51. Building An Incredible Event For All Ages

In the words of Plato, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation.” As meeting planners and speakers, it can be easy to focus on the numbers, the data, filling the seats, getting the slide deck right, and all of the other little details we tend to worry about.] As important as these things are, we must not get distracted from our main goal.  Creating a great experience for the attendees. In our industry we are all creators, creators of moments, creators of experiences, creators of breakthrough.  This is a concept that today’s guest fully understands and brings into every aspect of his business and events.  Chad Collins is the CEO of Collins Commerce Inc, an inventor, author, speaker, active philanthropist, and staunch LEGO fanatic. His event production company produces nationally acclaimed family events that include Brick Fest Live, a LEGO Fan Experience, Comic-Con for Kids, and Minefaire, an Official MINECRAFT Community Event.  In today’s episode, you’ll learn how to upgrade your business and next event with imagination, creativity, and innovation.   Here’s what we cover: How you can work with existing communities of fans to build events with HUGE brands How to handle large volumes of virtual attendees How Chad sold 20K tickets for his FIRST ever event How to create awareness in a marketplace a huge brand How they leveraged YouTube to generate 12M video views What to do while you are rescheduling & postponing events  How to start over-delivering to your audience now Leveraging Digital Assets  The winning strategy for selling tickets first-time event How group platforms build trust with your audience  How to break into the event business with no experience A fresh perspective on what success looks like for your audience How text message marketing generated 80% more sales during COVID Chad’s upcoming events you can participate in! And much more!   LINKS: Connect with Chad: www.chadevancollins.com www.dailydealtext.com Brickfestlive.com textsummit.com  Minefaire.com  Comicconforkids.com Join the Facebook group LinkedIn Instagram   Influential Speakers in Chad’s life:  The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss:  how to unlock outsourcing and hiring the right types of people.  Launch by Jeff Walker Ask by Ryan Levesque   Connect with Blair: [email protected]    Connect with us: Facebook: ​​www.facebook.com/advanceyourreach Website:​​ advanceyourreach.com Email​: ​[email protected]   Episode Minute By Minute: 0:02 What to expect today 3:18 Get to know Chad 4:40 How Chad’s journey with events began 5:57 How BrickFest began 13:25 How Chad collaborated with huge brands for his event 20:00 How Chad built an event with 10,000 people 24:08 How COVID affected Chad 28:51 How text message marketing changed everything for Chad 32:08 How Chad is creating virtual family events 36:27 How Chad recruits speakers that will attract kids and parents 41:24 The books that changed Chad’s life 43:55 The speaker that blew Chad away 46:24 Closing thoughts   More About Chad: Chad Evan Collins is an American entrepreneur where he is the founder and CEO of Collins Commerce Inc. He is an inventor, author, speaker, active philanthropist, and staunch LEGO fanatic. His event production company produces nationally acclaimed family events that include Brick Fest Live, a LEGO Fan Experience, Comic Con for Kids, and Minefaire, an Official MINECRAFT Community Event. He holds the Guinness World Record for selling the most tickets to an event for a single video game: 18,000 tickets sold for Minefaire at the LA Convention Center. In addition to his event production company, Chad is also a thought leader in the digital marketing space with a focus on text message marketing where he is the host of the Text Message Marketing Summit. In addition to frequent media appearances, Chad was featured in Gary Vaynerchuk’s New York Times best-selling book “Crushing It”. His latest venture, DailyDealText, is using the power of virtual events like Family Trivia Night to build a base of raving fans by providing FREE family entertainment while simultaneously building trust and loyalty with his audience.