Designing Seminar Workbook

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TRANSCRIPT:
Avish: So when you go to the seminar, if you are an attendee, it’s pretty common to get some kind of a workbook. I want to talk a little about that – starting with, do you think it’s important that you have some kind of a handout or workbook?

Fred: If you got a seminar where people have paid, like your people have paid $97 for a one day event, a simple handout, you know, a one page for each of the speakers if you have multiple speakers, or one page for each couple of hours in information deliver sufficient. But if somebody’s coming to a more expensive or to a more lengthy seminar, it certainly makes a lot of sense for you to have a seminar workbook. The answer is yes. You should have one, especially if it’s a more pricey event or if an event that is going to go on longer.

Avish: OK! Let’s start talking about on some of the things that go into that workbook. What do you mean when you refer to having a million dollar rolodex?

Fred: One of the things you want to have at the back of your seminar workbook is a reference page so if you keep constantly making references to different websites or places that people should visit whatever online or offline. You need to tell people right after top as soon as they start vigorously scribbling all those notes when you talking about them, say “Wait, wait, wait, don’t! You don’t have to do that. Anything I mention here is got to be at the back of your workbook in the resources section or the million dollar rolodex as I sometimes refer to it.” So, you get people and usually, I like to talk about that in advance of starting or at soon after starting so that people can relax and don’t have to write looking down but I think that it’s a good idea that if somebody say, “Wait, wait, wait I didn’t know – what did you say?” Just say, “Hey, thanks for asking but every reference that I’ve made is in the back. Turn your workbooks right now. At the back page you will see the million dollar rolodex” and show them that everything that you have there that’s important is listed.

Avish: As you say everything is important for the rolodex you’re talking about, resource is to people and sites, something like that?

Fred: Yeah. Anything, you know, by important – I mean, important sort of off seminar or off-site reference material of any sort.

Avish: OK. Now, should your workbook be just a big block of text? Or do you want to make it interactive or people can fill in blanks and write things done? What does the workbook look like?

Fred: I think that you – some people go over the top with this and make it like cartoon books or whatever and frankly depends on what kind of presentation or seminar you’re doing. But I think that a certain amount of you know, minimal interactivity is probably a good idea. Break it up with a few graphics, et cetera, et cetera. I don’t think you really need to go and spend thousands of dollars to help put one of these together. But I think it’s a good idea to make it so that it’s interactive and sort of fun and interesting to look at.

Avish: OK. What about white space? Do you like your handouts or workbooks to have a lot of white space or a little more text dense?

Fred: I think that the white space is good to allow people to – if you’re starting with that outline as we talked about before, the whole idea would be that in each sort of side of information – each section, each chapter of a book if it were in a book might have – in our example of 15 of those in 20 under them. So in each section of your workbook talking about a given topic, you’d have 20 things that you would want to communicate. And that might take one page or more than one page depending on whether or not a particular topic – one of those 20s would require them to take a lot of note and put in a lot of things on their own. So really, the white space determination – there should be an amount of air in the workbook itself, a little but airy. But I think the amount of wide spaces determined by how much writing you think they’ll need to do when they get to that section.

Avish: OK. That makes sense. What about contact information? Do you just put your contact info, kind of as the final page? Or do you put it in more places?

Fred: Yeah. Why I think it’s a good idea to make sure you put your contact information in every single page of your workbook, because inevitably somebody who comes to the event will go back to their home or office or with their colleagues or buddies and say, “Wow, you got to see this. This is really good” and they’ll make a copy of it and you want to make sure that your contact information is on every single sheet at the bottom, so that they know your website address, your name, your phone number, your email address – all that should be on there and it’s critical to have it on every sheet of the workbook.

Avish: OK. That makes sense. So if it gets separated or if only a piece gets copied, your info is still there.

Fred: You got it.

Avish: OK. Do you just basically put your outline in a workbook? Is that how you start at it?

Fred: For the most part, yes. So in other words, again, going back to our much repeated example here of 15 major topics, 20 bullet points underneath your 20 index cards under each one. You would use that as the framework. So what I would do is I would take all of those and enter them into a Microsoft word file, and have every single sort of topic be separated. Make that like a separate chapter. And the other thing, just put them underneath. And then decide when you look at it, “OK, what would be good to put in this space? Should I put a graphic, a cartoon? What should I put in there?”, and before long the workbook will start to create itself. So once you put it into a Microsoft word file where you have all of your 15 chapters and you can make those if you wanted to into separate Microsoft documents or you could separate them if you know Microsoft word well by creating several different sections. So you’ve 15 sections and then 20 points under each one and just bullet point them for now underneath there and then decide as you go through the workbook what you’re going to put for that particular bullet point. You may not put anything. In other words, it may be just a line of text and some space for people to write. But maybe there’s that line of text that relates to that but there’s also a graphic or something else. So, yes, start with the outline and go from there.

Avish: OK. That makes sense. So, let’s settle there a little about the physical logistics. What is workbook look like? Is it a bunch of sheets stapled together that spiral bound? Is it something else?

Fred: One of the things that really annoys me whenever to any kind of seminar and give them something to write on, it’s got to be something that can lay flat. So, I am a big believer in using that plastic comb binding kind of thing because I mean that’s pretty unsophisticated. You can also use the wire spiral which generally costs a little more and again depending on how pricey the seminar is. You may want to put this into a fancy looking package.

But the main thing is that, if you’re giving out a workbook, I like it always to be able to lay flat on the table. If it doesn’t lie flat, it’s a pain in the neck to write it. That’s the only thing but I also then put, and again depending on the price part of the seminar – assuming I‘m doing a pretty pricey seminar, I’m going to put a cover on it in addition to pages of the workbooks. So the cover is a little bit stiffer cardboard stock and might be different color so that we make sure that it’s something that sort of holds up to a little bit of knocking around.

Avish: Yes, so increase the perceived value make people feel like they’re really getting something tangible out of it.

Fred: Yes and one of the things that you don’t want to do is, you’re going to make that particular item pretty valuable or have high perceived value by saying in your guarantee when you put your site together or you’re doing your direct mail fees that if you’re not happy with the seminar by the lunch break on the first day, bring your workbook up to the front and we will cut your check. In other words, you’ll make it seem like that workbook that you prepared their seminar workbook is very valuable.

Avish: Ah, OK, that’s brilliant.

Fred: Yeah!

Avish: Alright now, anything else we need to know about putting our seminar together and designing the workbook?

Fred: The designed workbook, I think we’re pretty much done so there you have it!