Seminars

Product University: Attend Offline Events and Quickly Grow Your Business in the Process

Let's talk about offline events. Seminars, workshops, masterminds, intensives, whatever you want to call them. Getting off your butt (off your "but" too), off the computer, onto a plane and to a hotel for 2 or 3 days where you get to interact with people just like you.

If you're "new", you need to attend these events for the training sessions – and probably to buy someone's course from the stage. If you're experienced, you need these events to network, make some joint venture connections with people just like you.

I'm talking about attending at least 1-2 events per year. I don't want any excuses. You need to go. It's a cost of doing business and if you spend too long cooped up at home, you're going to wonder why you aren't relevant anymore, what happened to your affiliates, and therefore your traffic, list, and sales.

If you're young with no family then you need to see the world anyway. If you're old with a family then take them along, not into the conference room at the event but take them so they can do the touristy stuff on their own and hang out at the hotel.

These things called offline events are on my mind because Lance and I just wrapped up our event called "Product University." It was the first event we had run in two years, and THAT event was the first event I had hosted in two years. Our next one is in Salt Lake City October 12-13 and you should attend.

Pitch-Fest vs. Pitch-Free?

Sure, some of these events are "pitch-fests" (I still learn a lot from those though), some are "pitch-free" (a bad excuse for speakers who don't know how to close onstage), some of the people you meet are all about getting their business card in your face, others have the tired "I have an idea so you can do all the work of implementing it for 50% of the business" approach, a few will talk your ear off, plot world domination with you and want to be your best friend... but the majority of the people you meet at these events are cool people just like you, a lot of them are in your niche and just want to make a new CONNECTION that might pay off in the future.

I speak on just a FEW stages per year to stay relevant. Lance and I are reluctant to host a bunch of offline events because we could just as easily run a webinar to generate a few tens of thousands of dollars without having to promote it for several months, deal with the hassle and expense of traveling and renting the conference room, dealing with the equipment, making sure everything goes smoothly. But it is a lot of fun to host an event every now and then.

"Two-Day Intensive" Explained

The way we run these events is slightly different from what we usually see from others and here's why...

1. First of all, it's just us two speaking for the whole event – mostly because we trust very few people ALTHOUGH having one or two guest speakers in the future (who promote the event through our affiliate program) would go a long way towards getting more people to attend

2. We run the events for two days (Saturday and Sunday) instead of three days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) because a 1-day is too short and a 3-day is too long – I have attended a few events where hardly anything happened on that last day

3. No PowerPoints, SOME very minimal software demonstrations on the laptop and projector, it's mostly teaching using markers and a flip chart

4. Eight 90-minute sessions total (morning, before lunch, after lunch, then a Q&A session to wrap up the day, for both days) – we had each session's topic planned in advance and probably 5 bullet points so we knew what areas we wanted to cover. Only one of us would be the "presenter" (i.e. Lance presenting on affiliate programs while Robert is the sidekick with the occasional comment, or Robert presents about product launches while Lance interjects)

5. We never did a hard-pitch, but we did mention several URLs and we soft-pitched our Double Agent Marketing Platinum Coaching Program at the end of the day on Saturday (just before the Q&A session)

6. We recorded the whole event (audio only, so we didn't have to deal with lighting) and posted those inside the member's area whether people attended or not. This lead to a bunch of extra overseas sales and I think is a much better alternative compared to people selling the live stream of their event for 10 or 20 dollars

7. We bundled the event (for a short time) with our Income Machine course. Income Machine is $97, the event is $197, but when we launched Income Machine (about a month before the event), we said that Income Machine is $197 and includes Product University. But Product University is $197 and comes with Income Machine for free – this is called the double close

IMPORTANT:
Know WHY You're Running an Event!

Nothing too major. I don't know if you are at the point in your business where you can or even want to host an event, but if you do, make sure you know WHY you are running this event. If you're only running an event because you've seen someone else do it, it seems cool, or your customers are bullying you into it (I have seen all three) then forget about it.

The reason we ran our event earlier this month was to add a few people into our Platinum program, which we did and is the reason why the event made money.

I have also seen several up and comers lose money running an event on purpose in order to build a list. They run an event for a few hundred people, get a few big-name speakers to promote the event (50% commission), speakers pitch products from the stage (50% commission), and the event organizer spends 30 thousand bucks on the huge conference room and the add-ons the hotel requires, only make 20 grand back after all is said and done, but now has this list of very hungry buyers, in fact some of the best people in their niche, who will buy over and over again and take action and get huge results.

Then again other marketers who should know better run events and get all the meals catered, hire musicians, magicians, and hypnotists as part of the event and lose big money, then burn themselves out and you wonder why this person hasn't run an event in the last 5 years.

What's my point? When it comes to offline events...

• Attend them. Go to every session, hang out in the bar or the lobby instead of hiding in your room on your laptop. You'll have plenty of time for that at home. Keep attending them but be sure you know what your goal is each time (i.e., more affiliates, solve a specific problem in your business, join a mastermind, buy a product that solves a problem you've been having in your business)
• If you want to be a speaker, attend events, make friends with the event organizers, make a speaker sheet (a list of your products, URLs, speaking topics, your bio and testimonials of you as a trainer), create a book that proves you know what you're talking about (using our Make a Product system, takes 1 hour, is 30 pages long, free to publish on CreateSpace, costs $20 to get transcribed, $20 to edit, and $5 for the book cover), and run webinars consistently (at least one per month) to stay sharp and flesh out your "message"
• If you're running events or plan on running events, know ahead of time what your backend will be for the event (mastermind or coaching program is great) and keep it simple and low-budget, also keeping in mind that if someone attends an offline event who’s on your list, they probably own most if not all of your existing products

You can't ignore offline events but I hope to see you around, especially in Salt Lake City this coming October 12th-13th for Product University (it will be the FIFTH time we're running it!)