Creative Scheduling for Small Business Owners

Let's say you're a new comedy company, like Left Coast Comedy, and you're trying to attract a bigger audience to your shows. You could offer a class on 1candela.com called "How To Be Funny" and schedule it for 30 to 60 minutes before your next show. Teach your students how to be funny, then invite them to stay for the show!

This technique can be used by other kinds of small business owners, too. It's probably a good idea to mention in the class description that the class will be followed by a bonus event, so that students are aware of the possibility of staying longer. Also, mention how long the bonus event might last, so if the student wants to stay for the whole thing he or she knows in advance the time commitment.

A variation of this technique, for bonus events that normally have a ticket price, is to include some or all of the ticket price in the class registration fee and advertise that the bonus event is free or discounted for students.