A Six-Figure Business Event with tickets on sale charged between 0 – £200 is worth visiting, isn’t it?

The location of your event is important, isn’t it?

You would have thought so, especially since my ticket was complimentary. The opportunity to mix with successful entrepreneurs in a top venue for 8 hours of business advice from people who have the same drive and goals as you do!

That’s what I thought anyway. How wrong I was.

Holding the event at a hotel in Birmingham, just 20 minutes work from the centre of England’s second city, added credibility to the advert.

I looked forward to a day of education and networking in comfortable surroundings in Digbeth, Birmingham. I arrived in the area and asked for directions.

“Yes, there it is,” the local man said pointing to an imposing red brick building with green-topped towers, not too far away. “Go down Cheapside and turn left, the hotel is there.” I thanked him and moved towards the street. Cheapside, that name didn’t exactly strike me as auspicious but that wasn’t uppermost in my mind, although the name did seem apt as I walked down it. At the corner, there were police lined up across the street, again not what I expected to see.

There was a pub on the other side of the road and it quickly became apparent why they were there.  The street filled with protesters from the Football Lads Alliance, and I had to wait until they moved off.

I approached the hotel door and saw an amazing site, four young people, perhaps twenty-something years old, sitting on the steps smoking. Their appearance wasn’t what I expected, but I carried on into the reception. Two ladies sat behind the counter with tattoos openly on view and rings in their noses.

I asked about the event and the room, one of the ladies turned to a tall man leaning on the desk “Show him to the room”. The man obliged and took me along a corridor to a small area with banners showing the event organisers and the promise of a six-figure business.

A man in his suit and shown into a side room with about 15 wooden chairs set out in rows and seven men and women attending. The signing in sheet showed that this was it, the full extent of the six-figure business system, the hotel location and the promise of business systems.

It is not where I would have held a two-hour workshop, it is a hotel I hope I will never have to set foot in again.