Sometimes when an idea strikes, it’s best to take immediate action on it. That’s why you hear of songwriters or authors keeping a notebook beside their beds so that when they wake up in the middle of the night with an idea—a lyric, a melody, a plot line—they can immediately take action in the heat of their inspiration.
I think the same goes for entrepreneurs with business ideas. A business idea can strike at any moment, and when it does, it’s a good idea to capture it.
Well, this recently happened to me. I woke up one morning with an idea, and I knew I needed to take immediate action on it, otherwise I would either forget about it, or think too much about it and not take any action on it at all. My idea was to create an event around Craft Beer. Okay, I know it doesn’t sound wildly creative or pioneering, but let me tell you how the following four weeks unfolded after the idea came to me.
Week 1: Ideas & Technical Details
The morning I got the idea for an event that was focused around craft beer, I started hashing out details of how this event could actually be interesting. Over the next couple days I came up with this:
The event will be called Beer YYC (because the event is Calgary-based), and essentially, people will come to the event and be served the same 6 beer samples. A brewmaster, or knowledgeable staff member of the pub will explain each of the beer samples to the attendees as they sip along (the type of beer, brewing process, flavours, food pairing options, etc. — kind of like a brewery tour). I will then give out prizes to the attendees for participating in social sharing (snapping photos on their phones and sharing them on Instagram), and for playing a drinking game (how fast a chosen member at each table can drink a single sample — I believe the record time was less than 3 seconds!)
Then the rest of the night would ideally be a casual and social gathering; people would chat and make new friends, order food and more drinks, etc.
After coming up with the details of the event, I knew there were a set of technical details that I needed to figure out:
- Where will the event be hosted?
- Does the venue charge for large reservations?
- What will I charge people for the event?
- How will people pay for their tickets?
- How will I notify people & get them to buy tickets?
Venue
Because Calgary is so large and spread out, I knew the event needed to be in a central location where my target audience would be able to easily access. Obviously this needed to be downtown (most of my target audience work in the downtown area, live in the inner-city area, or can easily access via Rapid Transit). I called a handful of pubs & bars in the downtown area and found out a bunch of information in order to find the ideal location. I settled on the Calgary Craft Beer Market because of the following reasons:
- Central location
- No reservation fee
- Desirable venue (over 100 beer on tap)
- Serves a “beer flight” of 6 samples (perfect!)
- Accommodating for this type of social gathering
Pricing & Profits
I decided to charge $25 per ticket, because the beer flights were $10.75 per head plus 18% gratuity and 5% GST, and I needed to make profit in order to pay for the prizes and additional expenses (which I’ll cover below). My goal was to sell 50 tickets, which would—in theory—make me $584.00 in profits.
Selling Tickets Online
I needed to pre-sell the tickets, because I was required to provide the final reservation number to the venue 72 hours in advance. I purchased the domain name BeerYYC.com with GoDaddy, and set up hosting with JustHost then quickly set up a WordPress website with JustHost’s 1-Click WordPress Install feature. I purchased and installed a premium WordPress theme called ThemeTick that allowed me to sell tickets online (it even came with a free iPhone app that allowed me to check people in when they arrived at the event). Once people purchased tickets online, the money would immediately be deposited in my PayPal account. PayPal charges a small percentage (3% – 5%) per transaction, so I needed to account for those expenses as well.
Week 2: Launch & Selling Tickets!
By week 2, I had a business model, a venue booked, a live website, and a Facebook Event ready to launch. In a matter of days, I realized how committed I was to this idea — before I even had time to think if this was actually going to work or not. I decided that if I thought too much about it, or succumbed to the fear of failure (believe me, I definitely had my moments of doubt), I would just give up and not take the risk at all.
Then came time to get the word out, so I invited all of my Facebook friends who were located in the Calgary area to the Facebook Event and encouraged them to invite friends as well. In a matter of hours I had handfuls of people RSVPing “yes”. It was exciting!
Week 3: Crunch Time & The Final Numbers
By this point I was getting incredibly nervous, because despite the fact that within a few hours, I had over 25 people RSVPing “yes” and 15 or more RSVPing “maybe”, I had only seen a single ticket sale by the beginning of the third week — the last week for ticket sales.
When I launched, I made the decision to give people 2 weeks to purchase their tickets—I thought this was long enough so as to not pressure people into purchasing on the spot, and to also accommodate the people who wanted to wait for payday, etc. However, this decision backfired and did not turn out the way I had planned (I’ll tell you exactly why in a moment). With only one week left until I needed to end ticket sales, I started posting daily reminders on the Beer YYC Facebook Event and the Beer YYC Facebook Page to remind people how many days were left to purchase their tickets. I finally started to see a handful of ticket sales coming in, but nowhere near my goal of 50 people. In the last few days, I directly messaged the people on Facebook who RSVPd “yes” but still hadn’t purchased their tickets, which ended up getting me a few more ticket sales.
That’s when I realized my theory of giving everyone a long time to buy tickets was a bad idea — the responses I got to the direct messages went something like, “I totally forgot! Thanks for reminding me,” and “I thought I’d missed it! Can I still get my tickets?”. In hindsight, I realize that I should have given everyone a small window to purchase their tickets because everyone was initially excited, had Beer YYC on their minds and therefore would have been more willing to secure their spot right away—a healthy pressure to purchase. Instead, 98% of the interested people thought that because the event was 3 weeks away, they could delay buying their ticket until later. In fact, I had about 5 or 6 people directly messaging me after ticket sales ended asking if they could still buy their tickets, or bring their friends. Unfortunately, they missed the deadline.
My mistake.
However, I still ended up being pleased with the final numbers—in the end, 18 tickets were sold! I know I didn’t reach my goal of 50 people, but it was far better than a party for 2 🙂
Final Numbers Breakdown
18 people at $25 a ticket = $450 in revenue.
My expenses included:
- Beer Flights ($193.50)
- Gratuity ($34.83)
- GST ($12.53)
- PayPal Fees ($22)
- Prizes ($20)
- Food for me — fish tacos…so good ($12)
- Pint of IPA for me ($8)
- Transit to & from venue ($6)
- Website Domain Name ($1.15)
- ThemeTick WordPress Theme ($53.70)
Revenue ($450) – Expenses ($363.71)
Total Profit: $86.29
Getting paid $86 to drink beer, eat tacos and play drinking games with a bunch of fun people in downtown Calgary? Not bad! The domain name & WordPress theme were one-time expenses, so if I were to plan another Beer YYC event (which I hope to do in the near future), these expenses would not be included, since they’ve already been paid for.
The Event: Beer YYC
Tuesday came and I arrived early to find out where we were to be seated, and also to have a pint of a good IPA. Shortly after, everyone started rolling in. We all got cozy with our 3 reserved tables at the Craft Beer Market, and had a total blast! The event went off pretty much as I’d hoped it would. Everyone had a good time, tried a bunch of different craft beer, met some new friends, played drinking games, won prizes, ordered food & drinks, and many stayed around for hours to chat!
At the end of the night, I settled up the bill, and had a chat with the manager — who encouraged me to host another Beer YYC event at Craft Beer Market. He also told me that next time I’m at the Craft Beer Market on a Friday or Saturday night with some friends and there’s a lineup outside, text him and he’d get us in — VIP access! Woohoo!
With a bit of a buzz and a smile on my face, I headed home. Beer YYC success!
The Takeaway: Successes & Failures
The biggest thing I can takeaway from this experience is: if you have a business idea that excites you, don’t think too hard about it — just jump right in! Obviously you need to sort out details and come up with a legitimate business model, but if you start questioning your judgement and ask things like “what if I fail?”, “is this even a good idea?”, or “what if nobody cares?” then you’re in for trouble and you may question yourself into giving up completely.
I knew that I could fail. Horribly. But I was okay with that, because I wanted to see if I could do this — come up with an idea, plan it and execute it…all in a single month. If it didn’t work, great! I learned something. The only way to find out was to jump in head first. While I didn’t sell as many tickets as I’d planned, and the profits I made are hardly something to brag about — I still committed, and people paid me money to organize an event they thought they would enjoy.
Which they did, and I call that a success.
What are your thoughts?
Have you ever had an idea that would involve taking a risk? What was the outcome? Did you fail? Or did you succeed? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below 🙂
Cheers!
Brad