were bringing in all of their like influencers and podcasters. And I wasn't sure what the overlap was going to be between our communities, but I was kind of like, that might take a few people. I'm not sure. And then beauty con in LA, we always have people flying in from the West coast for summit.

14:14And I was kind of like, well, they miss summit to do beauty con. I'm not sure in the end, obviously not like we sold out really quickly or great, but I was, I was a bit nervous. I have to be honest. And so what I did is I, uh, I had a, um, a call with our like presenting sponsor and I just let them know, you know, what was going on and said, I feel really confident that we're going to be able to sell through these tickets. I'm not worried. But I want to let you know that this is happening and like, we can change the date if you want to. But what I would really recommend is that we just get our tickets on sale soon.

14:46So our community doesn't double book, like they know they're going to pick us and, but we want them to know that that's their choice and they haven't already bought a ticket that's not refundable to something else on the same day. So we did put tickets on sale a little bit earlier. And how we did that is with a collaboration post with our representing partner Vistaprint and with, you know, their co-host for the event. So we did a collab post on Instagram that was a reel that we filmed and we used a platform called ManyChat so that when people commented on the post, they would get a DM with the link to, you know, buy their ticket.

15:19And that is literally how we launched the ticket sales that went to our website. People could purchase and that was it. We also sent out an email to that waitlist that went out I think the same day and 24 hours before any of this happened our paid business bestie members got a like a personal email from me where I sent them their discount code all paid members get a discount to in-person events and they get first dibs so they know that you know an event's not going to sell out before they get a chance to get tickets so that email went out I think 24 hours before then the Instagram reel, the email to our wait list.

15:56And about a week later, I would say it was included in our newsletter as well. We may have sent one or two other emails, but we didn't do, we didn't do a bunch. Tickets were selling really well. The first week we usually sell through, I think about a quarter of the tickets, maybe more. And then things really slow down. That's always when I get a bit, you know, like panicky and start reaching out. And I do collaborations and partnerships and giveaways with other communities where they can kind of give a free ticket away in a competition for their community. And it just like helps spread the word outside of our, outside of our group.

16:29And that does, it's not, I wouldn't say it's like a, an amazing like lift in ticket sales, but it just helps with that drumbeat of sales over the next few weeks. And I set myself targets. So like I don't go to bed on a Friday night unless we've hit our sales target in tickets for the week. And I can't turn off that weekend. Like that's just what I tell myself. And it just honestly helps ease the stress and not put all the burden towards the end of the event to move tickets. I always forget this. The last week of ticket sales is when things go really crazy. We always sell out like the weekend before I see this big lift in tickets.

17:01We don't do anything. We do a couple more Instagram posts. Like it's just, everyone's kind of like in their head, they know they're coming, but they, they wait until they buy tickets. So that happened again this year. That's something to really remember. If you're doing something in person, people do tend to like buy last minute and that's great. You know, as long as you know, what's going to happen, but it does mean that it's a little bit more difficult to like plan ahead and make sure that you've got the right capacity and you've got all of your planning in place. Because like at the end of the day, we could have sold more than 700 tickets, but that's kind of what I'd planned for.

17:35We'd ordered seven, you know, we'd ordered a little over 700 like chairs, for example, we get permitting for that. So you can't really change those decisions last minute. Something else that I did that really helped sell tickets was I posted this like very like it was very vulnerable Instagram carousel post about my story building female founder world and and how I got here and like go and go and look at that I'm not gonna I'm not gonna give you the whole spiel now about my story and I definitely had a vulnerability hangover but I knew as uh you know we're all business owners and I'm building my business while you're building your business and yes my business is literally to help you build yours but I so I knew that like my story would resonate with you.

18:17And, and so I decided to share it and we saw a big lift in ticket sales. Like a lot of people I think connected with that and just thought like, yeah, this is the space that I want to be in. So I would say that if you're someone who's on the fence about sharing that, I do think that it helps people connect with you to kind of share your story as a business owner. And it does directly link to sales and you, you never want to share something you're not comfortable with, or that's kind of just participating in this like internet vulnerability Olympics for the sake of it. If you have something that is important to your story as to like why you're building this business and is going to in some way, you know, make your community feel seen in some way through your story, like I do think that it can be really beneficial to share that for you and for your community as well.

19:08I'm going to talk about the experience that we created a little bit now as well and something that I'm constantly thinking about with female founder world as this community grows and it has grown so much like I cannot believe how many of us there are now you know it started so small and now there are tens of thousands like more than a hundred thousand people like it is crazy to me but I want to make sure that as we as we grow and especially as our like physical events get bigger and bigger like how do we protect what made this group really special in the beginning and the thing that I the thing that I keep hearing from people is that when they come to an event or they come to a group call or something, it's just, they're like truly connecting.

19:50They're getting like that no BS conversation. And it's the people here are, they're like friendly and warm and helpful and interesting and doing cool stuff. And if you've been to other conferences and you've been to a female, you've been to female founder world, you know, that it's, we don't do this like icky networking, like peacocking about your business vibe it's like much more I think genuine than that and so how do we protect that as this gets bigger and the way I decided we were going to do that is by making sure we were creating these really like in smaller intentional spaces within this massive event where people can connect with each other so other founders and with mentors around who are kind of experts around these shared experiences and these growth barriers that we're all facing or that like are commonly being faced.

20:43One of them is money. And so we created a money chat space where people can speak, have one-on-one conversations with investors, mentors, CFOs, and speak with each other and hang out in that area to get that connection. We did this with social media, with legal, with a few other topics. And that was just something that I thought would like help protect the specialness of the community in this big space and help create meaningful conversations. And it definitely, definitely did. So that's just a note on the experience and what we wanted to create there. Let's talk about money a little bit. Before I committed to that massive event space, obviously I needed to know like, was this math going to math?

21:25You know, like my, my goal here is for the event to be profitable it was probably not as profitable as it could have been if I'd been more intentional about bringing on partners and starting some of the conversations early I think a year is not a crazy timeline to be starting to have conversations with paid sponsors for an event so we're going to start having those conversations for 2025 25 like right now. But my goal at the end of this event was that our sponsors and partners would pay for the hard costs of putting on the event. That's like, you know, we know that then we can definitely cover it no matter how many tickets we sell.

22:05And then ticket sales would be the upside and our take home profit. And I figured we could do about$70 ,000 in ticket sales, which for a small business like ours is like a really decent amount of money that can fuel the business for like most of the year, honestly. And it didn't quite match up that way. There were definitely some unexpected expenses where the event wasn't as profitable as I kind of mapped out in the beginning, but that's okay. It's just, you know, lessons for next year. And I want to keep this very real for you guys. So before we commit to that space, we want to have our anchor sponsor, like our presenting sponsor who is co-hosting this event with us.

22:42And to sponsor Female Founder world, you need to truly offer something that our community needs and wants. Vistaprint is a no-brainer. I've been using the platform since like, you know, my first business, which failed, but it's kind of, as I've been growing, I've been constantly using this platform. And so it really felt like an organic alignment. It felt like a no-brainer. And we literally use Vistaprint to build the event, like the signage, the gift bags, the merch, like all of it we create on Vistaprint And it's something that helps keep our team lean because it's easy to use and I can do a lot of it myself.

23:20And so that's the first thing that we want to lock in is that presenting sponsor. That is an exclusive partnership. They get exclusivity over certain categories and they are co-branded on all of our event artwork, like that main lockup that says Female Founder World, the summit presented by Vistaprint that you see everywhere. They get that. we had them we co-created a panel with them which was one of the best conversations of the day according to all of you that's what I'm getting my dms at the moment they had this massive like activation area where we co-created merch that everyone could take home for free which was so amazing and also if you missed out on the merch at summit you can literally just make your own we've got a discount code ffw25 and then I'll give you 25 % off your first order on Vistaprint So you can go and create your own brand merch or if you want to recreate ours, go for it.

24:15I can happily link you to the different products that we used. And that conversation with Vistaprint, like, I don't know, I think that started happening maybe a year before we signed them. And then that was another six months until Summit. So, like, it's not crazy for these conversations to be happening really far out. I think if we had, like, a sales team or, you know, a fully formed partnerships team, those things might be a little bit more quick. or we would probably have like more partners come through, whatever. But most of our partnerships are inbound. It's based on like real connections that I'm forming personally with brands and recommending.

24:47And so it's definitely slower, but I think it's better, honestly. Some of the other paid sponsors that we brought on included Postscript, which is an SMS marketing tool. And again, it's something that I organically recommend for brands using Shopify in the community. So it was like such an easy alignment. Once they, I sent them a, like a deck basically to pitch it. We had a couple of calls and, and then we, once they kind of wanted to move forward, we kind of figured out a concept that would work for them. Again, I don't want to just do like booths. Like it has to be some value add to the community at the event.

25:26And so we did a cafe for them, which was a huge hit. We called it the Techspresso Cafe. They're an SMS marketing service. I thought that was really cute. And we did literally like, you know, coffee cart, cafe menu, cafe chairs and tables, like cute little napkins with a number to text to connect with PostScript, like all of these really fun details that I knew you guys would love on the day. And that also added heaps of value to PostScript who wants to connect with our community. We also partnered with 21 Seeds as a paid sponsor. So they're a female founded tequila brand owned by Diageo. They did this like big, beautiful tequila bar at the event.

26:02And then in addition to these paid sponsors, we also have Contra sponsors. And these are brands that offer product or services or experiences in return for exposure to our community. And so that might be like food and beverage brands who gave you guys lunch on the day. We had like the pizza cupcake, we had farmer's fridge, a lot of different drink brands. We had Juliet, an amazing wine brand in the community, as well as non-alcoholic companies. We had a headshot studio where you could get your headshot taken by shoot. And these partners are not paying us, but they are giving a lot of product in kind.

26:40And it kind of just makes sense to have them there in that capacity. We don't do a huge amount of those, but it does make sense sometimes to have contra partnerships. And another example of a contra partner would be gift bags. Like we don't charge to be in our gift bags, but obviously you're donating product. I'm going to tell you a little bit about team now. So the first person that I engage to work on an event might be a little bit, might not be the person that you would think of. It's a graphic designer. So I start the graphic design for an event like Summit. I mean, I think we started it in early summer, maybe even spring.

27:14So like six or seven months out. And that's because it is one of those few things that you can like lock in ages before an event and tick it off your list and you need it for everything else. Like it's really important. So I worked with a designer called Studio Alyssa. She created a bunch of different designs for like merch and stickers and signage. The main hero artwork based on a brief that I created for her, which was essentially just text and an email and a Pinterest board. Really, really simple. And also she's been working with me since the beginning. So she, she knows the vibe and she's also like, you know, she built our brand guide.

27:50So like she gets it. And then I also worked with another freelancer called Amy Green and I'll, I'll link both of these folks in the group chat for you guys, but they, she also helped me turn a lot of those assets into, for example, we did this like big digital takeover in downtown New York in this atrium on the day of the event. She created our program, like little nitty gritty things that needed to be created closer to the the event that I don't have the skills to do. But now that we had all the hero artwork, we could have someone do it for us in that we didn't have to book like, you know, six months in advance.