As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m planning to do more live workshops — a lot more. This morning I checked out specific meeting rooms at two hotels on the Las Vegas Strip. There are still many details to work through, but at this point I can say it’s likely that I’ll begin offering some new workshops to take place in the Fall (Sep/Oct) and beyond.
In addition to doing more CGWs, I’d also like to develop workshops on other topics. I love doing live events, and I’ve seen how much value they provide to people. People keep asking me, “When you are going to do more workshops?” so I know there’s plenty of interest.
The most likely format for new workshops will be 3-day weekends (Friday-Sunday), but the main factor is to use the most appropriate length for the content. I prefer not to do 1-day events or shorter though because I don’t think it’s a good value for people traveling from out of town. For previous workshops, about 1/3 of attendees came from outside the USA. For many attendees the travel expenses are much more than the workshop registration, so I want to make sure they still get an excellent value for their money.
As far as pricing is concerned, I see no need to label these new workshops as “advanced” and jack up the price. It’s true that by focusing on more specific topics, we can go a lot deeper, but I don’t see why that should cost you more money. I expect the most likely price for each 3-day workshop will be $497 (same as CGW).
I wouldn’t design these new workshops in such a way that CGW was a prerequisite. So anyone can feel free to attend any workshop(s) that interest them. However, I expect there will be synergistic benefits for people who attend multiple workshops.
If you aren’t familiar with the Conscious Growth Workshops I did in 2009 and 2010, you can visit the CGW page to learn about it. We had a really great format for CGW #5 in Oct 2010, so I don’t think I’ll mess with it too much for the next one.
By the way… in case you didn’t know, CGW was mentioned in the business section of the New York Times last week. They even included a photo of one of our CGW games. You can ignore the financial figures that are attributed to me in that article though since what got published isn’t accurate. I was already planning to do more workshops before I was interviewed for this piece, but I’ll take it as a nice sign that I’m headed down the right path.
For now I intend to stick with Las Vegas for the location. Eventually I’d like to take them to other cities, but now isn’t the right time. Las Vegas has a nice advantage in that flights to and from the city tend to be less expensive than for other destinations, and there are limitless entertainment options after hours. The hotels are very reasonably priced, so the overall value is better than most other places.
The two likely locations for future workshops are the MGM Grand and the Tropicana on the Vegas Strip. Both are across the street from each other and only 5 minutes from the Vegas airport.
The Tropicana is an older hotel, but they just completed a $100M+ renovation, and the upgraded hotel looks really nice. I checked out several of their guest rooms to see what it would be like for people to stay there, and I thought the remodeled rooms were terrific. One of their suites even includes a steam room, sauna, and Jacuzzi tub. It looks like they’ll also be able to offer us a discounted group rate.
The MGM is a much larger property with thousands of guest rooms, so big that it has 3 different Starbucks. I could be happy doing workshops there as well. The downside to this location is that the conference center is literally 0.5 miles from the hotel lobby, so I’d have concerns about people getting lost or being late getting back from lunch if they underestimate the size of the place.
While I work out the details with the hotels, I’d like to get a better sense of what people want to see in terms of live workshops, so I created a simple online survey. There are only 7 questions, and it’s all multiple choice, so it should only take a few minutes to complete at most.
If you have no interest in attending live workshops in Las Vegas, there’s no need to take the survey. This is mainly intended for people who are at least semi-interested in attending future workshops. This is your opportunity to tell me which topics are most relevant to you.
On the survey there are questions to gauge your interest in several different types of workshops I’m considering offering. These are topics where (1) People have already requested a workshop, and (2) I believe I can provide significant and unique value for attendees. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it’s a good place to start.
If some workshop topics have lower demand than others, it doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t do those workshops. I’ll also use this data to decide which particular meeting rooms to book for each type of workshop, so we can hold the less popular workshops in smaller rooms.
If you have extra feedback to share, there’s a comment box at the end of the survey. If you wish to share your feedback publicly, feel free to do so in the corresponding forum discussion thread for this post.
I really appreciate your feedback on this, so thanks in advance if you decide to share your thoughts.
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