MBA2152 Why You Need To Attend More In-Person Conferences + Free Ride Friday

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that helps you and your business grow every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an innovative software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Free Ride Friday. On Free Ride Fridays we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away our automated webinar challenge over@webinar ninja.com AWC. It retails for $500 or you can win it for free. Just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and a review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Listen in on Friday just like today to see if you won. It's that simple. We share today's winner later on in today's episode. In today's episode you will learn why you need to attend more in person conferences. As things start to get back to the way things used to be. When it comes to conferences and in person events, I want to encourage you to do so. To go to these events, to go to conferences, to go to meetups, to go to retreats, to go to masterminds. And I'm going to share why? What are the benefits? What are the things that you're going to get out of it? I'm going to share with you what in person conferences did for me in my business, especially when I was getting started with the $100 MBA and the $100 MBA webinar ninja 8910 years ago. Some of the practices and habits that I did at these conferences to get the most out of them, but most of all, how to not just say to yourself, I got to go to more conferences, but actually implement how to plan for it and make sure it actually happens. All that and more. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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Let'S face it, no matter who you are, we all got a little bit more introverted with COVID and and just getting used to being at home and being homebodies or just getting back into the swing of things of socializing, meeting people again in person dinners and maybe in person events are not top of mind, but they should be. And I'll tell you why. When I started my full time entrepreneurial journey where I left my side hustling and my teaching days back in 2012, one of the best things that helped me was going to in person conferences. Even though I was on a budget and I was starting out and I was really a struggling entrepreneur financially, I found a way to go to local and national events to meet interesting people in person and I'll tell you what impact it had on me and how it helped my business grow. The first thing is that when you meet people in person, when you go to whether it's a conference or you're looking at other businesses and how they do things, you're listening to speeches, you're having side conversations, you're having dinners, whatever it might be, the first thing you get is inspiration. You get a sense of hey, I can do this, I can think bigger, I can do better things. You see other people do things that you want to do. You start seeing people a few steps ahead of you and understand, hey, I'm not that far off I can make it happen. It's a huge thing because you come back with a renewed perspective, with new energy to implement the things you need to do to take your business to the next level. Every time I went to a conference or an event, I saw a shift in my business and I started seeing myself and seeing my goals in a different light. I started thinking bigger, I started thinking and believing I can do better. The second thing I want to mention that I got out of it, which was huge, was the relationships I built. Meeting somebody in person, you get to build a relationship much faster and much deeper versus online. People that I met at an event, let's say I spent a couple days with them at this event, our bond with each other is much stronger. We became fast friends in a matter of a couple days. I know somebody very well, they know me. There's a level of trust that's been built where we can collaborate, we can work together, help each other out. That just doesn't happen that quickly online. It can happen, but it's just not as fast. It could take months, maybe even years. This is tapping into our biological nature. We are tribal by nature, just in our DNA. And meeting in person taps into that and allows us to build on relationships quickly. Now, these relationships that I built at these conferences helped me tremendously. When I was launching the $100 MBA show and I was launching webinar Ninja R software, I got to reach out to them and say, hey, I'm launching this new thing. Would you mind sharing this with your audience? And of course, I reciprocated when they needed a little bit of a push. They needed my support. And really in business, it's a small world, right? Everybody knows everybody. When you meet a few people at a conference, there's a good chance those few people can introduce you to another handful, a dozen, maybe dozen people that you need to know. So there's exponential rewards to going to this event. Number three, in person events allow you to step away from your business and get some perspective, see things in a different light, hear some new information that you're not listening to, reevaluate your opinions or your thoughts or your strategies towards something in your business. This, of course, is possible with an online event, like if it's an online conference, but it's just not the same because your dedication to that shift, to stepping away from your business and focusing on the event to gain a new perspective is totally different in an in person event because you have sunk costs, you have skin in the game. You bought a ticket, you bought Maybe a flight, a hotel room. Because of all this commitment internally, you're saying, hey, I need to take this seriously. I need to be focused on getting the most out of this event versus being on your computer and maybe being distracted with other priorities in your business. This actually gives the time and space and respect you need to give yourself and as a business owner and as a business leader to get what you came for in this event. So when I go to a live event, I just kind of block book my calendar and say, hey, these days I'm not doing any work in my business. I have to have my team take over or just say no to things because my full focus is, you got it. Meeting people, getting to know people, building relationships, giving value, talking to people, getting new ideas, getting perspective. It's professional development, but in a different way. Many times you go to live events, you see sponsors with their table, right? They have a sponsors area and there's all these big brands that are sponsoring the event. I love visiting this area. Not for the free swag, that's cool and everything, but because this is a great opportunity for me to talk to people I can partner with. For example, I went to a public speaking conference called Heroic Public Speak, and one of the sponsors was AWeber, one of the email marketing softwares that we integrate with at Webinar Ninja. I said, hey, I would love to collaborate with you guys. How about you guys present to our audience about how to use AWeber to grow their email list with webinars and then I can present to your audience in AWeber how to use webinars to grow their email list. This is a win win for them. And they're like, this is great, awesome. They get to promote AWeber, we get to promote our product. And it's valuable. It's actually good information for both parties. Most of the time, people that go to these events as sponsors are part of the marketing team. So they're able to make this decision right then and there and they go back to their boss and say, hey, we got a collaboration out of this. Visit out of this sponsorship spot or conference. It's a win for them. Most people just gloss over this area and kind of run away from sponsors. I say, no, these are potential partners that can help me grow my business. Do you have a podcast? Do you have a video show on YouTube? Do you do webinars? Do you need guests on your content? Well, guess where you can get some really good speakers at an event where there are speakers, right? You're gonna have speakers that stand on Stage, give great content. You can then say, hey, that person's really good. They'd be a great fit for my audience. They're there, they're at the event. You can approach them. You could say, hey, loved your talk. It was fantastic. This is what I do. Would you like to share your message with my audience? Would love to pencil you in for an interview on my podcast and you can book it right there. You don't need an introduction, you don't need a way to cold them. They're at the event. When you buy admission, you buy a ticket to these events. This is also a part of what you're buying. Access to the speakers. Listen, when I speak on stages, I get approached all the time and I don't feel bad. I don't feel like, oh, this person's bothering me. I'm honored. I'm like, this is great. I get to spread my message further beyond this event to other audiences. That's my job. This is what I have to do as a brand builder. Another reason why I love in person events is that it allows me to practice and work on my communication skills, on my people skills, on my listening skills. Because there's so many conversations that are happening at events with big groups, small groups, one on one. It might be a bit tiring for some of us, but it's well worth it. You need to put yourself through these exercises so you can sharpen up those skills.

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One of my favorite things about in person conferences is that it also fast forwards the relationship online. What do I mean by this? When I meet somebody and we're getting to know each other and I'm learning about their business very early on in the conversation, I'll be like, cool, let me check you out. Are you on Twitter? Are you on Facebook? Are you on LinkedIn? Yes. And you add each other or follow each other on Twitter, for example. At that point, now I have a contact. I can direct message you. I could follow up later on in the conference and say it was great to meet you. How about we collaborate? How about we work together? How about we support each other's work. And you don't have to do this for everybody, only the people that you're interested in getting to know more or work with in the future. But now you have the connection. It's like you got the means of communication. Don't leave the person that you're talking to without doing that, even if you're not interested in working with them or talking to them or getting to know them. Further in the future, I've learned that it's important for you to respect and know about everybody as you're moving up the ladder, because some people might surprise you. They'll do great, they'll blow up, they'll become quite successful and you can learn from them. You can learn from their experiences by following them on social media and continuing to have a relationship with them. You might not see the benefit now, but in the future you might. And if not, you didn't lose much by following them on Twitter, for example. So how do you make sure you do this? You actually go to events, meet people in person? Well, I like to do all of this planning a year in advance. I look at all the things I have to do in the year and I schedule my events, I schedule the conferences among I'm going to 12 months in advance, so I know that every three months or so I'm going to an event. Every two months I'll do something local and that's enough time for me to recover and be ready for the next event. And all you got to do is search your interests, plus conference or plus summit or plus event or retreat on Google. Just do that and you'll find tons of events that will interest you. Look at the speakers that speak at these events. Not because you're chasing content or chasing, you know, when these speakers speak there, you want to be there and you want to hear them speak. That's great and all, but really what you want to do is see if there's alignment, if there's people that you like that you follow, you read their books, you follow them online, There's a good chance they're going to attract people that are like that and that's going to be the crowd you want to be around. It's a good indicator of if this is going to be a quality crowd or quality conference with the right people. What I love about booking in advance is that many conferences will allow you to buy tickets well in advance, even well over a year in advance. And the earlier the better. You're going to save money with these early bird tickets. So it's actually a cheaper expense to get to the conference. And before you go, before you pack your bags and go to this event for a few days, just get yourself in the right mindset. Tell yourself, I'm now going to be networking Omar. Right? That's what I tell myself. I'm going to be networking Omar. I'm going to be friendly Omar. I'm going to be a person that is getting to know people. I'm somebody who's interested in building relationships. This is the mode I'm in right now. This is what these next three days are all about, is getting to meet people on a deeper level as much as possible. I'm not the same person as I am at home because that person's not going to want to meet anybody. That person wants to go back to their office and get work done and make money and make sales. Yes, that's important. But right now, this is what my focus is. I need to go all in and get the most out of it. I hope that helped and I hope I see you in an in person event soon. But today's episode's not over. It's free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's free ride to our automated webinar challenge. And the winner is. Tony Oderskall. Tony says short, sweet and super applicable. 5 stars. The $100 MBA is a treasure trove of lessons learned from those who lived it with business experience. Podcasts are short and sweet, but also super applicable. You always walk away with something that you can do better. Thanks, Tony for the great review. Your mission is to email me at omar00mba.net so I can hook you up with the lifetime membership to the automated webinar challenge over@webinarninja.com AWC it retails for $500 or you can win it for free. Just like Tony who just won a free ride. Just leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday just like today to see if you won. It's the that easy. Thank you in advance for leaving us love on Apple Podcasts. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you're an introvert and you really don't enjoy in person events, but know that they're valuable and you should do them. Just set up yourself some micro goals. Even if that's like, hey, at this event I just want to get to know five people, get their contact, get to know them well and understand their business. Share my business. If at the end of a few days. I only meet five people. That'd be a win. Maybe that's a win for you and then you can up the ante next time around. But the point here is that just set yourself up so that, hey, you're not overwhelmed, but you go away with some concrete takeaways and benefits. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

Of. Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication, and you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.