Imagine being a hostage at your own workshop! Imagine not having access to your own venue; having to take permission from someone else just to conduct your event. This is the crazy story of the very first Psychotactics U.S. Workshop. And while it's an entertaining story all by itself, there's a lot to learn as well. What went wrong with the strategic alliance? What did we do when the credit card company went bust? And how did a hurricane come to our rescue? Let's go on this on part one of this crazy roller coaster ride into Psychotactics land. http://www.psychotactics.com/crazy-workshop/ ================ In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: What went wrong with the strategic alliance? Part 2: What did we do when the credit card company went bust? Part 3: And how did a hurricane come to our rescue? Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.   Useful Resources The Brain Audit: Why Clients Buy (And Why They Don’t) Another Psychotactics Story: The Early Years-Psychotactics-Moving to New Zealand The Power of Enough: And Why It’s Critical To Your  ================ Psychotactics Workshop Story: Part 1 “This transcript hasn’t been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we’ll be sure to fix them.” “You want a room for 150 people? Is that correct?” “Yes that’s correct,” I said. “150 people.” And then I put down the phone. That was the booking I was making for our first ever Psychotactics workshop in the US. And I did some quick calculations. I had watched other marketers fill up rooms with 1500-2000 people. And I figured, naively of course, that I could easily manage to sign up at least a hundred and fifty folks. And if you know anything about workshops, you’ll get to know one thing quickly: You don’t have a workshop unless you have a room. Because that’s the first thing a client will ask. They always ask you where you’re going to host your workshop, and ask for the dates. And those dates need to be set in stone long weeks, sometimes month in advance. But hey, it wasn’t like we weren’t prepared. We were so nervous about this event, that it was critical we planned about six months in advance. It didn’t help that I had never been to the U.S. before. It sure as heck was scary that I had an Indian passport. Now it’s not like I wasn’t already a permanent resident in New Zealand. I was, but you don’t get New Zealand citizenship for five years, and so I was stuck with the Indian passport. And the passport matters. With an NZ passport I can just jump on a plane at five minutes notice. With the Indian passport, I needed a visa. I was petrified because I was selling seats at a workshop, and wasn’t even sure I’d get a visa It’s not for want of trying. I got in touch with the American embassy a few months in advance. They didn’t process visas that much in advance, they told me. All I could do was buy my ticket, get the requisite paperwork and book an appointment to get the visa. There was only one glitch. They would let me know about the visa a week before I was due to travel. And that was only part of the “problem”… On the other front we had the issue of signing up clients for the workshop. This as you can tell, was no easy task. The price of the workshop was $1500 per person. That didn’t include any meals, stay or travel costs. If a client was to agree to come to the workshop, they’d have to fly or drive to get to Los Angeles. And it’s safe to say that you’d end up spending another $500-$750 on top of the price tag of the workshop itself. I somehow had to make this workshop too hard to miss. I had to make it enticing enough so that people would somehow decide they just had to be there. And so we did the Free 16-Week training course in advance. In case you didn’t work it out, that’s four months of training week after week (kinda of tells you how much in advance we were getting prepared). And every week we’d have an hour’s worth of teleconferences. Each of the teleconferences ha