What skills or lessons have you learned recently?
This year I decided I wanted to do something to celebrate 20 years since the day I survived a major vehicular accident. I’m a tour guide by trade so I decided to put my skills to good use, with a walking tour event put on for charity. Read more here!
The tour was a great success and I made £240 for charity doing one walking tour of Old Town Edinburgh on a Free / Pay What You Think It’s Worth basis. To add to this, many lovely people who were unable to attend the event also contributed. This takes the grand tally, at time of writing to £723. This is very useful bundle of money for the Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity, which may even be a bit higher once Gift Aid is factored in.
Fair to say I am happy with this result and this experience. It topped my initial estimates for a what was possible and got very close to my stretch goal. It taught me a couple lessons and I have another idea for how to make next year a bigger success.
1). Talk to Everyone
This is basically marketing 101. Getting the word out for events is key to success. The easiest way is to tell people. Encourage them to tell others.
This is something which is somewhat new for me because though I recognise I talk a lot, it’s not often about the same thing on repeat. I tend to move from topic to topic. For advertising an event, consistent talk on the same subject is necessary to reach people, and you’d be surprised how open people are to discussing projects you are passionate about.
2. Use Your Story
This is something I also struggle with because when I was younger I talked too much about being hit by a van and it bored people at my high school. Eventually it was old news but I was still hanging on because it was my life.
I stopped talking about it as much, and started including it in secondary information about myself instead of making it all I was.
But for running this event, the fact that I’m a survivor of this traumatic event was my biggest strength. Being affected personally as important to explain why I was doing it and it helped Edinburgh Children’s Hospital raise more than otherwise. I’ve always thought it’s important to talk about anything which can help others.
And that’s why it’s also good to think about improvements. Here’s what I need to continue learning.
3. Give Yourself Time
This is been an issue I’ve had for many years.
I want it now!
I have big ideas which would be awesome if they happened, but it takes so long for the world to catch up with that vision. In the meantime, it takes effort and work, and it takes communication with others, then waiting for their reply, then reacting to it. It’s terribly tiresome and can turn trying to do anything into a huge pain. A huge pain which makes me want to stop and give up.
I’ve gotten better at pushing through that, but it’s still hard to give myself enough time to arrange everything. I made the decision to make this event a reality, though I’d envisioned it before, a mere ten days before putting it on. This is basically not enough time to put on even a small event and I wanted to put on something major.
Had I given myself more time, I could’ve done the poster design earlier, marketed more in schools and libraries, and built some more buzz all about town. Had I messaged schools and churches a month earlier, I might’ve made it onto newsletters and email blasts for the Christmas season.
In addition physical reminders like leaflets and posters can be an eye catching way to get attention. I ran out of leaflets and posters quickly on the Friday two days before the event. After all, I’d only managed to get the design done on the Wednesday since I was doing this on a tight schedule. Getting more printing done would not have been possible as most printers do not open on the weekend. This limited the number of places I could leave promotional material. But all of this was very instructive for later.
One of my tour guide colleagues, Dan Collins, has a fringe show called “Dune: The Musical”. To promote it, he does shows throughout the year. He advertises on Instagram and on Facebook, and anyone who knows him knows him as the guy with the Dune Musical. I went to his show this Summer and it was great, plus it was a comfortable sell out. It’s inspiring and it gives me an idea on what to do going forward.
In this coming year, I’m going to make sure everyone comes to know what I’m doing here. Building a tour guide enterprise to bring more fairness into guiding, making it sustainable and also doing good works to try and bring the city along with us. We could be a boon for the city and as I learn more lessons about promotion, I expect we can get donations to rise!
So follow along. On Instagram and on Facebook, or if you are coming to Edinburgh and want a tour you can book here!
Till next time.
The writer of this piece is alive with creative possibilities and full of mince pies.
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