Built to Brief.
Anyone can fill a room. The work is deciding who does not come in. You write the brief before the gate opens. I compose the room to it, and I report against it afterwards, by segment, with the declines counted.
Not an event. A composition.
The nightmare is thirty people in a room built for a hundred, no energy, your exec looking embarrassed, and nothing to show finance in October. Every part of this is built against that.
Before a listing goes up we write down who should be in the room and who shouldn't. That document is what the night is measured against, and it is the only thing I guarantee.
Applications are approved and declined against the criteria. A nine-question screen for a launch audience, a read-the-paper prerequisite for a research session, a fundraising-stage question for an investor room. Across the record, 305 have been declined.
Registrations, approvals, declines against stated criteria, attendance, and composition by segment. The artifact you take to the budget conversation next quarter.
The run sheet, the gate questions and the format documentation are yours at the end. If you never hire me again, that was the point.
Built to Brief.
one room, composed
$8,500Up to 150 attendees. Format, gate, run sheet, supplier co-ordination, and the floor on the night, so you're not doing logistics while your speaker is on stage.
Who was in the room, by segment, against the brief you wrote. Normally $1,800.
The format documented so your own team can run it. Normally $600.
Where you have no strong preference, the event is published to the Sydney-facing calendar. It's a human editorial gate, it has selected these rooms thirteen times, and it delivered between 16% and 42% of registrations each time. It can't be bought.
Nine thousand two hundred dollars of listed work, commissioned as one thing. The parts are also available separately at the prices above, and I'd rather tell you that than have you find out.
Not for you if you want a logo wall and a lanyard scan. And I will not loosen the gate to hit a headcount. That's the one thing this doesn't survive.
the guarantee
in writingI design and deliver another one at no charge, or refund the fee. Your election, not mine.
Numbers. Reach is yours. It's your brand people are answering. My undertaking is about the composition of who arrives, against criteria we agreed in writing. Anyone promising you a headcount for an audience they can't reach is guessing with your budget.
Registrations from your own list by ten business days out, the gate held against the criteria, speakers confirmed at the same mark, and check-in actually operated. These aren't hoops. They are the four things that decide whether the night works.
I tell you at the ten-day mark, in writing, and we resize, add sourcing as its own line, or move the date. You won't find out at the door.
If you've never run an event before, we start somewhere cheaper. See below. I'm not going to sell you a hundred-person room on a list that can't fill forty.
Smaller pieces are commissioned on their own: hosting, MC or moderation ($2,400 a session), activation design as documentation you execute yourself ($2,400), a pitch day ($3,600), a taught session for up to forty people ($2,600). The full schedule, which runs to five pages and carries every condition and exclusion, is issued on request: ask for NRL-SF-2026-01.
The Read.
before anything gets booked
$1,400A short, paid piece of work. What job you're actually trying to do, whether a room is the cheapest way to do it, what your own list will realistically pull, and what size to build. Delivered as one page you can hand upward.
It's allowed to conclude you shouldn't run one, or shouldn't run one with me. The free version of the same instrument says hire nobody about 44% of the time.
Ten business days from go. If it concludes you should run something, the fee comes off whatever you commission next.
If you've run rooms before and they filled, skip this. We write the brief and go.
Every room begins with a brief, and the brief begins with what your list can actually pull. If you've run rooms before and they filled, we write the brief and go. If you haven't, or the last one underperformed, we start with The Read above. It's allowed to conclude you shouldn't run one, or shouldn't run one with me.
The question is not what an event costs. It is what a qualified person in the room costs. The benchmark for a B2B trade-show lead is over $800, and a curated executive dinner runs $1,000 to $3,000 per qualified meeting. These rooms come in between $90 and $150 a head, with the composition reported against the brief you set. If that gap seems too large to be true, ask me to show the working. That's a short meeting and I'd rather have it early.
Want to talk it through?
And if you're not sure an event is the answer at all, run the eight questions on the practice page first. They're free, they're honest, and about 44% of the time they tell you to hire nobody.