21. I Sold 25% of My Event Before Announcing a Single Speaker | Designing Brand Experience Events
Episode 21 •
9th July 2026 • Rich Work: Attract Premium Clients And Build Wealth Through Premium Positioning • Rachel Pearson, High Ticket Business Strategist
A quarter of the tickets to my event, She Sets The Standard, sold before I named the venue, the speakers, or a single detail. That is what becomes possible when you are known for brand experience events, not just good events.
Everyone tells you the content has to be strong, and it does. But there are so many events to choose from now that strong content alone is not what makes someone walk out and tell a friend they have to be in that room with you.
Today I'm sharing how I design brand experiences that attract premium clients and how to build a brand world people want to be drawn into. So if your events land well but still feel like they could be anyone's, this is how you make them unmistakably yours.
Topics covered on Brand Experience Events:
How I sold a quarter of the tickets for my event before announcing the venue, the speakers or a single detail
Designing brand experiences people recognise as yours before they ever see your logo
Why high end brand experiences do not have to mean stuffy (dry ice, pipettes and chocolate fossils)
Real examples of brand experience events I've created, from retreats to a one day business event
Building brand experience events that attract premium clients and could only be yours
The Tickets That Sold Before I Shared A Single Detail
[:
[00:00:38] I'm Rachel Pearson, global brand and business strategist, skincare obsessed, and always distracted by booking the next mini break. Here, you will learn how to position like a luxury brand, attract clients who love to invest, and build wealth that lasts, so you can create the business and life you want, not someone else's version of success.
[:
What A Brand World Is
This week I'm taking you behind the scenes into my slightly wild creative process of designing brand experiences. By events I mean in person events, but I also mean online events.
[:
[00:01:56] I absolutely didn't. But because I come from a brand background, I'm not a designer, I was a brand strategist, I have always thought about doing this with my clients as well. When I say brand world, I mean how you think about what your clients are stepping into when they work with you. Not from a place of status, or that weird putting you on a pedestal thing that we can have in the online space, particularly in the coaching space, but what it feels like to be part of your work.
[:
[00:02:47] And then for the premium clients who don't work with me yet but would be ideal to work with, I want to turn their heads. I want to create something they feel, something that excites them and draws them in. That is not just going to be about the way my brand looks, my beautiful brand colours. When we talk about a brand, that is often what people think about, the visual system of it, the fonts, the brand colours, the logo, the symbols. It is all important, but that is one part of a brand.
[:
[00:03:40] So I ran an event a few days ago, a really small mastermind event. It was 10 people, then we went into private dining. And I'm also starting to think about and plan the experience for my signature business event, which happens in November, She Sets The Standard. Not in terms of content, content is separate and there will be good content, don't worry, but more in terms of the experience. As soon as they walk in, and even before they walk into that event in November, what are they going to be anticipating?
[:
Start With The Transformation, Not The Information
[:
[00:05:15] Because anybody can create information, and you don't need me to tell you that we're in a world now where there is a ton of information available. You can be taught how to create a great speech, a great speaking topic to deliver on stage, to structure it in a way that creates desire for your offer, that sells from the stage.
[:
[:
[00:06:30] The content does have to be good. You cannot run events now where the content does not deliver to a high standard, because there are so many events to choose from, both offline and online. But I also think about the concept that this event represents. So I'll give you some examples.
How A Retreat In Puglia, Italy Helped My Clients Own Their Quality
[:
[00:07:18] So when I ran my retreat in Puglia, I did a retreat in Italy at the end of last summer. At that point, I was looking at the premium clients who were coming, and I could sense this was not about them learning more strategy. They all ran successful businesses. Some of them had teams, they had increased their revenue.
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[00:10:45] One of the other things I'd organised was a trip to a vineyard, to taste some wine, of course, but the vineyard I'd selected has the highest awarded wine in Italy, and it produces a very limited number of bottles. So this vineyard is not about creating multiple different wines that could each go into categories and probably win several awards.
[:
[00:11:40] But they said, "We don't want to have the biggest selection. We don't want to be known as the biggest wine producer and have all of these choices. We want to be known as the best." So even in that experience, which was towards the end of the week when we'd done the strategic work, where we went out and had a lot of fun together, the quality, and seeing a business that had been around for hundreds of years, that has evolved over time but has always focused on quality, was reflecting back to them how they could own the quality of their own work.
[:
Head In The Clouds: The Mastermind Day Designed Around Play
[:
[00:13:03] I didn't know them in depth. I did an intake form to get a sense of where their business was at. But I thought, right, the start of the year, this was in January, when you come out into a new year and you have all of these big visions of what the new year holds. And then you get to, this was late January when we did this event, you get to later January, and that is the point where sometimes it can start waning, the energy, the optimism you had going into the new year, where you think, "This is going to be the year.
[:
[00:13:54] So we really went into this sense of play. The theme I chose, the concept, was called Head in the Clouds, because I wanted them to get back up into seeing their business from a vantage point, from outside their business, to really stay in that play and possibility, and to get back into the energy they started the year with.
[:
[00:14:38] I wasn't on the ground doing them, but I worked on the concepts. So big hotel brands, or music venues, getting DJs in, working with very high end luxury brands to partner with them. So I've got a lot of experience with events, and I know the key thing we need to look at is how you change the energy during the time that you have.
[:
[00:15:19] I knew that as it got towards lunchtime the energy could drop. One, because you need food. Always have good food at your events. None of these sticky bread sandwiches, the white sticky bread that my kids love, but not at events. But also because your brain is going through a cognitive overload.
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
How Designing Brand Experiences Shaped My Event She Sets The Standard
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
Why Brand Experience Events Are The Future For Premium Clients
[:
[00:24:48] What I've shared with you are brand experience events that only I can create, because they bring in my brand. My brand represents innovation. My brand represents creativity. I work in a deep way. I want my clients to feel that I see where they are playing it safe, no matter whether you're in a room with me and 100 or 150 people, like at She Sets The Standard, or you're in a room with me and there are 5 of us.
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
[:
How To Bring A Brand World Into Your Own Events
[:
[:
[00:28:37] There are many, many more events I could talk about. But if you're feeling like you want to experience it yourself, then She Sets The Standard is running in London on Friday the 13th. We're going to make it lucky. Friday the 13th of November 2026. We're yet to announce the speakers, but they are going to be incredible.
[:
[00:29:16] So if you're interested, the link to She Sets The Standard is in the show notes. The tickets are going quickly, and it's going to be a full day where you will meet new people and have opportunities to network. One lady who came last year attributed over £60,000 of new business to coming out of that event, not from who she met in the room, but through strategies and ways of thinking she implemented from that space.
