Hi @channel Totally forgot that it's February. It still feels like January 47th. How is everyone doing? What's new?
🌍 If you were at our absolutely banger London event this past fall, make sure you join 🔒[private feed] so you will be in the know for our upcoming London event this summer! More details to follow....
🤑 We're still working on plans for a fall event, and trying to raise enough sponsor funds to make this event free to as many CX leaders as we can. How can you help? If you know of event venues or spaces you think may be a good fit for us, let me know! We are looking at Chicago, SoCal, and Scottsdale for potential 2025 events.
💡 We're taking a new direction with our masterclasses this year and doing a mix of live and pre-recorded events. Have some hot takes to share? DM me or leave a note in the 🔒[private feed] channel that you'd like to be a guest or host one of these events! We're open to any topics related to CX, the industry at large, tips/tricks/trends, or general education for the CX leader toolbox.
🗳️ Let's take a poll in the thread: What do you think your typical budget for CX education/conferences will be this year? As we work to adjust to the looming economic struggles, is there room to pay a smaller amount for tickets, or should we continue to try to make our events free for CX leaders? Would you consider paying a fee to be a part of ElevateCX if it meant events were free for the year?
🥺 This has been a rough start to the year, whether you're in the USA, Canada (we're sorry), Mexico (we're sorry!) over on The Continent, across timezones, or deep in the sea (👾). I want everyone to remember you have support here, especially because our work on the front lines and the exposure to more and more human tension makes us susceptible to emotional and social burnout. That customer who's pissed you off today isn't really the reason you're so wound up, and your polices aren't the real reason that customer is an ass, right? So utilize the community we have here, the endless empathy and understanding we all try to bring to the table, and join 🔒[private feed] and 🔒[private feed] and the newly minted 🔒[private feed] to unload as needed. In moderation, even typing out your frustrations can help you expel the annoyance into the ether and move on from it.
Scottsdale! Yes! My new hometown! 🌵
Regarding budgets, we might consider some sort of certification or access that costs money so that we can use our Learning / Development budget. That one is for classes and certs etc, and using it for Elevate would be sweet. Ours is $600/yr.
Scottsdale is beautiful in the fall.
Don't get me started on certifications 🤣 It's been a long time goal but completely unachievable on my own, so it's never been something we could get off the ground
Regarding fees sh. We could go either way. The #1 question I would need answered is when/where are the events for the coming year so we can plan in advance. If we don’t have a lot of advanced notice to plan a year in advance, then paying by the event would be better. Then we know where/when and can make the decision to go or not. btw, loved the Denver event - it was my first. Everyone was so down to earth and authentic. Congratulations on your leadership and what you have built.👏
I haven’t been to a conference that wasn’t paid for out of pocket in five or six years and I don’t think that’s changing anytime soon unfortunately. But! I’m willing to pay if it’s an event that’s relevant, a good hang, and actually spends my money wisely. (I’m looking at you Zendesk booking former prime ministers and TV hosts to help you sell me on whatever company you’ve bought most recently 😒)
This is probably just me being a tech conference scrooge, but big headliners that are totally unrelated to the industry or mode of work I’m in do nothing for me—even when it’s people I generally like and respect. Especially when the ticket price is $$$$, I can’t help but wonder if that price would merely be $$ if they weren’t booking celebrity speakers
I know Hubspot likes to use CTA talent so perhaps there's a discount rate for them, but for this tier of speaker you are looking at a solid quarter million
"An example fee to book Jacinda Ardern is in the starting range of $150,000-$299,000. However, any recent popularity change would cause a price fluctuation well beyond this example."
They should pay Elevate speakers this much 🙂
I have a pretty hefty annual education budget that I can use for courses, books, subscriptions etc & events (which I can split up for flights, hotels, food, tickets, etc). For Denver this past year I was able to talk my company into paying for tickets for my team as well as flying in my distributed team member since we're HQ'd in Denver and I could say it was a team event.
Our L&D budget is $1k per person annually.
