#312: Everything We Learned From Our Second In-Person Event — The Good, The Bad, and The Full Economics

About this episode

Jay Clouse and his wife Mallory discuss the insights and economics from their second in-person community retreat.

This week, my wife Mallory joins me for only her second podcast appearance ever to break down everything from The Lab Offline Powered by Circle — our second annual 2-day in-person retreat for Lab members, hosted June 8–9 at Hotel Renegade in Boise, Idaho. Mallory planned essentially everything: seating charts, venue contracts, menus, swag, run of show. She's been at it for roughly 6 months. In this episode, we talk about: The full economics of running a community retreat (we lost $8,300, which is actually an improvement) How we took breakfast from a 4.8 to an 8.1 rating — and what we'd cut to reduce costs next year What ranked #1 for attendees 2 years running, and why trivia (our favorite activity) came in 7th Whether we'll keep doing this in Boise — and what Columbus, Toronto, and doing 2 events per year might look like By the end of this episode, you will have a clear picture of what it actually costs to run a high-quality community event, what's worth paying for, and what we'd do differently. Circle (event sponsor) Hotel Renegade Boise Craft and Commerce Conference The Lab Full transcript and show notes *** TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Cold open: people were moved, tears were shed…

People in this episode

Host: Jay Clouse

Guest: Mallory

Topics covered

• community retreat
• event economics
• attendee feedback
• event planning
• in-person events

Keywords

• community event
• retreat planning
• event costs
• attendee experience
• event feedback

Sponsors

Circle

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Hotel Renegade, Craft and Commerce Conference

Places: Boise, Idaho

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