EP. 46- SPECIAL: GURU Conference 23 Behind the Scenes!

Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. Also, dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.

And I am here with the director of Guru Events, the one, the only, Stanya. Antoine. How are you?

Hello.

Hello. Where's the energy, Stanja? Are you fired up?

Oh, no, the energy here. I'm actually super excited to be on the podcast because it's another thing I have not done. So this is going to be fun. Excited.

Oh, watch out. Stanya's joining the podcast world.

So for those of you who have no idea what's going on right now and you have no idea what Guru Conference is, let me give you a little background and then we'll jump into the chaos. So I do two things for a living. I have an agency called Alchemedia, but then I also have this events business and media business.

And we put on all these crazy events and stuff. And one of the events is called Guru on Friends and it is the world's largest virtual email marketing event.

It just happened in November and we had 20,000 marketers and it was two days, all virtual. We had people like Martha Stewart and Ann Hanley and Amy Porterfield all speaking. We had just all sorts of chaos there.

And Stanya, who's here with us, is in charge of it all. It's all her fault, right?

Yes, all my fault.

And today we want to take you through what went on behind the scenes, trying to organize it all, what worked, what didn't work.

And if you ever try to put on any type of event in person, a webinar, a big conference, anything, hopefully you'll appreciate all the chaos that went into trying to make this happen. Because organizing 20,000 marketers and 30 sessions and people from all 90 countries, it was a lot, but it was great. You did a great job.

The whole team did a great job. What's your vibe on it all?

I think it's like you said, it's a heavy lift, but it's very fun. I mean, when you put out the call of, like, who wants to do this? I was instantly like, me. Let's jump into a fun project. So I'm excited.

First off, second year was awesome. I mean, I thought we couldn't top the first year, but I honestly feel like we did. Don't want to, like, toot our own.

Horn, but, yes, we did.

Yeah, let's get into it. It's gonna be fun.

We did. So.

So, first off, I'll give a rundown on this first topic, which was our big keynote this year was Martha Stewart. What do you think of Martha?

Martha was amazing. Like, I mean, she was so much fun. Had such great tips. I thought that was a great, great keynote.

Martha was amazing. So I got to spend a little time with Martha separate from the actual session that we did. And I will tell you, behind the scenes, she's so cool.

Just so engaging, fun, talking about silly stuff. I mean, what you see is literally what you get with her.

I was laughing so hard because we had a prelim call with her team and her, and they were talking about where she was going to do her session, where the video is, what we were going to see. And so I remember being on the call, they go, how do you feel about Martha's miniature donkeys being in the background on the video?

I go, I feel great about that. That sounds like a great idea. No one's ever asked me if they have miniature donkeys walking in the background of the video.

And I was just like, what is going on? Like, right.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting there thinking, I'm excited you said yes. Like, this is gonna be awesome. Put the donkeys in the background.

Oh, my God. At no time would I say, no Martha about anything. I mean, there's a zero percent chance of that. And we did try to get Snoop to come.

That did not work out. So I don't want people to think that we didn't try. We definitely tried, which that would have been epic, but it was amazing. So Martha was a win.

So besides from Martha, we did something. I want you to give the breakdown on this. We try to come up with things to.

You know, people think virtual events stink, and they always stink because people make them boring. And they try to copy, you know, like, webinar formats which is so lame.

So we try to do these brainstorming sessions on what would be fun to add to the virtual event. So one of the ideas was, let's do the Hot Ones. The Chicken wing challenge live. And we did it. So, Sonia, break down. What? What was it? What did we do?

How did it go? All of it.

Yes. So I have to add with our team. No idea is too crazy. And there was a lot of, oh, maybe you all should not do this. But of course I was game.

Jay was game. I think if you haven't watched Hot Ones, what it is, is people get a set of chicken wings, and then they have an insane set of sauces.

I think on Hot ones, it's like 10. But of course, we needed to amp it up. But the host is also speaking to someone while eating the wings and having the hot sauce with their guests.

So we're like, how do we do this? For guru, we had three of the hottest sauces. All of them were, like, 10 out of tens on the Scoville scale. They were ridiculously hot.

I forgot, like, the actual millions of Scovilles in heat.

Well, no, I do know. So I think that a jalapeno is, like 30,000 on the Scoville rating. Okay. That's what I think it is.

And each one of our three sauces was at least 2 million on the Scoville rating. That's what we used.

Okay, back to your story plus.

So I'm telling you, like, when you read the description on these sauces, we're like, as soon as they say something insane, that's how you know it's going to be ridiculously hot. I think part of the challenge was finding someone who was willing to, like, do this with me and Jay.

Yes, that's true. That's true. Yeah. Oh, so. So I'll tell you how we got Nancy Harhut. So if you don't know Nancy Harutt, she's amazing.

And she agreed to do the chicken wing challenge. So here's how we got Nancy to do it. I was at a conference, and I saw Nancy. I go, nancy, hey, aren't you a foodie?

Because I always hear posting, like, about food on her, like, social media. I'm like, aren't you a food? She goes, oh, I love food. I'm like, oh, I have the best idea.

We're going to do this, like, food tasting thing during Guru conference. Would you mind doing it live? And she's like, oh, yeah, it sounds great. I'm in. Whatever. She had no idea what she agreed to, which was amazing.

And I thought all the pre calls because, you know, we're having to coordinate this, it's a virtual event.

So we're thinking, how do we get Nancy some chicken wings, how do we get her some sauce and make sure we're all on screen at the same time making this happen. But I was scared when we gave her all the details. She was not going to want to do it. But Nancy was game, she was good for it and it was awesome.

Yeah, we had a number of very well known people in the industry bail, like last minute bail, because you're like, no. They got scared. And by the way, justifiably so. Because when we did it, I got violently ill, like seriously ill, which I blame you, Sonia.

It was your fault. It really was.

I was ready, I had my ice cream.

I was like, mind you, just to let everyone know who didn't see it, what we did, it's like we all took our wing, added the sauce, all took a bite of the wing. So you make sure you, like were sufficiently tortured. And then I would ask the question.

Yeah, I don't remember saying anything intelligent responding to your questions. I just remember it was horribly hot during.

But that night after the conference was over, I, like, literally didn't see my family because I was missing in action. Like, I was nowhere to be seen for hours. It was rough, like, rough. It was wild. Anyway, TMI and all that. Oh, worthy. Oh, my God.

I mean, the last part of that challenge was great where we took like all the sauces, put them all on one wing and then ate it up.

It was so nasty. So let's go on to some other stuff. So what did we do?

The number one thing that we did that I think really annoyed people, we got in a lot of heat on this was we decided, how do you get thousands of people to show up to a virtual conference? How do you really do it? And we said, you know what? We're going to have no on demand, right? No on demand.

There's no way to go back and watch any of it. And the good news was we had about a 74% show up rate, which is massive for what we did at the scale that we did it.

We got in hundreds of very aggressive emails about how wrong it was that we had no on demand. Some of the emails were wrong.

Yeah. Some of the emails were like, really insane. Like, oh, how could you do this to us?

Yeah, like, we're terrible people.

But I know people were pissed, but I do feel like it was the right way to go.

Just because if it was a live event and I, and this was the thinking internally, you would be doing everything you can to like craft your perfect agenda. I've been to life conferences, you know, you're going to miss out on some things in person you want to see, but you choose wisely.

So I, I think having that thinking also helped to boost the show up rate because people knew, okay, these were the only two days we were going to get this.

Yeah. And so, I mean, conference is free, right? So we were kind of like, listen, it's our call. You're not paying for it, so it's our call.

That doesn't make it right. It doesn't create a great vibe for those people. But what Sonya said is spot on. We wanted to treat this like it's a live in person event.

I'm not saying this is what we're doing, but we're trying to figure out is there a middle ground? And one idea that we had is you go to the event, you're at least at the event for one hour live.

And as soon as you're at the event for at least one hour live, it triggers an automated email that gets you the on demand link. So like almost like you have to earn the on demand availability and be there at least live or something. I don't know. We're talking about that.

What do you think of that idea?

I like the idea because personally I like the idea of pushing you onto the platform. You're trying not to go on there because I mean, when people see things are on demand, it tends to be like permission in your head to skip the live.

And we're trying not to happen. So I like that idea. We're tossing around a bunch of ideas, but we're thinking of you all. For sure.

We're trying, we'll get there. So yeah, we are trying for sure. I mean there was plenty of stuff that did work, right?

We had amazing swag giveaways, we played insane music, our Spotify playlist. I think there's now over 300 people that follow that playlist. I mean like a thousand songs got added to it by everybody that attended.

It was, all of that was bananas. But let's talk about some stuff that was like, it didn't go great. We do a Session called Guru After Dark.

We did it first year, we did it this year, and Guru After Dark is after.

On the first day, after all the sessions end, we do a special session where we literally only talk about reality tv, because a lot of us watch garbage tv. Like, right now, I'm watching the Paris Hilton reality show on Peacock or whatever. It's on, and it's great and terrible all at the same time.

Anyway, so this year, we decided to go way deep. And we had two of them, cast members from Love is blind 4. We had. Zach and Bliss were married. We had them on, and I think it was a dud.

What did you think?

You know, I loved it because I was kind of fangirling. Not gonna lie. I've loved and watched every season of Love is Blind, and they're like, my favorite couple so far.

I wish they would have announced that she was pregnant. That would have been wild. But I don't know.

It was so. It was so, like, I felt so forced. Like, they were so nice. I love them. But, like, they.

They were on the screen, and we were like, bring people on and be like, hey, do you like each other or is that fake? I don't know. It was so weird. It felt weird to me.

I don't know if I do think some people got shy also when they got on the screen. And it's like, maybe they weren't prepared for their questions.

Meaning, like, some of our attendees that got on there, and they were just like, oh, my God, what do I say?

We had one of our people come on, and he goes, hi. And then we brought him on screen. We didn't know what they were going to ask because, hi, I don't know who you are, and I don't watch your show.

And then he went on to ask question. I'm like, what is going on right now? It was adequate.

I wanted to sink into my pink hoodie at that moment.

Yeah, right. Oh, my God, it was so bad.

So let's talk about other things that went sideways, because, you know, everybody always talks, like when they do podcasts and stuff, like, oh, we're great. This is great. Everything works great. No, a lot of stuff doesn't go according to plan. So I'll give you another example. Right?

There's so many things that there's always something.

It may seem like all buttoned up, but it's like controlled chaos in the background.

Absolutely. So before every big session, we had an email, automated trigger go out saying, coming up soon. You know, Martha Stewart speaking.

Be there in 15 minutes or this person speaking or the chicken wing challenge happen, go. And we'd have these automated email triggers happen. Now keep in mind this is the world's largest virtual email marketing event. That's what it is.

So we had Ann with Ann Hanley, who's amazing from marketing profs, her keynote was coming up and her email trigger about her session went out like a half an hour into her session. Oh, it was so bad. It was so bad that your fault. Was that your fault?

That was not my fault. I'm going to tell you right now, I have these emails scheduled down to the minute.

So I'm looking at my phone and I'm like, I haven't seen this go off yet. So I'm freaking out. But you can't help. Sometimes technology doesn't listen to you. That's, that's what I'll say.

And you have to be able to roll with the punches.

That doesn't mean don't have your triggered emails because I mean if there's any way you're going to get people onto your platform, it's by reminding them that important things are coming. And a big thing that was coming up on the, on the conference.

Oh, I will tell you right now, you will not have a successful event webinar or whatever if you're not. If you don't have the stomach to send out a lot of emails to your database promoting it, reminding people, telling people it's about to start.

You need to drill that database or else you will fail. That is the number one tactic that we use to get our show up rate as high as possible. Right.

Wouldn't you say without email we would be dead in the water.

Yeah, I completely agree. Because it's. The show is top of mind to you and your team. It's not top of mind forever.

I mean, I'm sure we have some super fans who are like, oh yeah, I'm going to be there. But you have to remind people that they signed up for this and that they should be there.

Yeah. The last big fail which we are working on, we do have a plan is the overall, the, the Guru Conference social media game is weak. Weak. Right.

I mean we have none. Right. It's.

I completely agree.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I'll tell you what we have and what we're going to do.

So we have a LinkedIn page which is Guru Events, Guru Space Events, you can go follow that and we do some minimal posting there. But we have like no presence on any other social media platform for Guru Conference or any of it. But we're changing all that.

So now we have a whole new plan and rolling out in January, we're going to have an awesome new Instagram page and we're going to have such cool, fun videos and content every single day. Same thing on LinkedIn. Those are going to be. Our two primary channels are LinkedIn and Instagram.

Instagram is going to be at Guru Media Hub and we'll send it out once we launch it. And the reason we're going at those two is we looked at Tick Tock, we looked at threads, we looked at X.

And in my opinion, it's very hard to do every platform great. So we decided we're gonna try to do two platforms great because our social media game stunk.

Yeah. And I mean, the other thing that I will say does not work for us is going quiet.

We get all this engagement and everyone is so hype on Guru and then we go quiet. So we're trying not to go dark.

Yeah. You know, something that we've. Everyone keeps suggesting to us, but I'm bored. I wonder what you think. We haven't talked about this.

Everyone's like, you guys should have a slack channel and everyone should talk or whatever. And I'll tell you why I'm not for it. And that doesn't make it right is that I feel like those community, like, things, they start out hot.

Like, everyone's like talking for like a week, two weeks, three weeks. Now fast forward, it's two months later and it's like a ghost town and it gets weird. And that's not a vibe, it's just weird.

So I'm like, very hesitant about any of that. What do you think about.

I agree with you. We wouldn't want to kill the vibe that we've already created. Our brand is always being different, being fun. The mood is up.

Like, I wouldn't want to create a ghost town and lose the fun aspect.

Oh, by the way, anybody that's listening, if you're one of the people that was signed up to is getting a hoodie, it is coming. I swear the hoodies are coming. We did this whole big hoodie promotion and in a great way.

We are, like, incompetent when it comes to mass sending of hoodies. But now we have a plan for the Future. But the hoodies are being shipped out literally, like, this week.

So hopefully around New Year's or right thereafter, everyone get their hoodies. So thank you for being patient. That was wild.

Can I say that was an unexpected hit, though, because, like, we throw all these ideas on the board and then you don't expect things to be, like, as fire as they are. People don't realize it. We have two different hoodies. We have our plain events gray hoodie, and then we originally made just 10 of the pink ones.

Right.

Not expecting people to, like, freak out. And everybody wants one, mind you. I was like, this thing is gorgeous. I want one.

Right.

But did you expect people during the conference when we're like, hey, do this and you'll get this hoodie that they would.

00. I definitely didn't expect. Because we ordered 100, right? Originally we ordered a hundred leading into it.

And I'll also put another teaser out there, which we're not gonna announce what it is, but we decided every year now at Guru Conference, we're going to have an awesome theme for the conference. We're going to change it every year. We think that's gonna be super fun. We call dress up and we have stuff to do, fun stuff around.

We have the best idea for our theme for this year, but we're not announcing that until after the new year. And it's going to be so fun. So we're excited.

Can you give the people a hint?

No.

Not even the smallest.

No way.

I'm so excited about this. I want you to say, like, something so great.

And so if you and people are like, where do I get more? Go to guru conference.com you can get on our insider list. You'll be getting all that information about it.

And we can't thank everybody enough for jumping on board, being a part of this community. We really feel like we're all in this together and we feel like we're building something super fun. So it's awesome.

So, Sonia, what do you want to say before we wrap up?

Right.

Amazing. Well, go everyone go follow Sonya Antwan on LinkedIn.

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