21. I Sold 25% of My Event Before Announcing a Single Speaker | Designing Brand Experience Events

The best brand experience events sell out before anyone knows the venue. I have just started selling tickets to my event in November, and we are already over a quarter sold. I have not named a single speaker. I have not shared one detail about the day. My husband keeps reminding me of this, almost in disbelief, because on paper it makes no sense. People are buying anyway. They are not buying a line up or an agenda. They are buying their place in a room they already know they need to be in.

For a long time the advice has been the same. Make the content strong, deliver real value, send everyone home with a notebook full of things to do. The content does have to be good, I am not arguing with that. But there are so many events to choose from now, both in person and online, that strong content on its own is no longer the thing that makes someone walk out and tell a friend they have to be there next time.

What actually sets your events apart is how people feel inside them. It is the world they step into, the way they are met, the small moments they did not expect. That feeling is what they remember, and it is what they repeat to other people. So this is less of a guide to running events and more of a way of thinking about how you build a brand world that people want to be drawn into, the kind that attracts premium clients without you having to convince anyone of anything.

 

Why Strong Content Is No Longer What Sets Your Events Apart

We are in a world drowning in information. You can be taught how to write a great talk, how to structure it so it creates desire for your offer, how to sell from the stage. And yes, some people are naturally better speakers than others. But it is a skill, which means it can be learned, which means it is no longer the thing that makes you different.

What differentiates your event and your brand is how people feel connected to the content. Think about reading a really good book. You are not just absorbing information on the page, you are feeling it, and that emotional connection is what makes the story stay with you long after you have finished. Events work the same way. The content has to land to a high standard, because there is too much competition for it not to. Yet the deciding factor is the emotional texture around the content, the concept the whole day represents.

This is where most people stop short. They think a brand is the visual system, the fonts, the logo, the beautiful brand colours. All of that matters, but it is one small part. The bigger question is how people live inside your brand. How do they experience it? What are the moments where, even before they see your name or your logo, they simply know it is you?

That recognition is the real asset. It is what turns a good business event into something people describe to others as unmissable. And it is what lets you sell premium clients on an experience before you have handed over a single piece of proof. When the brand world is strong enough, the details become almost secondary, because people already trust the feeling they are going to get.

 

What To Get Clear On First When You Design a Brand Experience Event

No matter the format, whether it is an intimate mastermind, a retreat abroad or a full day business event, everything starts with the same question. What is the transformation I want people to have in that timeframe with me? Not what I want to teach them. What do I want them to feel, decide or become by the end of it.

Once that is clear, I build a concept from it and the concept is never the topic. It is not sales or marketing or content, because those things can be taught anywhere. The concept comes from looking at what is genuinely holding my clients back and what they secretly want, then designing the whole day to reflect that back to them.

The retreat I ran in Puglia, Italy is the clearest example. The women coming were already successful. They ran real businesses, some had teams, they had grown their revenue, they knew the strategy inside out. What they needed was not more strategy. They needed to stop hiding behind their client results, stop letting the work speak for them while they quietly kept their prices lower than they should be and ran offers they had outgrown. So the concept became owning the quality of their work.

I designed every part of the week around that. From the moment they arrived, a private driver collected them and brought them to the villa. I knew exactly what each woman liked to eat, down to the one who loved her herbal teas, so all of it was waiting for them. When they walked in, each had a beautiful high end beach bag I had chosen individually, with a design that represented a specific strength I saw in them. One of my clients is a holistic health coach whose energy is her whole zone of genius, and she was not seeing it in herself. Hers carried the all seeing eye, and I told her straight away that it represented her capacity and her energy, that this was her strength.

Then there was the vineyard. I chose one that produces the highest awarded wine in Italy yet makes a very limited number of bottles. They are not trying to be the biggest producer with the widest range. They told us plainly that they do not want the biggest selection, they want to be known as the best. We toured the cellars, saw the centuries of process and the minute attention to detail, and the whole experience quietly reflected back to those women exactly what they had spent the week deciding about their own work. That is what designing brand experiences around a single concept looks like in practice.

 

High End Does Not Have To Mean Stuffy

At the start of this year I ran a mastermind day in January for a group I mostly had not worked with before. I knew the timing mattered. You come into a new year full of big visions, you tell yourself this is the year you make a certain amount of money or finally do the thing, and then about four weeks in life becomes life again and the optimism starts to wane. So the concept I chose was called Head in the Clouds, because I wanted them back up at a vantage point, seeing their businesses from above, playing in possibility again rather than getting stuck in the heavy how.

I know from years of running events that the energy almost always dips around lunch. Partly because people need food, and partly because the brain goes into cognitive overload. That is the moment people either shut down because it feels uncomfortable, or they grip too tightly and start demanding the exact steps. I did not want either, not before they had opened up what they actually wanted to create.

So I booked a hotel in South Kensington that does a science themed afternoon tea, and I did not tell them. They sat down to find pipettes to make their own drinks, dry ice, smoke, cakes shaped like planets in beautiful colours, little desserts set in chocolate soil where you had to dig for chocolate dinosaur bones. It was pure play. This is a serious business event for ambitious women, and yet high end does not have to mean stuffy. The theme was possibility, so they needed to physically experience possibility, to lose themselves in it for an hour.

When we came back from that tea, that was when we went into the how. What does the plan look like, what are you committing to? One woman left that day having decided to run her own events. Since then she has hired a castle, sold it out, and is doing another one in September. That idea came from that day, but the commitment came from how she got to see herself inside an experience like that. I could coach her and ask the questions but I could not have manufactured that level of decision without the play that came first.

 

How To Design Brand Experiences That Premium Clients Immediately Recognise as Yours

My signature business event in November is only running for the second time, and last year I almost played it far too safe. I had planned it for 50 people. Then I was in Canada visiting my sister and I messaged my team to say I was doubling it, that 50 was not stretching me and was not the point. This is my event to change how women build businesses and how they think about wealth, so I could not be playing small. We went for 100, with very little time to pull it together, and I went huge with the concept. I called it: She Sets The Standard.

If the event was about women raising the standard of what they want for themselves, especially the wealth they let themselves build, then the room itself had to reflect a completely different standard back to them. I wanted every woman to sit down and feel that the next part of her story was unfolding. So on each seat was a card that read, "I have been expecting you". They turned it over to find an individual question written just for them, things like, "What would it look like if you were to own this room?" or, "What does holding the standard look like for you?". Straight away it set the tone that this was not a day of being talked at while you scribbled notes.

Everything was bespoke. The affirmation cards in their gifting bags were designed specifically for the event, not a random selection of brands you could find anywhere. Rather than a programme, I wrote a magazine. It was meant to be 25 pages and ended up closer to 40, telling the stories of the speakers, giving travel tips for women staying in London, spotlighting the brand partners, all beautifully designed to take home. The brand partners themselves were chosen because each one challenges the way their category is normally done. Verdant Alchemy with their scent range, Siren Grounds the female first coffee company, Tea and Tonic, and Not Another Ordinary Accessory who make products from apple skin that look like the finest leather. Their founders were in the room, standing up and speaking, proof in the flesh that you can challenge your category and build something successful.

 

At the very end, as everyone left, we handed out individually selected stems of flowers. A small gesture, but an unexpected one, the kind of surprise that becomes part of the brand world people remember. One client who has known me for years told me that the moment she walked in she knew it was my event, even if she had not known it was mine, because it could not have been anyone else's. That is the whole point. When the experience is unmistakably yours, premium clients recognise it instantly, and your reputation travels far beyond, oh it was a good event, to, you simply have to be in that room.

 

Key Takeaways

  • Strong content is now the baseline, not the differentiator in events. What sets brand experience events apart is how people feel connected to the content and the brand world they step into.
     

  • Start by naming the transformation you want people to have, then build a single concept that every detail reflects back, from the welcome to the gifts to the venue.
     

  • High end does not mean stuffy. Designing brand experiences with real play and surprise, like a science themed afternoon tea, can unlock the exact commitment that pure strategy never could.
     

  • Build an event that could only ever be yours, and premium clients start selling it for you. They tell other people they have to be in the room, and a quarter of the tickets go before you have announced a thing.

 

FAQ

What is a brand experience event?

A brand experience event is an event designed so that every element, from the welcome to the gifting to the venue, reflects a single concept and a feeling that could only belong to your brand. Rather than relying on content alone, it focuses on how people experience your brand in the room, the moments they did not expect, and what they feel as they arrive and leave. The aim is for attendees to recognise the event as unmistakably yours and to want to be part of that brand world again.

 

What is an example of a brand experience event?

A brand experience event is one where every detail is designed around a single concept so the day feels unmistakably like one brand. A clear example is a business mastermind day built around the concept of play and possibility, helping attendees get out of the heavy how and back into seeing what was possible in their business. Rather than a standard lunch, guests were taken to a science themed afternoon tea with pipettes to make their drinks, dry ice, planet shaped cakes and chocolate soil to dig through for hidden chocolate. Because the experience embodied the concept so well, one attendee left and went on to hire a castle and sell out her own event.

 

How do you create a brand experience event?

You start by naming the transformation you want guests to have in the time you have with them, then build a concept from what is holding them back and what they want. Every detail, the welcome, the gifts, the venue, the partners, the way people leave, should reflect that concept back to them. Strong content still matters, but the deciding factor is how connected people feel to it. When the experience could only be yours, premium clients recognise it instantly and tell others.

 

Transcript

[00:00:00] I've just started to sell the tickets for She Sets The Standard for November, and we are over 25% sold now, and I haven't given any details. My husband says, "You haven't given them the venue, you haven't given them any speakers, you haven't given them any details." People know about this event.

The Tickets That Sold Before I Shared A Single Detail

[00:00:16] It's only run once before, but people know that they need to be in this room, and that is the power of brand experience events that people want to be drawn into. Welcome to Rich Work, the podcast for established female entrepreneurs ready to turn their expertise into premium clients and consistent high ticket revenue.

[00:00:38] I'm Rachel Pearson, global brand and business strategist, skincare obsessed, and always distracted by booking the next mini break. Here, you will learn how to position like a luxury brand, attract clients who love to invest, and build wealth that lasts, so you can create the business and life you want, not someone else's version of success.

[00:00:58] This is where premium positioning and building wealth meet for women who are rewriting the rules. Let's get into it.

What A Brand World Is

This week I'm taking you behind the scenes into my slightly wild creative process of designing brand experiences. By events I mean in person events, but I also mean online events.

[00:01:21] So if you're running a masterclass, basically anywhere you want to bring a community of your ideal clients together, I'm going to focus on events to talk through how I think about this, but it is a bigger conversation. It is about how you create a brand world, a world where your brand lives, and this is something I have always talked about since I started the business, and I see other people talking about it too. It is not as though I'm standing here claiming I came up with the concept.

[00:01:56] I absolutely didn't. But because I come from a brand background, I'm not a designer, I was a brand strategist, I have always thought about doing this with my clients as well. When I say brand world, I mean how you think about what your clients are stepping into when they work with you. Not from a place of status, or that weird putting you on a pedestal thing that we can have in the online space, particularly in the coaching space, but what it feels like to be part of your work.

[00:02:29] So with my current clients, I want them to feel energised. I want them to feel like they're part of what I'm building, that it's exciting to be part of what I'm creating in my business, that they get to share in it, and that it is going to inspire and help them think creatively about their own business.

[00:02:47] And then for the premium clients who don't work with me yet but would be ideal to work with, I want to turn their heads. I want to create something they feel, something that excites them and draws them in. That is not just going to be about the way my brand looks, my beautiful brand colours. When we talk about a brand, that is often what people think about, the visual system of it, the fonts, the brand colours, the logo, the symbols. It is all important, but that is one part of a brand.

[00:03:16] What I think we're going to see become more important is how people live inside your brand world, how they feel it, how they experience it. What are those moments where, even before they see your logo or your name, they just know that it's you? It's an interesting time for me to do this episode, because I've just run one of my brand experience events.

[00:03:40] So I ran an event a few days ago, a really small mastermind event. It was 10 people, then we went into private dining. And I'm also starting to think about and plan the experience for my signature business event, which happens in November, She Sets The Standard. Not in terms of content, content is separate and there will be good content, don't worry, but more in terms of the experience. As soon as they walk in, and even before they walk into that event in November, what are they going to be anticipating?

[00:04:13] How are they going to feel that this is only an event that I could run? So I'm going to talk through a few different examples, and as with everything I do, it's not a blueprint for how to run events or how to think about creating a brand world, but I'm going to give you examples of how I think about it that may inspire you, or you might think, "This is an element I can bring into the way I work."

Start With The Transformation, Not The Information

[00:04:39] So I run a variety of different size events, and I have run events with my mastermind. So if you're a mastermind client of mine, we have a retreat. I've got one next week at the time I'm recording this episode. I've run retreats abroad. I have run one day business events. When I'm designing brand experiences, everything, no matter the format, always starts with one question for me. What is the change I want people to have that day, in that experience, in that timeframe with me?

[00:05:15] Because anybody can create information, and you don't need me to tell you that we're in a world now where there is a ton of information available. You can be taught how to create a great speech, a great speaking topic to deliver on stage, to structure it in a way that creates desire for your offer, that sells from the stage.

[00:05:39] I've done all of that before, and there's a psychology behind it. But I'm talking about something different here, because if you can be taught that, and yes, some people will be naturally better speakers than others, it is a skill. That is a skill. What is going to differentiate your event and your brand is how people feel connected to the content.

[00:06:06] It's like when you're reading a good book. There's that famous quote, "People don't remember what you said. They remember how you made them feel." When you read a story, you connect with the content. It's a feeling, an emotional connection, and that means the story then stays with you. That is how I think about running brand experience events.

[00:06:30] The content does have to be good. You cannot run events now where the content does not deliver to a high standard, because there are so many events to choose from, both offline and online. But I also think about the concept that this event represents. So I'll give you some examples.

How A Retreat In Puglia, Italy Helped My Clients Own Their Quality

[00:06:50] Whenever I run a retreat, I have a theme for it, and it's not sales or marketing or content. Those things come into it, but that's what you can teach. When I say concept, I mean when I look at the change that is going to happen on this retreat with me, I look at what is holding my clients back and, ultimately, what they desire.

[00:07:18] So when I ran my retreat in Puglia, I did a retreat in Italy at the end of last summer. At that point, I was looking at the premium clients who were coming, and I could sense this was not about them learning more strategy. They all ran successful businesses. Some of them had teams, they had increased their revenue.

[00:07:40] They knew the strategy, but this was about them really deciding to own the quality of their work. To not keep hiding behind client results and letting the clients speak for them, not really taking the credit for it, or keeping their prices lower than they should be, or running offers they had outgrown.

[00:08:06] It was going to be a week together where, from an identity perspective, they needed to acknowledge where they were letting things continue that they had outgrown, and really stand in their decision that the quality of their work is high. So I designed the retreat with that theme in mind. Even from the moment they showed up, I made sure to take care of everything, so they really felt they were being held to a different standard.

[00:08:45] From me and my team organising the private driver to pick them up and bring them to the villa, I knew exactly what every client liked to eat, like one who really loved herbal teas, so we had all of their particular special foods brought in. But more than that, it was really from the moment they walked in, knowing that I saw the qualities in them that they weren't seeing in themselves yet.

[00:09:16] One of the things I did when they first arrived was I had a beautiful, high end beach bag, and I had chosen a different design for each of them that represented something about their strength in business. So for one of my clients who is a holistic health coach, she had the all seeing eye as a pattern on the bag, because her energy is her strength.

[00:09:44] Her ability to support clients with their capacity is her absolute zone of genius, and she was not recognising that for herself. She was honouring her own energy, but she wasn't seeing how incredible it was that she could run multiple businesses, keep up her nutrition, make sure she was well hydrated and sleeping, travelling around the world, and she just did it as though it was the most normal thing in the world.

[00:10:11] So even from when she arrived, I said to her, "This represents your capacity, your energy. This is your strength." So even when I'm thinking about the gifts I choose for clients, it's about reflecting back the concept, the theme of what I know is going to change them, so that from the very beginning of that retreat they were having individual qualities reflected back to them, qualities we then built upon in the strategic work we did throughout the week.

[00:10:45] One of the other things I'd organised was a trip to a vineyard, to taste some wine, of course, but the vineyard I'd selected has the highest awarded wine in Italy, and it produces a very limited number of bottles. So this vineyard is not about creating multiple different wines that could each go into categories and probably win several awards.

[00:11:12] It is about quality over quantity. They gave us a tour at the vineyard, took us into the cellars that are hundreds and hundreds of years old, showed us their process and how minute the attention to detail was around creating these very high quality wines, and how bold it was to do that within a country like Italy, which is known for its food and its wine.

[00:11:40] But they said, "We don't want to have the biggest selection. We don't want to be known as the biggest wine producer and have all of these choices. We want to be known as the best." So even in that experience, which was towards the end of the week when we'd done the strategic work, where we went out and had a lot of fun together, the quality, and seeing a business that had been around for hundreds of years, that has evolved over time but has always focused on quality, was reflecting back to them how they could own the quality of their own work.

[00:12:20] This is a concept I carry through whenever I'm designing brand experiences for clients. It is always through this idea of the change we want to support clients with, and then I create a concept from there that feeds into experiences throughout the day, the materials I'm creating, the way clients are met, the arc of the event, the way moments are brought in.

Head In The Clouds: The Mastermind Day Designed Around Play

[00:12:43] So here's another of my brand experience events. I ran a mastermind day at the start of this year, for premium clients, the majority of whom I hadn't worked with before. Some of them had been to my event in November, but I hadn't worked with them in close proximity, and there were only about 5 clients. So I didn't know them.

[00:13:03] I didn't know them in depth. I did an intake form to get a sense of where their business was at. But I thought, right, the start of the year, this was in January, when you come out into a new year and you have all of these big visions of what the new year holds. And then you get to, this was late January when we did this event, you get to later January, and that is the point where sometimes it can start waning, the energy, the optimism you had going into the new year, where you think, "This is going to be the year.

[00:13:33] I'm going to make this much money. I'm going to do this and that." And then you get 4 weeks in, and life has kind of become life again after the excitement of Christmas. So I wanted to look at that with them, at where it had started to feel a bit heavier because you've put all this expectation on it.

[00:13:54] So we really went into this sense of play. The theme I chose, the concept, was called Head in the Clouds, because I wanted them to get back up into seeing their business from a vantage point, from outside their business, to really stay in that play and possibility, and to get back into the energy they started the year with.

[00:14:15] So that was how I structured the content. But I also know, from running plenty of brand experience events myself, and as a bit of a spoiler, or maybe a little trick I've picked up, I have always run events. I started when I was at university, I was a wedding planner, and then when I worked in marketing and went into branding, I helped organise events for big brands.

[00:14:38] I wasn't on the ground doing them, but I worked on the concepts. So big hotel brands, or music venues, getting DJs in, working with very high end luxury brands to partner with them. So I've got a lot of experience with events, and I know the key thing we need to look at is how you change the energy during the time that you have.

[00:15:00] So for Head in the Clouds, I knew I was going to ask a lot of them. They just rock up to this day with me, they've got no expectation really other than being open to it, and I was going to ask a lot of them to stay in this concept of let's think big, let's think about what's possible.

[00:15:19] I knew that as it got towards lunchtime the energy could drop. One, because you need food. Always have good food at your events. None of these sticky bread sandwiches, the white sticky bread that my kids love, but not at events. But also because your brain is going through a cognitive overload.

[00:15:38] So you've started the day and it's all exciting, and then you go in and it starts to become a bit harder, and you think, "Why can't I get this? Why is this not clicking? Why do things not really line up for me right now?" That's a time when we can easily go into either shutting down, because it just feels too uncomfortable, or really wanting to control and going into all of the how, like, "How do I do this?

[00:16:03] How does this work? What does that mean? What's the next step?" And for me, these mastermind days, these intimate experiences, these strategy days, they're not really where you do the how. Not with me anyway, because we can get into tactics. That is easy to get into once you have got into the right head space of what it is you want to create.

[00:16:30] Where are you being complacent in what you're doing now? Let's open it up. So I knew that I needed, as we got to lunch, to make it fun again, to let them play and not get too worried about, "But how is this going to work out for me?" The venue I hosted this at was a hotel in South Kensington in London, where I knew they did an afternoon tea, but it's science themed, so it was all experiments.

[00:16:56] So we went through, and I didn't tell them about this, but we went through to have afternoon tea, and as soon as they sat down there were pipettes to make their drinks. There was dry ice. There was smoke. When they brought the cakes, they were all planet shapes, beautiful colours, super fun little desserts that were in chocolate soil, where you had to dig for fossils to find chocolate dinosaur bones.

[00:17:21] And this is a high end business event, but high end does not mean stuffy. For this theme, where it was about them playing in possibility, they needed to experience it as well, and to just lose themselves in it. And when we came back from that afternoon tea was when we then went into the how.

[00:17:41] "Okay, what does the plan look like? What is it you're going to commit to?" And from that day, and I'm just thinking of one client, she decided she wants to launch an event. She wanted to run her own events, and since then she has hired a castle. She sold out that event. She's doing another one in September, and that idea came from that day.

[00:18:01] That commitment came from that day, but it would not have come from the day if I hadn't helped her play. And that's not just, I can't tell her to do that. I can show her, and ask questions, and coach her to think about it, but that level of commitment to go out and decide also comes from how you see yourself in experiences like that.

How Designing Brand Experiences Shaped My Event She Sets The Standard

[00:18:27] And then my signature business event, the one day business event I host in November. It's only the second time we're doing it, the first year was last year, and I was ballsy, I'll tell you, because I'd had it set at 50 people, and in July I said, "No, this is..." No, maybe it was later than July.

[00:18:47] I think August. I messaged my team. I was in Canada visiting my sister, and I messaged them and said, "I'm playing way too small with this. I'm doubling it." I know I can sell the tickets for 50. It's not stretching me. It's not what I'm here to do. Not just for me, but this is my business event to have an impact on how women build businesses, and also how they think about wealth.

[00:19:07] I cannot play small in that. So I doubled the event. We went for 100, and we had very little time to then get everything in place. I just went huge with the concept, and I called it She Sets The Standard. I hadn't named it up until that point. And I thought, "Right, Rachel, if you're going to run an event about women seeing the standard of what they want for themselves, especially in the wealth they can build, I want to help women see that."

[00:19:35] I have to create an event that reflects back a completely different level of standard to them in that room, where they walk in and feel like something massive is going to happen, but they don't know what is going to take place. So I really thought about telling the story of every woman in that space.

[00:20:01] I wanted every woman to sit down at her seat and feel like the next part of her story was unfolding. So when they sat down, they had a card that said, "I've been expecting you." Then you turned it over, and each one had an individual question on it, things like, "What would it look like if you were to own this room?"

[00:20:25] Or, "What does holding the standard look like for you?" So they had a question straight away, which set the tone for what the day was going to be. It was like, oh, everybody's got different ones here. This is speaking directly to me. What do I believe about this? This is not a day where you sit there and get talked at and talked at and are expected to make notebooks full of notes.

[00:20:47] I wanted them to be really present in the room, so they had the card as soon as they got there. Then they had a set of affirmation cards that were bespoke designed, everything was bespoke, as part of their gifting bag. So these were not gift bags with randomly selected brands in them. They were unique pieces.

[00:21:10] You can't get this anywhere else. These were not mass produced standard items. They were designed specifically for the event. We then created a magazine. Other events have programmes. I thought, "I want every woman to see herself, to see her story in this magazine." So I wrote the magazine. It was meant to be 25 pages.

[00:21:30] I think in the end it was about 40, maybe more, and it told the stories of the speakers we had there. It was a hybrid between an event magazine and something more, because we also gave them travel tips for if they were in London for a few days. We did spotlights on our brand partners, and it was a beautifully designed magazine for them to take home, right?

[00:21:51] That became part of being in this space. And then down to the partners I chose to work with for the event, they all represented a standard of business being run well. So the brand partners, and I was incredibly lucky that they all came on board, were businesses challenging the way their category was being done, and they were in the room.

[00:22:18] So the founders of the businesses were in the room that day, and it was so powerful to hear from them. We had Verdant Alchemy, which is an incredible bath bomb and scent range. They have different products, incredible ingredients and smells, and the quality of ingredients used in these products is insane.

[00:22:39] So Vivienne was in the room, the founder, and she was able to stand up and speak about how important it was for her to be in rooms like this, to build her business and have her vision. We then had Siren Grounds, which is a female first coffee company, coffee developed for women, run by Samana Duran, and she was in the room, she was on the panel.

[00:23:01] We had Tea and Tonic, and we also had Not Another Ordinary Accessory, which creates products from apple skin, so it is sustainable and environmentally friendly, but also incredibly beautiful products. You would look at them and just think they are the highest quality leather, beautiful colours. So the brand partnerships I had in place were also there to show in the room that you can challenge the category you're in.

[00:23:31] You can think differently and run incredibly successful businesses. You can go out and do something you don't see there, but just because you don't see it already does not mean you shouldn't do it. So the brand partners really represented that. And then when everybody left, we gave out flowers at the end of the day, because as a woman, I like to buy myself flowers, and I ran this event for women in business.

[00:23:58] They'd had a whole day of hearing from incredible women, learning, seeing strategy, hearing from women who had sold and exited businesses for 9 figures, and I wanted them to feel as they left that they were getting to indulge themselves, like they got a rose. Yes, it's a small gesture, but they were individually selected stems that they got as they left, and it's that element of surprise.

Why Brand Experience Events Are The Future For Premium Clients

[00:24:29] It's that element of not expecting it, and this is what I mean about brand worlds. Because if you're sitting there thinking, "I can't create all of that stuff Rachel's talking about, I'm not that creative," every person who runs a business is creative. Creativity is not about being an artist. It is about being able to create concepts like the ones I've talked about.

[00:24:48] What I've shared with you are brand experience events that only I can create, because they bring in my brand. My brand represents innovation. My brand represents creativity. I work in a deep way. I want my clients to feel that I see where they are playing it safe, no matter whether you're in a room with me and 100 or 150 people, like at She Sets The Standard, or you're in a room with me and there are 5 of us.

[00:25:18] So when I'm creating these concepts, yes, it's about the change I want my premium clients to experience during the day, but I'm not just looking at the information I create, or how I talk about it, or whether my framework is right, or whether what I say is going to be enough, or whether they're going to leave with something.

[00:25:36] I'm also thinking about what it is, when they walk out of here, that's going to make them say, "Go to Rachel Pearson's event." How are they going to describe it to somebody else? Because that's how my brand gets known. That is how my reputation goes beyond, "Oh yeah, it's a good business event," to, "You have to be in this room."

[00:25:55] I've just started to sell the tickets for She Sets The Standard for November, and we're over 25% sold now, and I haven't given any details. My husband says, "You haven't given them the venue, you haven't given them any speakers, you haven't given them any details." People know about this event.

[00:26:12] It's only run once before, but people know they need to be in this room, and that is the power of brand experience events that people want to be drawn into. One of my clients, who I worked with for a long time, I'm not working with her at the moment, but we worked together for a long time, she said, when she came to She Sets The Standard, "I knew this was your event even if I didn't know it was you, because as soon as I walked in, it was your event, and it couldn't have been anybody else's."

[00:26:40] And this is what I really think we're going to see with events moving forward. There are so many different events to choose from, and there are so many people, if we go outside of events, so many people now to learn from, to engage with, to experience, to hear from, to go to their talks.

[00:27:00] Why is it that they want to experience their time with you? What is going to make them walk away and tell somebody else, "Any time you see her, or an event from her comes up, you just have to be in that room"? That is what I think we're going to see events move to. There are certainly ways you can create highly commercial brand experience events, and I'm always thinking about how I make commercial sense, because you can absolutely run the money into the ground running events.

[00:27:29] It's a lot. There are ways of structuring it, through sponsorship or through how you do your ticket sales, that mean you will make revenue even before you sell tickets.

How To Bring A Brand World Into Your Own Events

[00:27:51] But it's also, for me, about designing brand experiences that only you can own from your brand, events that can only exist because they represent your brand. And I think we're going to see this more and more, with people bringing much more of their own way of doing things into their events. I think we're going to see mixtures of exercise and business, of arts and business, more experiential things, and I love it. I'm really here for it.

[00:28:16] But you have to think about what it is that you do. You work with your premium clients now, what is it they love coming to you for? Why do they stay in your brand world? Why do they want to continue to be part of it? What is exciting for them? How can you bring that more into how you're running events and how you're communicating your brand out to the world? So that is how I think about creating brand experience events, and that's just giving you a few examples.

[00:28:37] There are many, many more events I could talk about. But if you're feeling like you want to experience it yourself, then She Sets The Standard is running in London on Friday the 13th. We're going to make it lucky. Friday the 13th of November 2026. We're yet to announce the speakers, but they are going to be incredible.

[00:28:55] Last year we had Debbie Wascow, who has just been acknowledged with a CBE in the last week for her contribution to female entrepreneurship. We had an incredible panel. And this year, my vision is to take this event to be the premium business event in Europe. So, as you can imagine, I'm going to be taking it up a level.

[00:29:16] So if you're interested, the link to She Sets The Standard is in the show notes. The tickets are going quickly, and it's going to be a full day where you will meet new people and have opportunities to network. One lady who came last year attributed over £60,000 of new business to coming out of that event, not from who she met in the room, but through strategies and ways of thinking she implemented from that space.

[00:29:41] So if you'd like to come along, I'd absolutely love to see you there, and you can get your ticket through the link in the show notes. Until next week, I'm Rachel Pearson, and this is Rich Work. Thanks for tuning in to Rich Work. I'd love it if you left a review, it helps other women to find us. In the meantime, follow me on Instagram, @rachelpearson.co, for a different take on premium positioning, one that's not about fitting a box.

[00:30:08] See you next week.