Meeting Eli The Computer Guy – How to market an in-person event?

Rick: Hey, Eli. Can you hear me?

Eli: I can hear you now. I can hear you now. Yes.

Rick: It was pretty painful watching the live stream right now. No one shows up.

Eli: I was surprised. This is the perfect example. I thought this was going to be a cool idea. Apparently, I’m wrong.

Rick: Yeah. I actually ran a similar experiment to yours where I invited my audience to jump in and see what I could help with. I offered it to two different groups. One that was paid and one that was free. I got the free people and a bunch of people from India showed up and asking a bunch of different questions that I really can’t do anything with and I asked the people that pay me money to show up and only a handful of them did show up.

Eli: Yeah. Yeah. Cool

Rick: There you go.

Eli: You’re Salty Slopes right?

Rick: Yes sir.

Eli: I will say, you know what, I fucking laughed at that name a couple of years ago but I remember it, I do remember it.

Rick: Have you heard the first name for Amazon they had when they first released. I think it was like, Kazam or Kadabra.

Eli: Oh yeah, yeah, I heard that yeah.

Rick: The name is irrelevant. You just got to get out there and do the work and I’ll figure out the name stuff later.

Eli: That’s cool. So, what are you up to now because you were developing apps and then didn’t you go into education or something? I forget.

Rick: Yeah, I have a … Being someone that likes to play around with different things and exploring different ideas. You have to figure out where you fit in the world right? So I’ve been having a lot of success with actually being a software consultant where I actually go ahead and actually talk to different clients and come in there and pretty much provide SRS stuff for the services that I do offer and either come in as an actual developer or actually just giving them a road map for them to actually follow up with.

So I work with start-ups. I work with different organizations here and that’s for my day to day work but I also like to teach, I like to show people stuff. I have open source projects that I work on and a bunch of different cool stuff.

Eli: Cool. Cool. So, how can I help you today or you just showing up to say, “Hi.”

Rick: I don’t want to take up too much of your time but my question that I have from me to you is, I’m going to be doing an in-person class and my goal is to sell 20 seats. And now you might actually ask, “Rick, why in the world would you do an in-person class. There are so many different options. Why would you do this?” One of the reasons why I want to do it is for public speaking. I really want to go ahead and actually present a topic and see if I can actually deliver on that topic with an actual audience instead of doing it online.

Eli: How much are you going to charge?
Rick: That’s my question that I have for you. The price for the seats are going to be $30 and my question is, “What would you recommend me as far as for advertising for filling those 20 seats?”

Eli: What are you going to teach? What’s your class?

Rick: Programming fundamentals.

Rick: It’s going to be getting started with JavaScript type of deal. More like a deep dive into JavaScript and even go on there from. So, somebody that’s curious about programming but doesn’t quite exactly know how to go about it.

Eli: I would focus on … Whenever it comes to education one of the weird things you run into is, everybody is willing to pay money for kids but they’re not willing to pay money for themselves. “I want the kid to have a better life so I’m not going to … I’d rather have my kid learn robots at eight years old versus me actually get a masters degree that could make our lives better.” It’s a weird thing. If I were you, especially at that $30 price point I would focus on older high schoolers and college kids if I were you. And I would probably go to the vo-tech programs in your area. Because you must have a number of high schools. Because you’re in Salt Lake City area right?

Rick: Yep.

Eli: I would go to the local high schools actually and try to talk with whoever their vocational people are. Their career councilors or something like that and basically, if I was going to try to do it for money, I’d try to sell it probably to that senior, that junior, senior year, high school type kids. Because they’re interested enough. They’re still interested enough in technology, they haven’t gotten beaten down yet so they’ll take the classes. The parents will hand over the cash, $30 who the fuck cares, that’s no amount of money. The problem you get into with adults is they just don’t have the time.

“Eli, I don’t have the time for that.”

That’s what you have to think about is when I was starting Everyman IT, way back when, that’s where I had the … I was trying to figure out how to monetize. One of the things, since I still have my building, I still have all my equipment. I started this apprenticeship program, the idea was an apprenticeship type program where for $500 a month, you come in, I do a one-hour seminar every day and then you get free reign of a fully equipped environment. To build computers, test things out. I had all kinds of equipment back then. But the biggest problem I got is every adult that called, their thing was, “Does this guarantee me a job at the end of it?” And they’re so fucking focused on the job, where if you say, “Well, it will improve your resume, so that should improve you getting a job.” But they want that piece of paper. It’s why you still have these people that want fucking A+. You know?

Rick: It’s insane. Yesterday I was talking to somebody that has a start-up that’s funded. Very different, very different, okay. They actually had money. What they do is they actually go ahead and actually find a specific area of land. This is land that has not been … There’s nothing there it’s just straight up land. And they go ahead and give you an evaluation of how much that land is worth. Depending on, what type of soil, what kind of water resources are around, what other land is around that land and so on and so forth. The deals that they’re actually making, to sell one of these pieces of land, is $1,400,000 million dollars. Okay? And they get 3% of that sale. Their piece of software is excavating this specific area and figuring out how much it’s worth and that’s what their software does. The work is there. There’s tons of work that is … I don’t know how to communicate better. There’s tons of cash out there you just have to be in the right room.

Eli: Yeah, yeah. But that’s the problem with so many … But everybody wants it handed to them. They want, “I have this piece of paper. Now I’m going to get a job.” They, you know …

Rick: Yeah, no. Hell, no. I’m going to look into the kids part but yeah, you’ve answered my only question that I had.

Eli: Yeah, yeah, focus, like I say focus on teenagers or maybe the college kids because I tell you with this, man, I have fucking tried to sell to adults and you want to just lose your God damn mind, try to sell adults technical training without a certification. If you say, “An A+.” They’re all over that, but just an hour or two or five and you’re going to lose your mind.

Rick: That’s good to know. I’m going to definitely look into … Yeah, because my idea was to run Facebook ads and see what kind of feedback I got there. But Facebook is, “You got to pay to play.”

Eli: Yeah. Well and that’s the thing too. You also have to think about what your profit margins are. If you had a $3000 coding class or you want to put 20 asses in seats, that gives you $60,000 to play with. You’ve got $600 to play with.

Rick: Yeah. All right. Cool. Thanks so much for your time.

Eli: Yep. See you later.

Rick: I’ll keep watching the stream. Hopefully, it’s not as painful. Somebody else hops in.

Eli: Maybe, think I’m going to go have some lunch now. I think this test is about complete.

Rick: All right, man.

Eli: Okay. See you.