Smart Business Ideas: What to do Before and After a Keynote Event
Mark’s “Sly as a Fox” program helps stimulates creative thinking.
It doesn’t teach you anything about how to make use of events, summits, and conferences for your business apart from specifics I teach about using creative thinking for solving business problems, creative thinking for management, and more.
Opportunities like Mark’s Da Vinci and the 40 Answers Keynote see thousands of people coming in and out, but no one is really doing what should have been done before attending an event.
If you thought that event was just about picking up yourself and heading to the venue, you are wrong. There’s a lot that can be done before and after the event to help you squeeze the money you spend. Here’s what you can do:
Start with a purpose
No one ever walks into an event, summit, or conference without knowing (at least in part) what to expect. But there’s more to your mere expectation from the event, which is usually the subject/theme the event is on. Beyond that, it could be new people, deals, connections, and arrangements you could walk away with.
- Start with a list of what you think you’ll pick from that event you are about to attend.
Could it the possibility of a powerful motivational speaker agreeing to write a foreword for your book? - Is it possible to find a few new customers for your business?
- How about finding a mentor to help you accelerate your entrepreneurial journey?
Keep that list on your Evernote (or in your pocket). Strike that.
Due Diligence makes you smart
Just walking into an event and building relationships (that’s one of the things you can do) is hard. It doesn’t give you any context to begin with and you’d really have to start from scratch.
Thanks to the Internet, you don’t have to. Most of your fellow attendees are all up to something. And they are something. Hit up their websites to find out who they are. Here’s a little about Mark, his book, his stint with building a 10,000-pound rocket, and his book titled Da Vinci and The 40 Answers, for instance.
Use social media, tools like Connect6Degrees, LinkedIn, or others to get to know who’s coming even before they actually arrive.
Imagine walking up to someone and say,
“ Hey Mike, how is your plumbing business coming along? Did you manage to hire a virtual assistant you were looking for the other day?”
Yeah, due diligence makes you smart.
Pre-connect to follow up later
Chances are that you already know a few people (without you knowing that you know them) even before an event starts. Some of those could be your 2nd or 3rd degree connections on LinkedIn. Maybe you follow them (or they follow you) on Twitter.
If you are looking up events online, you are likely to know who else is attending. From there, you can check to see if you can pre-connect.
Thrown in a word that you are heading to the event too.
Strike up a chat. Get the conversation started.
Do the social dance
Make a list of all the people you met, and the fallout of every meeting. Head out to check them out online and follow them on their social accounts – as many as possible. Then do the social dance.
What’s social dance, you ask?
You can follow them on social and keep supporting their cause. Comment on their updates. Leave your opinion on their social shares. Communicate with them. Retweet, like, and reshare what they are passionate about. Just keep in touch.
What do you do before and after an event? Tell me all about it.