How to Guide for Giving Workshops for Profit

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Step 1

Start with the skeleton timeframe. You may not yet know exactly what will be included when giving workshops precisely, but you do know it has to start, stop, and have breaks every 1 ½ hours, plus a lunch break if it’s an all day workshop. Write down your start time, end time, and the chunks of time between breaks you have to conduct the workshop uninterrupted. If you don’t even know this part yet, just estimate. If needed, see what other similar workshop’s timeframes are.
Step 2

Fill in the time chunks. Start with a rough draft of what you think the content could be to fill in the allotted chunk (or chunks) of time. Then, for every one hour of workshop, choose an estimated 15 minutes of something that could be cut if it had to without destroying the workshop. Then create on the side, an estimated 15 minutes of something that could be added but wouldn’t destroy the workshop if left out. When giving workshops, you want to be covered if things go faster or slower than planned.
Step 3

Choose a proper title. Avoid a romance title that doesn’t tell what the workshop is or what its benefits are (“The Wings Shall Forever Light the Way”) unless it’s a play off a national household term that will draw students. Avoid using your own name in the title unless you’re a popular household term (Joe Smith Workshops). Title the workshop with the exact targeted benefits the workshop attendees will receive. (Time Management for CEOs).
Step 4

Practice before charging, and begin promotion at this stage. If possible, put on a free workshop for friends and family, or offer a free workshop for a local charity or as a one-time tithe to a senior citizen or low income group. When there is less pressure because you’re not taking people’s money, you can feel more relaxed while you build up confidence, and not feel so bad that there really were first time quirks that you just can’t see in the planning stage that were worked out during the practices. But, make the practices seem real. Set a specific time, location, and workshop timeline that must be followed. Learn from what went wrong, but also begin promotion for giving workshops for pay by taking note of what went right, and using that in your future promotion. Did people leave satisfied? Did they contact you afterwords about what a difference it made?
Step 5

Start small when it’s time to start giving workshops for profit. Once you’re ready to charge for giving workshops, consider starting small as one more step towards building a solid foundation beneath you and gaining even more material for promotion. Examples include contacting your local parks and recreation, local food co-op, or local hospital (many give wellness and self-improvement classes to the public), senior citizen center or continuing education department of your closest community college. The pay for these can be somewhat low, but you will get your first paycheck and they’ll do much of the promotion for you, which is important when you’re first starting out. Ask how they handle money, if they choose the fee and give you a percentage, or if you simply charge your own fee and collect the money yourself. You may find food co-ops are happy to have someone give workshops on cooking, soy candle-making, and gardening. The parks and recreation might like workshops on beginning quilting, fitness, rock collecting, yoga, basketball skills, and public speaking. Hospitals sometimes seek those who are experienced at giving workshops on how to do relaxation techniques, yoga, desk-side fitness and eating more nutritionally. Senior citizen centers might want workshops on folk arts, flower arranging and creative writing. Continuing education organizations may need workshops on time management, public speaking, beginning dance or workshops on business plans. At these, also hand out questionnaires for further improvement and to get promotional testimonials.
Step 6

Promote and Grow: Now you have a solid foundation, testimonials, and serious professional experience on giving workshops and are ready to start charging your own top-dollar fees or to be hired by larger well-paying entities to put on well-received workshops. You’ll need a web presence and possibly printed brochures and business cards. Your online and printed promotion needs to list the benefits that future workshop students will gain. Make sure this list is the minimum you know you can fit in for sure, something that should already be worked out from your practice and starting small – don’t get caught promising too much that can’t be delivered if students ask more questions than planned or that has to be crunched or makes the workshop go overtime. It should contain little samplers of what “goes right” at your workshops (such as that people leave excited or with a finished product they’re proud of) and actual testimonials written by past attendees, along with obvious things like workshop dates, fees, payment methods and your qualifications. If you don’t yet know how you’ll do your website, the Resources below takes you to another ehow article that shows you many options from do-it-yourself for free (without scam free hosting sites) to making the website itself both promote your workshops and simultaneously being another serious source of income on its own (from a web design course even used by colleges and the military). If you grow (or even start out) to the point of needing a business license, a business name, and wanting a solid business plan, the Resources leads to an article that shows where you can get legitimate and free help customized for your business of giving workshops.

Comments

FrazzledNanny said

on 4/20/2009 This is something my sister and I thought about doing. Thanks for the helpful and informative article on giving workshops for profit. It's greatly appreciated. 5*