First Quarter Event Planning Strategy

Hey, that's a Christmas tree behind me. Because it is the holiday season, which means that the year is coming to an end, which means the first quarter is soon approaching. And with the first quarter, we get the show and event season. Okay, now I've seen some of the controversies online ranging anywhere from you shouldn't go to any of these events, they're all a waste of time and money, all the way to event promoters telling you that you've got to come to their event. It's life changing, and if you don't, your business is going to get left in the dust. I wanted to share a few thoughts with you that I hope will be helpful from having been in this industry for 30 years. The first concept here is that these shows are expensive. The cost of travel, food, hotels, extracurricular activities, they cost money. Right. And so we're all looking for a return on investment. So we need to be able to gauge whether or not what we got at this event is greater than what it cost to go to that event. Roi. No rocket science there. Right, we get that. Okay, now here's the hiccup though. If I've heard it once, I've heard it a hundred times. And it goes something like this. Nathan. I have binders and notebooks and notepads and folders chocked full of notes and content, strategies, ideas, concepts, information for my business that I've done nothing with. Well, what's the difference between having all these notebooks, binders and folders and everything full of information you don't do anything with and not having those things at all? It's the amount of money you spent to go to the event where you got that information. Okay, so let's talk about a couple of truths around this stuff. Number one, these events are full of really good information. They're full of great education ideas, strategies, concepts, things that can and should be implemented into your business. The other thing that's true though, is that not everything that you hear or is presented at these events is for you right now. It really has to do with the stage that you're at right now. As an example, if you're a young single person with no kids, how much benefit are you going to get from a class on how to parent children through adolescence? I mean, you're going to learn something. Sure. Great information, no doubt. Can you take it home and immediately begin to implement it? Probably not. So the thing you need to understand is that these conferences aren't necessarily laid out to identify the stages of life that you may be in or the stage that your business is in so that you understand where you should be paying attention. The better you understand what stage your business is in, the better, easier it is for you to know where to go and what information to grab so that you can go home and implement that immediately. It will also help anytime you're hearing mainstage speakers who are talking about all these great ideas and concepts and experiences that they've had. Some of them will apply to you and some of them won't. As an example, if you're listening to somebody talk about how they scaled their business from 15 to 30 million, they've probably got some really, really great information. But if your company's at 2 million, you may not be able to use much of the really good information that you gather from that. So take some time to pencil out what are the struggles you're dealing with, where are you at right now, and where are you trying to get? What is that next stage? And then begin to figure out which ones of these events actually are going to offer the things that you can gather and take home and actually get a return on investment. So, Merry Christmas, happy Holidays, and I hope to see some of you out there.