You Picked the Ticket Price. I Paid the Rest: The Real Math Behind My First Fan Meetup

If you've been around here for a minute, you know I can't resist a transparency experiment. I've let strangers play hiring manager with my work, I've handed my rate card to the internet, and I've let my mom run my Stories. So when I started dreaming about finally meeting some of you in person — like, in real life, with hugs and iced coffee — there was only one obvious next step.

I asked my biggest supporters to vote on what I should charge for tickets.

And then, because I apparently have no chill, I actually did it.

How the Vote Went Down

I posted a poll across my email list and Instagram with three options: free, $15, and $35. The event was a casual two-hour hangout at a café space in Los Angeles — think mingling, a short Q&A, photo ops, and me trying not to cry in front of everyone.

The results surprised me. Free won with about 44% of the vote, $15 came in around 38%, and $35 got a humble 18%. But here's the thing: a lot of people who voted "free" followed up with messages saying something like, "I voted free because I don't want money to be a barrier, but I'd happily pay."

So I landed on a compromise: $15 tickets, with a handful of free spots reserved for anyone who couldn't swing it — no questions asked, just a DM. Roughly 60 people voted, and I capped the event at 40 seats because, honestly, I wanted to actually talk to people, not do a speed-round of hellos.

What It Actually Cost Me

Alright, the part you're really here for. Here's the real math from my spreadsheet, receipts and all:

• Venue rental: $250 for a private back patio at a café in Silver Lake. (Weekend afternoons in LA are not cheap, friends.)
• Coffee and pastries: $310. I promised snacks, and LA café catering prices made me briefly reconsider my life choices.
• Custom name tags and a small print order: $85
• A photographer for the first hour: $200 — worth every penny, since I wanted everyone to leave with a decent photo
• Payment processing fees: about $48
• Miscellaneous (table cards, a cooler, extension cords, a parking validator situation): roughly $70

Total: about $963.

Thirty-one people paid for tickets at $15, which brought in $465. Add the seven free spots, and I was sitting at 38 attendees against my 40-person cap. That means the event ran me about $500 out of pocket.

Could I have broken even? Sure — at $25 a ticket, I'd have been close. At $35, I'd have profited. But the vote said $15, and I committed to honoring it. That was the whole point of the experiment.

The Part Nobody Puts in the Reel

Here's what the budget spreadsheet doesn't capture: the labor. Planning this thing took me around 15 hours across two weeks — venue emails, catering confirmations, designing name tags at 11 p.m., and one minor panic spiral about whether anyone would actually show up.

There's also the emotional cost, which I don't say to be dramatic. Standing in a room full of people who know your work — and your face, and your opinions — is vulnerable in a way a comment section never is. One woman told me a video I made two years ago got her through a rough move. I had to pretend I had something in my eye.

So Was It Worth It?

Financially? No. It cost me about $500 and a chunk of my sanity.

Every other way? Genuinely, yes.

Within a week of the event, my email open rates jumped noticeably, my DMs shifted from "hi, love your content" to actual conversations with people I'd met face-to-face, and three attendees ended up in my paid coffee chat program. One booked me for a collaboration. You can't put a clean ROI on that, but it's real.

If You're Thinking About Hosting Your Own

A few things I'd tell a friend:

1. Cap attendance low. Intimacy is the product. Forty people who felt seen beat four hundred who felt processed.
2. Don't do free-only. Even a small price filters for commitment. My no-show rate was under 10%, which is shockingly good for a free-ish event.
3. Build in a pay-what-you-can option. It kept the event accessible without tanking the budget.
4. Budget for help. The photographer was my best spending decision. My phone camera roll is chaotic; her photos are not.
5. Pick a city you can get to cheaply. LA worked because I'm here. If I'd flown somewhere, the math would be underwater for years.

The Verdict

My community voted for a price that was generous to them and generous of them — and they showed up like they had something to prove. I lost money on paper and gained something a spreadsheet can't hold: a room full of faces attached to the usernames I've been talking to for years.

Next time? I'm thinking a bigger venue, a real ticket price, and maybe a second city. And yes, I'll show you the receipts again.

Because if there's one thing I've learned running this whole experiment-filled career: the numbers are interesting, but the people are the point.