How a virtual event needs careful preparation, but when done well opens up the whole world of opportunities from your own home office.

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

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, I used to be an IT person and I remember bringing someone in from. It was osj, 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 the Houston Livestock Show. 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 county Mounties, you know, all the county police and all the sheriffs, 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.

These wonderful, wonderful stereotypes that, that people have about Houston. Well, you're a nice, warm part of the country. And you could tell from what I'm wearing. For those of you that can't see me, I'm wearing a woolly hat and three layers because it's pretty chilly here in the U.K. 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, it says, 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 four 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? Will you be seen as the 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 impact on the world. And I think you'll agree with me, James, that the one thing that. 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.

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. How to take care of your depression and how supplements and nutrients. I mean, it's just like this hugest expanse of.

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?

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, 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 Polycomb Darling. Yeah.

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 technologies, guys.

When you get good stuff, it lasts, right?

I thought you were going to get a BlackBerry out there. For a moment, Tony, I was like, oh, that.

Actually, I saw someone using that the other day. I. I was. It was just too funny.

Yeah. Yes. A Zoom, you think is a great platform.

Great platform. And there's many, many webinar platforms 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 worldwide without a hiccup, without a glitch. And 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 two rooms in two places of the world to be able to have a telephone, you know, a video conference.

Yeah.

And now here we are getting it for 30 bucks a month.

Yeah, it's. It really is incredible, isn't it? Tanberg is the name we're looking for. The Tanberg 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. We had one pitched to us just a couple of weeks ago. And. And I. I mean, I literally saw the. It's like. It's like gamification basically is what's happening.

Yeah.

Is that we are. 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. My boom is gone. But I haven't got a generation.

So I guess what I'm saying is that we're now into like the third or fourth 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 four days long, made over a million dollars. 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. You can literally attend a variety of these meetings at the same time. I love it.

So we've got the platforms already coming to their own. Are you seeing anyone doing any VR where people are sort of wearing 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 studio, as I like to call it.

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

Shocking. Shocking. Light of fire. Tony, I'll have a lighter 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 the sort of zero degrees in the. In the shed here.

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

Thank you. I've got one. I think it's made in China. But what about this challenge, then? And this is, I guess, part of what you do 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 Hardy 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 play games. One of my best friends and business partner, Linda Kane, who's been doing Blue diamond events forever, she actually brings in like an escape room 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 want to accomplish in three days or two days or one day. For example, we just ran a one 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 seven or eight 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 2000 bucks just to get to your event, I can afford to buy your program.

As you said, 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 a week of kindness and gratitude, which is about to be repeated the week of Easter. I LinkedIn and I created the event as an event for business to business. I've got probably 8,000 people on LinkedIn 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 want to 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 a, on Twitter, an 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 six 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, a mentor. I know. If you want to get hold of you. Tony Kaufman, how do they do that?

The first thing is, is to write this down. It's Tony, get your pencils. T O N I Tony at. And it's K for Kaufman, D for design, another D for development and an m for marketing. Inc.com KDDM Inc.com Perfect.

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

We're sending, 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 Tony 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 to guide you. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Speak VR.