EP 365 – Maximizing Your Speaking Opportunities

NCS 365 | Maximizing Speaking Opportunities

NCS 365 | Maximizing Speaking Opportunities

 

When you’re speaking at a conference or an event, you want to make it worth the audience’s time and make sure you walk out with some great students. The biggest thing you can do is just do the right things – show up early, play full tilt, and be respectful. You will often find that you’ll turn any event into something amazing that a lot of other speakers or attendees won’t get because they don’t play by those rules. Learn more about those rules as Scott discusses the three biggest things to consider when you are speaking in front of audiences that will help in maximizing your speaking opportunities.

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Maximizing Your Speaking Opportunities

I’m thinking what should I talk about in this episode? I thought, “Why don’t I talk about some of my habits to maximize my speaking events? How to maximize showing up to an event and how to capture the audience and make the most out of it?” One of the things that I like to do is I always like to come in the day before. If I’m speaking in the afternoon, I still want to come in the day before. I want to come in and just get settled. I’m tired. I’m jet-lagged. I want to come in. I want to stretch out a little bit. I want to unwind a little bit. I want to get something to eat. My travel preparedness starts before I jump on the plane. I’m a big proponent of not eating a heavy meal before you fly because the last thing I want to do is sit with a heavy meal. It’s not a good thing for three hours or two hours, however long it is. I don’t eat a big breakfast. I might have a breakfast taco at the airport, but I’ll have a cup of coffee. I might have a Red Bull.

Show Up Early

I’m usually pretty easy but fast about going to sleep as well. If I’m on a plane, I don’t sleep most of the time because I was using the time to market and reach out to different people. Add some people to my LinkedIn connections, some more real estate investors, some more podcasters and things like that. Along with reaching out and getting booked on other shows. I’m respectful. I try to talk to the flight attendants. I fly Southwest. I’m always the first one on the plane for the most part. I’m always A1. I get there, just visiting, just being present with the flight attendants. They offer me free drinks, “Thank you. I appreciate it. It’s a little too early for me.” I get a rental car. I’m pleasant. They bumped me up a free upgrade to a brand-new Ford Mustang convertible. I’m driving through the back roads, just enjoying a nice solid V8. If the weather was nice, I would drop a top-down convertible and enjoy it but still, it’s so nice to hit in that aspect and then I get in and get checked in pleasant.

The people at the hotel are like, “You came all the way from Austin? Do you need a glass of champagne?” I’ll take a glass of champagne and then I come in. I come up to the room, check it out real fast, making sure it’s going to work for me. It does. It’s a gorgeous room here, a brand-new casino, so what can be wrong with it? It’s a nice spot and a nice location. I go to find out where the meeting’s going to be at so I’m familiar with this. I try to see if anybody’s around, who’s handling the meeting. There was nobody there yet. They hadn’t started setting up the room. I come up in my room. I take out my shirt so I can hang them up. I see if I’ve got to do the poor man’s iron, throw them in the shower, getting them clean and unwrinkled, that way they look good.

Then I go down and get something to eat. I try to eat healthy there too. The only thing open is the buffet. I loaded up on a lot of vegetables and very little protein, but a lot of vegetables and some salad and a couple of glass of iced tea. I also start scouting out the event. There’s a spa here. There’s a casino. Do they offer massages just in case my back locks up? Which isn’t very likely because I’ve been doing good. Where’s the fitness center? The fitness center’s right around the corner. It’s open 24/7 with my room key. I can get in and get a little bit of cardio and loosen up my legs. I got a heavy lift day at my office with Thomas Nee, my trainer, so I can be loose as a goose and be ready to rock and roll because the thing kicks off at 8:00 AM.

That’s part of the reason I want to be here early too is I’ll take a nap for about two hours. I go down at night. I go downstairs at around 6:00 or 7:00 just to network with people, see what’s going on and be prepared. There are people sitting around and checking in coming for the event. You can tell because I can hear them saying, “I’m here for the Freedom REIA thing.” I start identifying people so that when I start talking, when I go into the room, I can identify who’s had a glass of champagne, who likes alcohol and who likes to joke around a little bit. That becomes part of my discussion is one of the jokes I use in identifying with my audience. I like to make them laugh in the first 30 seconds to a minute if I can.

I’ve come in. I relaxed a little bit. I get changed. I have to take a nap and take a shower just to cool off a little bit. I close the blinds so I can relax for a little bit. I’ll hit the gym. I’ll get prepped up there. I’ve already found that there’s a coffee bar right off my elevator. It has a fruit juicer so I can get some fruit shakes or protein shake in the morning versus a heavy breakfast which will help my energy go. I don’t know exactly when I’m speaking. I always want to prepare for the worst. If I’m right on in the morning, I’m sure I’m not right on in the morning, I’m sure I’m right before noon or right after noon, a prime spot, but I’m here all day.

Play Full Tilt

I have to prepare to make sure my energy stays up all day. I don’t drink a lot of coffee. I might have one or two cups. I always make sure to bring water. I was very fortunate enough, God shines on me. When I opened up the trunk of the Mustang, there’s literally three-quarters of a case of water sitting in the back seat there. When somebody dropped the car off, they don’t even check out the trunk. I got my water. I brought some bottles in. They’re in the fridge getting chilled for me. I can go down to the fruit smoothie place where I talk to them, “Do you serve stuff all day?” They’ve got perfect green smoothies for me. That’s the best thing I’d love to do.

NCS 365 | Maximizing Speaking Opportunities

Maximizing Speaking Opportunities: Always prepare for the worst and make sure your energy stays up all day.

 

If I’m speaking after lunch, I won’t eat lunch before I speak. I don’t like it. I don’t like the lethargicness of it. I don’t like being slowed down by that, which is what happens a lot of time. My goal is to hang around as many people here. Leon reached out to me. He is running the Freedom REIA here in Rochester. They were hoping to get 200 people. They’re not having 200 people here. They’ll probably have 110, 115, which is okay. It’s still what I want to do. If they’d gotten below, if they hadn’t gotten 100, I probably would have canceled on this because based on my time and my schedule, I want to at least be speaking in front of 100 people. Otherwise, I could just sit here and do a live stream and talk to you guys and talk to other people as well.

They have over 100 people, which is great. I’m going to be full-tilt. The thing too is people can find me pretty easily, but I don’t want to give them my business card. When I come to an event, I’ll have a flyer, which I got it printed out. I don’t care if it’s black or white or color. It doesn’t matter. There’s not a table for me. If there is a booth, I like to have some fun or a different swag. Some of them they take that, they’re going to market for me. I don’t like pins. I don’t like thumb drives. Thumb drives are great but they’re easy for people to walk away with. I want to give something that people are going to take and whether they know it or not, they’re going to do some brand awareness for me. They’re going to do some advertising for me.

One of the greatest things I love doing is I like going and getting these PopSockets. They would love them for their cell phone. It’s got my logo. The lady in the desk in the gift shop when I walked through there. I grabbed a nice shirt there because I spilled Ranch dressing on my other one. Stacy’s there and she’s like, “I like your PopSocket. Do you have more? Mine’s a little busted.” Sure enough, “I happen to have an extra one for you.” She’s been doing advertising for me throughout the weekend. I’ll give a few of those away throughout the event. I also like bringing stickers because a lot of us, we’re just grown up kids. I don’t like notepads because it gets thrown. They’re great for people taking them, but they don’t give a rat’s ass about this.

What I like to do is I want to give something that somebody can use. I pull up nice stickers that people love. They love these things. It’s not a small sticker, it’s a big sticker. They can put it on their water bottles. They put it on their laptops. They put it on their bumper. They put it somewhere where they’re going to carry with them. This is a little bit too big for their cell phone, but I also get some other things. I got some “I love notes” stickers and some nice stuff. I ordered my stuff from Sticker Mule. Some people are going to slap these on their laptop and they will be marketing for me. I ordered from Sticker Mule and these came in. I put a rush order. It’s inexpensive. I ordered about 500 different stickers. It was $200 because they are really nice. It costs me about $0.75 apiece and it varies. I want different sizes for different things, but these are going to be like hotcakes. This and the PopSockets are going to be like hotcakes. People are going to be walking billboards for me. I’m not just going to give it all out willy-nilly to people because there are two types of people that come to events.

This is why it’s important if you’re going to be speaking at different events out there. I know many people in our tribe like to speak. They’re looking to speak at different REIA clubs. They’re looking to start their own REIA club or start speaking on stage more. There are two classifications of people that show up to events. You have the people that are serious about it. They’re there to take notes to learn something. Then you have also the prize pigs and this goes back to my radio days. Prize pigs are people that show up for the free stuff all day long. They love free stuff. That’s what they do. They don’t buy anything. They just show up for the free goodies, the free candy, the free cookies and the free stuff. That’s why I don’t want my giveaways to be too expensive.

Sometimes I’ll bring my book. Sometimes I’ll bring a bunch of my books, which costs me about $5, $6 apiece to print for 100. I didn’t get any extra in time. It’s fine but these are cheap to giveaway. I’ll give this away. It’s going to work in my favor too. If they use it, great. It will be something they advertise for. When you start speaking, when you start going out to things too, you’re going to want to cut your teeth on free events or very cheap events like Meetup groups. Real estate club meetings, stuff like that where it’s $20 or free. That’s a great way to hone yourself, but when you start taking your time seriously, what you have to realize is if you’re going to an event, and this is one big thing that I have focused on is qualifying my audience. It’s not my audience. If I’m qualifying the audience, I’m speaking at is a better thing. I get real estate clubs calling me to come and speak and if they’re local, I don’t mind coming.

If it’s free, an hour, two-hour radius, I’ll go to it. If it’s Quest IRA or something like that, I’ll be glad to go to it. I know that Quest is doing a good job of qualifying their audience. If it’s a REIA club meeting that’s a couple hours away and it’s a free event, they don’t charge for the REIA, I don’t go into it. The reason for that is there will be no money in the room when you’re speaking and that’s not trying to sound arrogant. If I’m going and I’m offering up a class or something, I want to make sure if I’m going that people are willing to have the money to pay for it. I don’t want to go if it’s free because there is no investment on their part and free has no value. I want people that are going to value their time because if they’re coming to a free event, they don’t value their time, they’re probably not the ideal thing. It’s important across the board. Free has no value. I would rather talk to 100 people that have paid $100 to an event, than an event that has 1,000 people that have paid zero.

NCS 365 | Maximizing Speaking Opportunities

Maximizing Speaking Opportunities: If people are coming to a free event, they don’t really value it because there is no investment on their part. Free has no value.

 

I get pitched on going into these big business fairs and stuff like that, small business expo and I’m like, “How much does the person pay to be there?” “It’s free.” I’m not going to go. It’s not going to be worth my time. You want to pay $5,000 to go to an event, to have a booth, to have taken a time on my schedule where there’s no investment in the people coming. I want to go to an event where there’s investment on both sides. My time is valuable. What I’m bringing to the table, what I’m sharing and I’m not one of these guys who speak for 60 or 90 minutes and it’s all pitch. I’m going to give a good 60 to 75 minutes of good quality content before I offer my workshops.

The thing that is important is it’s an opportunity when they sign up for my workshop. They have an opportunity to learn something good. They’re going to get some great marketing. They’re going to get some great capital raised. If they don’t stick it with the notes, that’s fine. They’re going to at least get value and that’s one of the things I pride myself on is that we get a lot of people that reach out to me and say, “Scott, note’s not going to work out to me but I learned how to market from you. I learned how to use social media. I learned how to raise private capital from you and you help me on that form or fashion.” I’m totally fine with that.

I don’t need the money from teaching. Do I enjoy teaching? Does it add some money to me? I make some money teaching and speaking. It’s great. It adds some more money to our bottom line. It’s very easy. It adds investors. It helps me find deals. It helps me find buyers for my assets, which is the whole reason why I started speaking in the frontend. That comes across in my discussions. I give a lot of content. I can crack up and be funny about it. I can have a good time with my audience. I can poke fun at it, but I’m also there for the long haul. I’m not one of these people. I don’t like to fly in and speak and then be gone. I don’t think it’s fair to the audience. I want to be around the audience for the whole event, whether it’s one day or two days or four days. If I can’t do that, it’s very hard for me. I’ll give you a great example. Aaron Young, one of our great sponsors of the podcast with Laughlin Associates and a dear friend. He wants me to come to his Laughlin Associates’ the Magnify Your Wealth Summit. I went to the event for the day to meet with the attorney, to meet with Kevin Day, my asset protection and to meet with Brent Buscay who was working on my Rockefeller Strategy.

I don’t need to speak. It was great seeing Bill Griesmer and Eric Hyde there who were there taking the class, but I’m not there to speak. I just literally want to talk. I don’t need a booth. I don’t need to take appointments. I’m in for a few hours and I’m out. I don’t need to speak. I’m not pitching anything. I’m just here for myself to learn about that aspect. There are a lot of people that go there, but it’s not fair for me to just to show up and leave. I know some people do that. That’s fine. Some people don’t value my time, but I like it because I built a connection. People get a chance to know me a little bit more during that two days or three days by having lunch or having cocktails or being there in the morning to visit with them or being there late at night to talk with them.

I will be here from 8:00 AM or before that 7:30 probably until about 8:00 at night. I’ll be here all day. I might take a quick hour break to come up the room, freshen up a little bit after I speak and let the adrenaline rush cool me down a little bit. Freshen up and go back down there and play full-tilt because I’m excited to spend some time with Jeffrey Taylor, Mr. Landlord, who’s going to be speaking here. He and I are the two big names speaking here. I’m excited because in January in the Bahamas, the 16th to the 19th, Jeffery Taylor is having his Mr. Landlord Retreat at the Atlantis Resort and he’s asked me to become a speaker. I’m excited about that. We’re going to do some promotions and email blasts out. It would be a great thing for some of our mastermind and our note family and note tribe to go to as well.

You’ll see some information about it. I’m glad to hang out with Jeffrey, to visit with him and catching up. He’s asked me to come into a couple of his conferences around Memorial Day weekend every time. On Memorial Day for like the last few years, I’ve been on a boat and somewhere in the middle of the ocean for the most part. I’m excited and honored and that’s part of the reason I might look into this. They don’t have 200 people here, but at least they have 100, which is great. I talked with Leon who runs the club, he had great marketing ideas. He’s working on some stuff. We’ve made some other arrangements on some things. We’re going to make the best of this and have a great time.

The thing I want to say is I play full tilt and that’s one of the big things that a lot of people are afraid to do. I want to go sit into things. I want to learn something. I see so many times people go to an event and then they’re out in the hallway the entire time. They’re not inside listening. They think they’re too good to listen to what’s going on in stage with speakers. That’s the biggest travesty that you can do and the biggest disservice you can do to the people that invited you. If you paid and you want to do that, that’s completely fine, but if you’re there as a guest, you’re there as a speaker or you were there for free because somebody paid you into the event. You not being in the event, not talking, not listening and not networking with the other people that are attending is a disservice on your part.

NCS 365 | Maximizing Speaking Opportunities

Maximizing Speaking Opportunities: Be prepared to serve the audience that you’re at. Having a servant mindset when you’re speaking to them is very important.

 

I am very particular about where I go. I don’t speak at many expos or many summits anymore. If I already know most of the people in the room, it’s not worth for me speaking there. I’m excited to be here because I’ve not spoken here before in Rochester and it’s a great little event for me to be in and out for a day. I’m going to lose two days but I’ll get a little work done at night. I’ll be home and hopefully, add another 100-plus people to our database. A chunk of those will be students that will come to our note family. The thing I look at is if I can bring on five people, I want to do more than that. When I speak to an audience, especially if I’m allowed to sell my workshops, I want to hit at least 25% to 35% of the principals in the room. I don’t mean people. If you’ve got 100 people but there are married couples, that’s only 50 principals. Let’s just say there are 60 principals and so if I want to do 25% of those in the audience that means that would be fifteen sales. That would be a very nice day. A nice hour and a half that would pay for my time for the full day plus expenses and everything else. Whenever you’re speaking somewhere and you’re promoting something or selling something, there’s usually a split to the person who’s the promoter. I’ll be giving a chunk of that of my sales to the promoter here because they put on the event. They brought these people together. They worked their marketing to get people here and that’s an important thing.

These are my three principles of traveling. One, arrive early so you can be there and you can get settled in. Avoid the jet lag. The reason I also like to come early too is to avoid any flight delays. Any flight delays, you get bumped. You want to be here early. You wouldn’t want to fly in early. You try to fly out and your flight is delayed and you’ll never make it, then it puts stress on the event. I want to get here early so if my flight was delayed a couple hours, I still arrive early. Show up early. Get settled in. Figure your locations, get in your best mood and your best feel. Get the energy around you great. Get a good night’s sleep. Don’t drink a lot. Be prepared to give, to serve the audience that you’re at. Have a servant mindset when you’re out speaking to them. It’s very important. One of the things is as I walk in, “How can I give to the audience? How can I help deliver it?” That’s the first thing. By being able to deliver, I’ve got to be here and be in my best spirits.

Be Respectful

The second thing is be strategic in your marketing. If you’re able to talk and not to give away or not sell in a class, like I say swag is important or you will also use a thing like a text messaging service, “If you like my notes, text the word NOTES to 72000.” If I am speaking and I’m offering my workshop, I want to make sure and be around for those. Oftentimes while I’ll do pretty good sales at the frontend, over half of my sales usually come later in the day as I get a chance to visit with these people one-on-one and to talk with them. Let’s face it, whether it’s a $500 workshop or $1,000 workshop, the big thing is everybody values their money and I respect them for that. Especially when you got a one-day event or two-day event or three-day event, they may have a limited budget and you have to respect that.

I’m not a big fan of, “Go to the back of the room and sign up now.” Some people like to do that. I disliked it. It’s very cheesy. That’s my opinion. I want to offer a value to them and just hang out and give them chance to know me, give them a chance to see me. Get them a chance to jump online and see our social media profile. They can see the videos that we do. Provide all the extras that they don’t get in an hour, an hour and a half with me on the stage. We’ll have a good time. I promise that. They’ll understand that we’ll have a good time. We’ll get them laughing and they’ll learn something about the note business and walk away.

One of the most valuable things that I love is walking off stage and when people come to me, “You made notes a lot easier than I’ve ever seen it before. You made it sound a lot easier. You educated me, you didn’t talk over my head like a lot of people do. You didn’t make it complicated. You talked very simple layman’s terms that everybody can understand and that’s an important factor when you’re speaking to somebody too. When you’re speaking in front of an audience, you don’t want to confuse your audience whether it’s on a webinar or live. If you’re doing a PowerPoint, make it very organized, be respectful of the time. If the person speaking before was on time, they get off in time, you need to be respectful of the person after you.

There’s nothing ruder at an event when somebody goes over their time. If it’s at the end of the day, that’s a different thing. If the promoter tells you it’s okay to go a bit longer, we’ve got some flexible or somebody’s in early, that’s great. If there’s somebody who’s waiting to go right after you, that’s extremely rude for you to go longer. Be respectful of the time that they gave you. If you start going longer than an hour and a half, most people’s brains can only absorb what they can withstand. Most people need a break after an hour and a half. They need to get up, stretch their legs, went to the restroom, grab a cup of water, fresh cup of coffee or just reset their brain to get up, go outside and come back.

After an hour and a half, you’re just bludgeoning people to death with information. It’s important in your presentation when you’re talking not bludgeon them to death. Keep it humorous. Make it easy to read. Here’s another thing too when you’re giving a presentation at an event. If you’re speaking, if the promoter has given you a speaking spot, they’ve already given you power. You already have authority with the audience. For you to come up with a presentation and you have your first four slides be all about you or how awesome you are, that’s a disservice to the audience as well. You don’t need to tell how big and bad you are, you are already in front of everybody there. They already understand that. You want to keep the about you when you’re presenting to maybe just one slide. You want to offer up something that’s different. You want to grab their attention in the first couple of minutes and do something different. I’ll tell a joke or I’ll talk about the four shapes. What do they see? Try to get them to laugh. Part of that is baited with when I been here early to find out who’s drinking. Is this a drinking crowd? We’re at the casino, sex, drugs and rock and roll or gambling. I’ll make something to get everybody laughing and that’s when I got them. There are other times when I’ve come in before and there’s been a lot of uproar talking.

NCS 365 | Maximizing Speaking Opportunities

Maximizing Speaking Opportunities: Practice, practice, and practice. You should know your stories like the back of your hand.

 

One of the things I like to try to do, especially if it’s been a longer day. I’ll have them stand up in my first minute or two, turn around, stretch, give them a massage, back massage or whatever to the person next to them and then take it and then sit back down. Getting them the act of standing up and then the act of sitting down puts you in control of your audience and it’s a very important thing. If people are loud talking, you need to shush them. You need to get them to quiet. I’ve confiscated phones from people who were on their phones in the front who are distracting people around them. They may not like me, but I already knew if they were on their phones, they were not going to be my ideal client. They’re not going to be the ideal person because they don’t find value in what I’m doing. They’d be more of a distraction to the people next to them.

It’s okay to be a little bit an ass from the front of the stage if it’s going to be for the best of the audience. That’s one thing. I like to get everybody on the same page. I don’t like people talking and I want the room to be listening. If they’d be loud, I’m going to ask them to go outside or if the doors are open in the back and there’s a loud audience, I’m going to ask them to close the doors so that it doesn’t distract from those in here. We’ve all been there. When we get there late, we went to the back two, three rows and all we can hear when we hear somebody speaking is the people behind us out in the hallway or in the back of the room. It’s important to get them to shush. Get them to be quiet and go from there. Just be yourself and be great.

Don’t have 50 million slides. Understand the 10, 20, 30 rule when it comes to giving a presentation. Ten slides equal twenty minutes of content in 30-point font. If you’re going to have to put more on the screen on your PowerPoint slides that caused the font to shrink down in the low twenties. The eighteen is too small and nobody can see it. I’ve already scouted out my room. I know what the room’s going to set up. There’s not an aisle down in the middle, which I like having an aisle down in the middle. It’s a little bit awkward room and all the stuff there. I don’t have to go to the sides of the audience. I know I’m going to have some pictures. I don’t have to go back and tweak my slides to add a few things to keep their focus on the slides, which is important. Steph always wonders why I’m always tweaking my slides the night before, “Why can’t you just use the same presentation?” and I often am using the same presentation 90% of the time.

I made a little bit of extra things. I’m tweaking some dates. I’m tweaking a few different images. I’m tweaking up my stories that I tell because that’s another thing too. If you’re speaking, don’t just read from the PowerPoint. It does you no good to turn your back on the audience and read from the PowerPoint. It’s a disservice. If that’s the case, just give them a PowerPoint and go home. What you want to do is have your PowerPoint serve as your highlighted items. Take your notepads. We’re going to talk about four or five points on a slide. It’s like an index card, four or five points. Here’s the story one, story two, story three, story four. You should know your stories like the back of your hand. This is one of the great things that I’ve had speaking coaches tell me about that have taught me and my buddy, Greg Reid, told me this. Get to know your six or seven stories or your four or five stories you can tell them and know it inside and out. Practice it. I practiced and said my same stories a lot of times. I add different examples because I don’t want the example from four years ago being the same thing.

You practice your stories to the point where you know exactly when to pause and you know when the audience is going to gasp or they’re going to sigh. You practice and practice. It makes you a better speaker. It makes you a better educator. It makes you a better salesperson when you can talk with the audience and have a conversation that goes back and forth with them like that. I’ve got to learn that from speakers like Greg and so many people out there that I’ve learned from speaking over the years. Another thing that I love going to is I love going to comedy shows, standup comedy, comedy club and watching the comedy guys. The comedians, the male and female comedians and listening to their jokes and their puns and how they work in the audience and how they can joke back and forth to people individually.

That’s one of the most valuable things that has helped me be a better speaker. I have seen people bomb doing that and I realized, “What did they do wrong? What did they do good? What did they do wrong?” When I speak, I’m always the most difficult person. I am the biggest critique of my own stuff. I wonder how I did. What did I do good? What did I stumble on? I usually know what I did, but I want to see if anybody else picked it up. What’s the final headcount? That’s always a big thing I like to know because I keep it for myself and knowing how I can compare that to how I ended up closing the things. When you come to an event, when you start speaking, you’ve got to realize this is a craft. It’s another muscle that you have to work on and you’re not going to be great at it right off the bat. I have never known a great speaker to be excellent at it right off the bat. It takes time. You’re going to screw up and go from there.

We have a question, “How much have you learned from Esther’s Follies in Austin, Texas?” There are some great things. I’ve learned some great stuff. I don’t want to say I’m a magician. I’ve learned just joking about that stuff. I think more so than anything else is don’t be afraid to make fun of yourself. I will joke at myself throughout the presentation in a good way just to get everybody feeling at home. I have a tendency sometimes they’ll let too many cuss words slide out. I always try to watch that depending on my audience and where my audience is at. I’ll still say it because every once in a while, it slips out. It also depends on the mood that I’m in.

Try to always go into your speaking event or to a conference in a good space. Do not let little things distract you. Do not let other people’s negativity or other people’s negative energy drag you down. If you could avoid them, avoid that crap. Quite so often, it’s good to get away sometimes. To go to a quiet space and focus on where you’re at. Bring a positive energy. If you bring a negative energy, a lot of people can feel it and sense it immediately. It’s something that they don’t want to be a part of and they want to walk away from, so be positive. Show up early and be prepared. Play full-tilt and be respectful of your audience and your time. Those are three of the biggest things that you can do when you’re out at an event, whether you’re speaking or you’re just showing up in networking. If you show up and play full-tilt, you’ll never know when an opportunity may present itself that you may get thrown in or thrust into the thing. I had some things happen.

I went to a summit in St. Louis a few years ago. It was in February and a blizzard blew in and they went from having 200 people to 75 people. We arrived before the blizzard comes in. Over half the speakers weren’t able to make it for a two-day event. I had my speaking event, but I ended up having three other speaking events to fill because the promoter came to me and he’s like, “I’ve got a spot. Would you be able to talk about anything? Would you be able to add anything or do a second discussion on things?” I’m like, “I can talk about raising capital or I can talk about marketing.” It allowed for it to be one of my most successful events speaking-wise because I was flexible. What I did was I was able to get the chance to know the audience a little bit better. I adjusted my pricing to take advantage of what was going on in the audience there so that everybody could chime in because everybody’s pretty good. I wanted to make it worth their time to make sure I walked out with some great students.

The biggest thing I can tell you is just do the right thing. Show up early, play full-tilt and be respectful and you’ll often turn an event into something amazing that a lot of other speakers or attendees just won’t get because they just don’t play by those three rules. I want to thank all of you for tuning in. For those that are on iTunes, on Stitcher, on Roku, the Smart TV channels, iHeartRadio, Spotify and Google Podcast, thank you so much. I’m always humbled at the amount of downloads that we are getting and those that respond back with emails and the comments on the social media platform. Thank you so much for being part of our note family. If you could do us a huge favor, go out, subscribe and leave a review on any of those channels. I would be very appreciative that you would do that. Once again, go out and take action. When you’re going to an event, keep those three things in mind. I guarantee you’ll do a lot better and before too long, we’ll see you all at the top.

 

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