How a virtual event needs careful preparation, but when done well opens up the whole world of opp...

Hello and welcome to this episode of Speak PR. Today, I am delighted to have Toni Kaufman with me. She's the founder and CEO of The Standout Universe. Should I say yeehaw? Because you're coming to us from Houston, Texas. Hi, Toni.

How are you, Jim? You know, it's so cute. Everybody has this image of Houston, right? Because our cops are on horseback sometimes, you know. But I had, uh, I used to be an IT person and I, I remember bringing someone in from, it was OSG, the Overseas Shipping Group. And I was doing some work for them at the IT level. And I remember bringing in a young man from Russia and a young man from India to come over and help us set up all the servers and do the worldwide communications. Right. So it just so happened that the livestock show was on, which is the biggest one in the world, right here in Houston, the Houston Livestock Show.

Yeah.

And, and I said, you know what, guys, I'm going to take you over there. And so we ended up the night and I got them in the car and we drove them over there. And as we're driving to what used to be the Astrodome, right, as we're driving towards it, you see all of the, the county mounties, you know, all the county police and all the sheriffs. And, and they're all just standing there by the gate, you know, having a good conversation. They got their boots, they got their hats, they got their guns. And the young man from Russia goes, oh, look, they're in costume for us. No, not really. No.

These wonderful, wonderful stereotypes that that people have about Houston. Well, you're a nice warm part of the country, and you can tell from what I'm wearing. For those of you that can't see me, I'm wearing a a woolly hat and three layers because it's pretty chilly here in the UK. Now, you've got a huge amount of experience, really, Tony. And what I love about you and on your website and on your LinkedIn is welcome. How may we serve you? And I, as you know, talk to a community of business owners. And I thought you have a massive amount of experience in online events and people presenting themselves, and you're hosting now, you said concurrently, 4-day events online. So can we talk about how companies and individuals can create and leverage online events as a topic? That'd be great.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you're, if you're new to the online world, if you're new to the business, there are, you know, there's as many— it's multifaceted. It's like a diamond. There's so many ways to get into the industry. so many things you can specialize in, but it all comes down to one thing. Do you have the credentialing? Are you the authority? Can you— will you be seen as a go-to expert? Because that's basically step one, right, is how are you coming across so that you can make your sales, so that you can get your interviews, so that you can get your, your, your, your impact on the world. And so, and, and I think you'll agree with me, James, that the one thing that I love about this entire community worldwide is I haven't met one person yet who doesn't want to make a difference.

Yeah.

It's about mentality. How can I serve? And that applies to everybody from love doctors, you know, all the way down to people who are teaching you how to eat better, you know, and how to take care of your depression and how supplements and nutrients—

I mean, it's just like this huge expanse It seems as well as though online shows really enable a global audience for these opinion leaders in the way that before there might have been West Coast America or Southeast England or Far East practitioners. Now it's global. So how do you see that playing out, Tony? Which platforms from a technology point of view do you see kind of making the most sense?

Well, you know, I have to take my hats off to Zoom. Very impressed that they've been able to— I mean, it was like they were in the right place at the right time. I wish I had invested. But the power of this online conferencing system is just— it just absolutely blows me away because I used to work in corporate America. I used to be a Microsoft technical evangelist, and I used to have to set up You know, conference calls. Remember the conference tables?

The Polycom dial-in. Yeah.

The Polycom dial-in. As a matter of fact, you're gonna laugh at me. I'm still using a Jabra.

Wow.

From 2015 and it still works.

Some good old technology.

I told you guys, when you get good stuff, it lasts, right?

I thought you were gonna get a BlackBerry out there for a moment, Tony.

I was like, oh. Actually, I saw someone using that the other day and I was, it was just too funny.

Yeah. Yeah. So Zoom, you think is a great platform?

Great platform. And there's many, many webinar platforms, and there's many, and they grow daily, right? But I have been very impressed with the power, the resilience, and the capacity of the servers to handle this, you know, worldwide without it, without a hiccup, without a glitch. And it's just, it just amazes me because I remember from the Polycom, we then went to the television. You know, and that took, you know, half a million dollars to set up 2 rooms in 2 places of the world to be able to have a telephone, you know, a video conference. And now here we are getting it for $30 a month.

Yeah, it really is incredible, isn't it? Tandberg is the name we're looking for, the Tandberg TV conferencing systems. They were a client of mine for a while in Asia. What about the functionality? Because there are some companies like Swapcard, for example. There's one called Airroom that has been in touch recently that are kind of taking almost trade show conferences online.

Oh yeah. As a matter of fact, we had one pitched to us just a couple of weeks ago. And I mean, I literally saw the— it's like gamification basically is what's happening. Is that we're bringing in from, you know, me, I'm a boomer. You're probably a Gen Xer, right?

In between, I think probably me.

My boom is gone, but I haven't got a lot of So I guess what I'm saying is that we're now into like the 3rd or 4th generation of game players, video game players, so that you're used to seeing your little Sims, you know, avatar walking through the house and doing all this. Well, this is exactly what's happening with gamification and the artificial intelligence team, like the ones you just mentioned a couple of, is that now if you want to join a conference, for example, I just worked at a conference that was 4 days long. made over $1 million. So, you know, people are making some serious sales online and on online conferences. But, but what I've seen is the ability to literally walk up in your little avatar. You know, you go into this room and it's this giant conference center and you walk up to the front desk and you pick what you're wearing and what you look like and all that kind of stuff. Right. And then at the front desk, you've got the marquee telling you what events are going on in that conference center at that time.

Mm-hmm.

You can literally attend a variety of these meetings at the same time. I love it.

So we've got the platforms that are really coming into their own. Are you seeing anyone doing any VR where people are sort of wearing the, the VR headsets?

That's the turning point, Jim. I mean, people are not going to live events, and now it's even easier and better to attend all the events you ever wanted From the comfort of your own home.

Or in my case, the slight discomfort of your own garden, uh, studio, as I like to call it.

Well, I can tell you I've got the heater on because it's 73.

Shocking, shocking. Light a fire, Tony. I'd have a light of fire for you. I've got one burning in the house right now for the kids and the dog. They're all enjoying it, but I'm out in the, in this sort of 0 degrees in the In the shed here.

Heater. We're going to send you a heater.

Thank you. I've got one I think is made in China. But what about this challenge then? And this is, I guess, part of what you do as a, as someone has a background in television and production with your Standout Universe, because surely the challenge is that an individual salesperson used to go to a trade show, for example, or a conference, and you'd have a community of people that you knew. How are people doing that?

We're doing exactly the same thing. For example, we are doing live online events. We are doing the VIP dinner party before the night before. We are doing the breakout rooms for lunch with our sponsors. We are doing the party hearty Marty, you know, the happy hour at the end of every day where we just open the Zoom and everybody just has at it, right? We play music. We have, we play games. One of my best friends and business partner, Linda Cain, who's been doing Blue Diamond events forever, she actually brings in like an escape room on Zoom. So there's a lot of ways to gamify and there's a lot of ways to play. But the important thing to keep in mind is that you're my client and you've given me a wish, what you wanna accomplish in 3 days or 2 days or 1 day. For example, we just ran a 1-day, 12-hour summit. It was a gift giveaway with Summit because we combined 20-minute talks with the giveaway that they were giving. And it ran all day on Saturday. By popular demand, we had to extend it through Sunday.

And I suppose when people don't have to travel, they can fit it in with their family schedule or their health schedule or their work schedule.

That's where we used to pay, you know, I used to spend, because I went to like 7 or 8 events per year, right? So the travel, the hotel, the meals, you're looking at $2,500 on top of the program that you're going to invest in, right? And now people are sitting at home watching this event, figuring out, you know what, I really like Jim. I think I want to work with him. Let me listen to his offer. And because I didn't have to shell out $2,000 just to get to your event, I can afford to, to, to buy your program.

As you say, there's all this discretionary income that hasn't been spent. And then the other thing presumably is about all the content. One of the issues that we addressed with the client that was going to an American virtual conference from the UK was about creating all the digital assets because they didn't really have enough showreel bios in, in high res. What's your experience, Tony, of helping clients to create all of that? Because they actually now have to have kind of a whole production suite, don't they?

Yes, there's a whole other school of thought that, that is, you know, show us your imperfections because that's what's sexy.

Okay. Am I looking good then now? Because I'm not in a very— I'm showing all my imperfections, including my location.

The imperfections are what attract people to work with you. It's not the perfection. It's the ability to create that common character that allows people to say, you know, I'm right there with you, Jim. I'm going to listen to you a little bit longer. Because that is what happens when you're the host of a summit or a podcast is you become the authority figure. You become the go-to expert, and you become the person they want to work with because you're doing it.

And are you seeing this working for B2B clients as well? Industrial machinery, for example.

I know Facebook just launched a Facebook for Business, but LinkedIn is still still king when it comes to B2B. I share all of my events as an event on LinkedIn, and for example, the one we did last Thanksgiving, which was the Week of Kindness and Gratitude, which is about to be repeated the week of Easter. I went. I went to LinkedIn and I created the event as an event for business to business. I've got probably 8,000 people on LinkedIn.

Yeah.

And when I export that list to create the mailing list to try to nurture a campaign, to try to tell them, this is who I am, we probably met, you may have been one of my old computer students, I'd love to tell you what I'm doing now and see if you're interested in 1, 2, or 3. Get an answer back. Now you know who you're dealing with and you can start tagging your list with what they wanna hear.

Oh, that's another great and slightly unknown feature, isn't it, of LinkedIn? That actually you can export into Excel or a comma-separated file your contacts, actually, can't you? So that would then go into a mailing list, for example. I guess you have to have permission.

By the way, you can also do that on Facebook, but I'm not telling you how.

So what would you say to a, a person that wants to launch their brand into a B2B setting? Because often small companies could really leverage this global platform of virtual events.

All you need is a landing page to start with. All you need is a community page on Twitter and Instagram, a Clubhouse, you know, LinkedIn. You can start off small and start off basically using free tools that are out there that we can use. Facebook Live, for example, what a great way to get seen. Start building your audience, start participating and joining others in their communities to build your list faster. That would help a lot. Just get started and, you know, look for your mentors. You have to have a mentor, guys. Have to have that. It doesn't have to be a million-dollar mentor or even a 6-figure mentor. It could be someone that you can bring on as part of your team that has that in mind that you can get probably for, you know, less than $12,000 a year.

Wonderful. And Tony, that's one of the roles that you play is as A mentor I know. If you want to get hold of you, Toni Kaufman, how do they do that?

The first thing is to write this down. It's Toni, get your pencils. T-O-N-I, Toni,@, and it's K for Kaufman, D for design, another D for development, and an M for marketing, inc.com. KDDMINC.com.

Perfect. Toni, thank you so much for joining me all the way from the warmth of Houston with a very warm personality.

We're sending it your way.

We're in the second beast over here in the UK, so we're embracing the warmth all the way from Texas.

Take care. God bless everyone. Be safe.

Thank you. So you've been listening to Toni Kaufman from the Standout Universe, the business that she runs over there in Houston, Texas. So many lessons to learn there, and I'll put some in the show notes. In the meantime, I wish you the best of health, a profitable or at least sustainable business, and that if you've got a business, look at getting online. All those virtual events are there. And it sounds like they're really ripe for the business development that you can build with someone like Tony DiGaiuto. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Speak PR.