247 – Small Meetings can make Big Money: Tom talks How to do a Live Event

Episode 247 – How To Do A Small Local Event
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, it's Tom here with episode 247 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today I'm going to talk about how to do a live local event. Except it won't be just local. Now, I'll tell you about that, shortly. See, in this episode, I'll give you a bunch of tips to make happy attendees, keep your expenses low and make lots of money. I hope you didn't miss episode 246. That's Denise Wakeman. This is the second time she's been on. And this is the second lifestyle business she's loving in the travel field. You'll be amazed. She's the only one that's ever talked about this on the show. So check that out. Episode 246. All right. Grab a copy of our automation e-book. We sell it for twenty seven bucks, but you get it free for listening to Screw the Commute podcast. Just check it out at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and you will thank me because this thing saved me carpal tunnel. We figured it out a couple years ago. Just one of the things in the book saved me seven and a half million keystrokes and allows me to have the reputation of taking care of customers and prospects lightning fast. And that'll do the same thing for you. screwthecommute.com/automatefree and everything we talk about, of course, is always in the show notes This is episode 247. So you go to screwthecommute.com slash 247. All right. While you're over there, hey, why not grab a copy of our podcast app? It does all kinds of cool stuff on your cell phone and tablet. We have training, video training and screen capture training. You know, a lot of apps just throw them at you and you've got to figure it out on your own. Well, no, we don't roll that way. We're gonna show you how to use it so you can take advantage of all the cool features so that's screwthecommute.com/app. All right. Our sponsor is the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia. It's a distance learning school which teaches legitimate techniques to make a great living, either working for someone else or starting your own online business. And guess what? After eleven years, we're starting in house classes. So check that out. And we're also applying for the G.I. Bill. And I'm trying to get some help here. We're giving big scholarships to veterans and I need a CPA accountant that is veteran friendly to possibly do some work. So if anybody knows of anybody, have them get in touch with me right away. Thanks so much. And while you're at it and IMTCVA.org, that's the school address. Take the quiz. Just put forward slash quiz. It'll be in the shown notes too. And get mad because you're going to see the seven different ways colleges and universities are ripping off families and contributing to this massive student debt. And the kids are competing for jobs at Starbucks after they get their MBA. So it's really bad. So take that quiz over there, but be prepared to be mad and pass it on to other people. You know, that might help. Thanks so much.

[00:03:51] All right. Let's get to the main event. We're talking about running small local events for cash and to promote your business. And I'm talking about an indoor local event, by the way. Maybe up to 30 people. I guess you could go as high as 50 people, but the complexity rises the more people you have.

[00:04:11] So let's talk about making money with these events. All right. Well, one ways you can charge admission or you can have a free event. Now, if you have a free event, I'm going to make a suggestion that you might want to collect no show deposits because so many people sign up for free stuff. I know I was in that meetup thing for a while. Thirty people would sign up and then you'd have one or two people show up. So. So no show deposits might be a way to go. Now, if you do a no show deposit, I suggest it's it's advertised as they'll get him back after at least half of the event. So they can't just show up that morning and grab it and leave again. And there's a couple reasons for that. One of the things you can do is off, you know, after they fall in love with you because you're going to do a great event. Right. Because you've learned all my speaking techniques and you wake them up and you're great on stage, right? Right. Right, right. Well, if not, you better get some help, because last thing you want to do is attract people and then have them laughing at you because you suck so bad onstage. All right. So so anyway. I want them to love you. And then at that point where they love you, then you could say, well, you can apply the no show deposit, I'll give it back to you right now or you can apply it to a product or service. All right. So you don't want to do that first thing in the morning because you know that you may have not proven yourself to these people yet. So there is a little technique for it.

[00:05:53] Another way to make money is to sell products and services at the event. Another way is to stimulate sales of later services. Now, for financial, I get every my fancy neighborhood out there every day I get a invitation to go to some steakhouse. I know they're going to hammer me to try to invest in their financial planner business. But anyway, that's very common. They and they spend a lot of money to do it, too. So it's I'm sure it's paying off for them because they keep doing it. I mean, even a long time ago, I went to one with a plumber and it was a do it yourself thing on how to remodel your bathroom or something. Something like that. Can't remember. It's been awhile. And once I saw all the things it took, you know, this is the smart plumber. You know, you could try to do it yourself, but, you know, you could have massive leaks and not know what you're doing and everything goes wrong and then it costs more to fix it. So so that's a smart plumber. And a lot of people right there on the spot signed that plumber up to do their bathrooms. So so you could do all kinds of stuff. So that was stimulate sales related services.

[00:07:11] Now you can get sponsorship even if it's a small group, if you have a targeted group. What if it was 20 CEOs from Fortune 500 companies? OK. Just 20 people. Well, you'd have people knocking you down to sponsor the event. But even small events I've been to, you see people selling jewelry, selling cosmetics, printing, you know, even with some of the groups or 20 or 30 people. But there was loads of sponsors there. So what I would do if I was going to try that, I'd say, OK, if I put 30 people there, it's going to be 50 bucks. If I can't put 30, it's just going to be 20 for you to come and be a sponsor. Now, I'm just throwing numbers out here. All right. But I mean, if you were you know, if you're meeting was stock investors or real estate investors, it might be a hundred or two hundred or five hundred dollars for a sponsor or, you know, for small groups. I mean, in bigger groups, it's a fifteen hundred two thousand twenty five hundred. So so it can go pretty high depending on the nature of your group. But you have to put people in the crowd or you'll have some upset vendors. That's the whole thing. If you're just starting out at this, but you can get sponsorship and you can video and sell the videos around the world, that's why I said this is not necessarily a local event. See, I've been I've done over 3000 presentations in 12 countries and I love speaking at big events, but I can't stand. I think I threw one big event with like one hundred and forty people and it just drove me crazy. I don't like that. I even had a meeting planner and I still was too much trouble for me. I like to speak at the big events and then they get a percentage of my sales, but I don't like to set them up. So my butt camps for the last several years, I just do them at my school with a very small crowd in the crowd. And so it costs me nothing for a hotel, very little and refreshments. And we videotape it and then sell the videos. Hundreds of those around the world say so it's a local event, but it's not really local. If you videotape it. All right. So that's that's another way to make money.

[00:09:33] Now, you can see if you don't have a lot of your own products, you can sell affiliate products at an event and I just mentioned about guest speakers. That's what I do quite frequently around the world. But you can have guest speakers and get a percentage of their sales. So typical is 50 percent. I'm you know, I've I've negotiated better deals because I'm kind of a headliner. And, you know, I pay 30 percent, which, you know, I can reveal that now because I don't do it as much anymore. I've had to kind of keep it under my hat because the promoters didn't want all the other speakers trying to jockey for a better deal. But I proved myself over a long period of times. So I made that money all the time. So they they went along with it. Ok. So anyway, those are ways to make money. Now, where to have it? Well, really small events you could have right in your home. I mean, I used to do butt camps over above my garage where I now have my TV studio. So you can do it in your home in a rec room or something. If you're only five, 10, 15 people maybe have a big living room. No problem there. So you had knock out all those potential hassles and expenses. You could book a small room at a hotel, and I'm going to talk about hotels a little bit more a little later. Libraries have rooms available or places available to have you just have to call them up, see what their parameters are, whether they allow for profit things and so forth. Nonprofit groups can get really nice rooms at electric and gas companies and hospitals. A lot of them have gorgeous meeting rooms and theaters. And if it's a nonprofit event, then you can sometimes, you know, they do it for goodwill for the community and sometimes they'll put their AV person there for you and help you in any way just to look good in the community. So. So if it's a nonprofit thing now, we do them like that with fundraisers. So I hook up with a nonprofit group and it's a fundraiser for a nonprofit. But we never bother telling the gas company or the electric company that, you know, with the method that I teach for fundraisers. I'm getting half of the money. OK. So, you know, we're split splitting the money. But still, by leading with the nonprofit, you can get all kinds of fantastic perks. And it's technically a charitable function. It is. It's just that there is expenses and I'm the expense.

[00:12:14] Now many restaurants have private rooms. Again, I mentioned the financial planners do this all the time. You know, they have a really nice steak dinner for you or something. And then they make their pitch in a private room. I mean, even restaurants are renting out commercial kitchens in off hours for classes. You got to be creative. I mean, I also heard of a school renting out their gymnasium for different activities and stuff. So to make extra money. So just be creative. If you see a space you like, make a deal with them. You know, some places would love to see you bringing in more people to display what they have for sale. Like like some workout places and dance studios and things like that. Martial arts places, they have big areas and you let them make a little presentation to your group and then off hours and now people, they might get some new students, dance students or martial arts students or whatever. See so you got to be creative here.

[00:13:20] And maybe you do woodworking and and you do it use your shop as a classroom. You know, so like I said, be creative. I use my video studio, obviously to do video classes, you know, so. So there you go. Now, let's talk about hotels a little bit more, because I'm not trying to talk you out of hotels, but I'm giving you fair warning that you can lose your shirt and not even know it until it's too late. So here's just a couple of things about hotels. The first thing is you want to know how many square feet you need, and and keep in mind the number of people a room will hold can vary wildly depending on the room setup. So when I do my butt camps at hotels, I I like to have about 20 feet from the wall behind me to the first row of seats. Well, that takes up a lot of space out of a room at the front of the room with my table and projector and room for me to roam around a little bit. So you have to allot for that when you figure out your square footage. Now, it's obvious that if you just had chairs in the room, you could fit more people than you could with tables and chairs and with regular classroom tables. You can fit more people than you can with round tables. Now, a hotel person will be asking you all this stuff, and if you don't have answers, they know they're dealing with a newbie and I hate to say it, but you're more likely to get taken advantage of and it can be for a lot of money. Here's an example. Let's say they gave you a price of one hundred and fifty bucks for the room for all day. Well, what is all day? What time can you get in? If you go past a certain hour and you're not out of the room, do you get charged extra? If so, how much? And what if you hook into their sound system? Is that included in 150? Or are you going to be charged another hundred fifty? All right. When you get the bill at the end of the day, I mean, there's tons of things like this to watch out for. And I suggest you get a meeting planning book that will give you a checklist of what to watch out for and what to ask. And in hotels, make the bulk of their money on food service and coffee and soft drinks, etc., and it's all plus gratuity plus service charge plus whatever else they can get away with it, which is usually like triple plus on top of whatever the cost was. And sometimes if you book in the food, the room is free, but are water stations included in their room for free. Or is that extra some charge on consumption for the food service. Well which in some cases is easy like. OK. You use twenty seven cans of soda. But here's one that gets you gets people all the time. What about coffee by the gallon and which they happen to refill three times even though they didn't need it while you were busy handling your meeting. And now you get charged three times as much and it can be 50 to 100 bucks a gallon for coffee. Okay. So. So these are things that can really bite you in the butt in hotels. And you can't bring refreshments into the hotel unless your event was about, let's say, making pastries or something. But you must tell the hotel and get it in writing. I mean, I've seen I was at a meeting one time. It almost got shut down because the guy running the meeting snuck in a whole bunch of food for everyone and he knew better. And there was very tense there out there.

[00:17:12] Now, if it's an all day meeting, maybe it's lunch on their own. And so it's good for you to provide a list, the local restaurants and Starbucks and things, so people know where stuff is. So it doesn't. So they're not all, you know, half hour late, getting back from lunch, blowing your meetings. Here's another thing at hotels. I was in Chicago at a union hotel and I just need an extension cord with a power strip on it. No big deal, right? Both of them together. It costs me $15 at Wal-Mart. Right. And I actually had some with me. Could I use them? No, I couldn't use them. I had to get an electrician for two hundred dollars to come to plug in the extension cord. And they also charged me another 25 or 50 bucks. I had some outrageous thing for the power strip on the end of the extension cord. I mean, this is serious stuff. And this was a long time ago. It's hard to tell what it is now. And I couldn't rearrange seats like I usually do to make sure everybody can see. You know, I do all this stuff in the setup period before people get there. I check the seating, make sure everybody can see and it's comfortable and everything. But no, I couldn't move the seats around. I had to have their people do it. So it was a massive amount of money that for stuff that you wouldn't have prepared for had you not known.

[00:18:42] A really good tip to know is to know all the stuff you need to know and then play hotels against each other. I mean, don't lie because a lot of the salespeople know each other. In other words, you can't say the Marriott offered you a fifteen hundred square foot room for 50 bucks because the westin person will call down to their friend that the other hotel and ask him about it. Now, if it if it was, let's say, two hundred and seventy five bucks and they were going to throw in free Wi-Fi at the Marriott. Hey, you can be darn sure. I'm going to tell the person at the Westin after they were going to charge me 350 bucks plus Wi-Fi and I'm going to play those hotels against each other. So that's perfectly legitimate as long as you're not lying and you can really get stuff down. If if if it's anything close and it's not, they're giving away the farm. You can make a lot of good deals just with that one tip.

[00:19:42] All right. So some other considerations about the room. Don't put out too many chairs, stack extra chairs in the back so the place doesn't look empty. If you have less people show up than expected, even if you're expecting 20. I would put out ten chairs. All right. Cause I don't want empty chairs. It looks really bad. It looks like a dead nightclub. You know, somebody comes in, it looks like this is pitiful. So don't put out too many chairs and try to plan breaks. You know, try not to go more than an hour and 15 minutes, maybe an hour and a half at the most before you have breaks.

[00:20:19] Something else to consider is signage and either indoor, outdoor or both. Well, if you know, if it's a community center, they might not have any, you know, ability to make signs. You have to have a sign out front. And what if it rains? It make sure the sign doesn't disintegrate on you. And if it's hard to find a meeting room, you've got to talk to the hotel about it. Can you put up, you know, easels pointing with a big arrow with a poster on it, pointing towards where your group is going to be? Because, you know, I've been you know, with, like I said, three thousand meetings. I've had every crap meeting you can imagine. And, you know, people roll in in forty five minutes late because on a massive hotel in Vegas, I mean, it was literally a mile walk from my hotel room to where the meeting room was. You know, so people get lost, they can't find anything. So. So you got to think about that because that can ruin the whole start of your meeting, get you thrown off for the whole day.

[00:21:21] So signage, you're going to need a helper for registration. You know, if you have started to get 20, 30 people or more, you know, you're trying to be ready to be onstage and and people rolling in asking questions and this and that, you're probably going to need a helper. It can be just about anybody. It's not a really highly skilled job. As long as they're personable then. But you're probably going to need one and maybe another one inside or outside the room, you know, whichever, you know, depending on how hard it is to find the room. What about a coat rack if it's cold? Now, here's another big thing is parking. Free is always best. All right. But, you know, a community center probably gonna be free. But if it's a hotel, it could be paid and you can be darn sure people are going to walk in and say, hey, I need this validated since I'm at your meeting, you know? So you you'll have to pay for all that parking. So you got to think about those things if you're going to book a book, a room in a hotel. Now, some of the hotels that are out, you know, motel, you know, Marriott. Not Big Marriotts like are downtown but the garden inn kind of things they usually have free parking easily. You know, no validation necessary.

[00:22:39] All right, so another thing in the room. Logistics. Where's the windows? You don't want to set up. And then there's people in bikinis and, you know, bare chested, you know, buff guys walking behind you at the pool. Yes. So pay attention to where the windows are. You know, tell people where the restrooms are if if it's going to be an all day thing. And it's not in a hotel. Maybe you got to have a look at a refrigerator there. Kitchen where people are microwave. People are bringing their own food. You know, some places I've been there was no restaurants around. There was some community center way out in the boonies and people brought their own lunches. But, you know, they they have to sit there all day. So luckily, the place had a refrigerator to put it in. Think of these things. Yeah, to think of the location of the doors when you are setting the room up because you don't want the doors anywhere near where your presentation is because late comers and people go in the bathroom are always interrupting you. So you want to the entrance and exit doors on behind the people so that it's not disruptive of people coming and going.

[00:23:50] And then there's just so many things folks and doors make noise. So you might have a keep a can of WD 40 with you if the doors are all squeaky and sometimes we put duct tape, have some duct tape with it, a duct tape over the latch of the door. So it's not making a bunch of noise. And we've even put a old box of Kleenex because the the door would slam shut. Every time somebody would go in. So so we tape duct taped a box of Kleenex. So it was a buffer. All this stuff can really drive you crazy if you don't think about them and check them out all day? That's another reason you should get a thing of amazing public speaking. It's ninety seven bucks for a whole year and it's got four hundred and seventy five videos of showing you all these things of being great onstage, but also all these things that happen in hotel rooms. I just kept a video camera with me is doing all these speeches around the world and I notice things that are wrong and I videotaped them and put them in that site so that you can see, oh, boy. I never thought of that. Like, for instance, risers.

[00:25:04] Yeah, I think that's coming up next. In little rooms, you don't really need them. In fact, it's weird. I've been in small rooms with a three foot what riser. It's like you're your flying over the room. It's just stupid. But maybe the room was set up that way and you have to use it while you also have to step on it ahead of time to see if it squeaks. If you're someone that wears high heels, you've got to make sure that the grooves are that where they come, the risers come together. There's no gap there that's going to catch your heel and break your ankle or break your shoe or whatever.

[00:25:40] So these are all things you check out. Backdrops. You can spend as much on a backdrop as for the whole room, you know, with these velvet backgrounds. So you got to look at the room, see? You know, is it a pleasing background or is it looks so bad that you need to rent a backdrop to put in there? So those are some things you think about. Then you got to think about tables or no tables. Now, one thing I did, I usually don't like tables. I want people packed in as tight as possible. But when it's an all day event and they have to take a lot of notes, that can be troublesome. So the last thing I did is I went on my buying apps and bought a bunch of used tray tables. So people that didn't care didn't want to just sit back and listen. They didn't have to have a table and other people that want to put their laptop up and so forth. Then they had a tray table. I mean, I have school class, classroom tables available. But, you know, you're kind of stuck with a six further eight foot table where these tray tables were nice. You could move around very easily. So that was another little angle.

[00:26:46] Let's talk about audio visual that, by the way, folks, everything I'm covering, you know, when you get into it, there'll be 100 times more things that you'll run into. But I'm warning you about all the major areas here. All right. Audio visual, well, projection screen. You know, most of the time people are going to do speeches with projection or PowerPoint or something. I don't use PowerPoint, but I project videos and graphics and things like that. So one of the tricks you can use if there's a big white wall somewhere you can get away of without hiring a screen, okay. Or bring in a screen with you. But it's hard to get that all the time. So you might have to get a projection screen sometimes if you know, with that kind of stuff. You can bring your own stuff in. You always check with the hotel, but you could. You can buy those used, you know, a portable projector screen with, you know, it's on a little tripod and we're talking small crowds, remember? So if it's a massive crowd, you don't want to be, you know, you're just gonna have to take the screen that's in the room or get an AV company. But for little crowds, you can have a portable screen. You can even sit it on a table if it needs to be raised up a little bit higher and your biggest expense besides, you know, even if you're doing it out of your home is a projector. You know, those things can be three hundred to three thousand bucks. And then the thing is, is if you live far from like a Best Buy or something. What happens if the bulb goes out? You have a spare bulb. You have a spare projector so you can ruin your whole thing if you're if you're supposed to show a lot of visuals.

[00:28:32] Electricity for you and the participants. Now, my classroom at my school has plugs in the floor, spread out through the classroom, which is nice, but if you're gonna run cords you need to get a nice, big, thick duct tape and tape them down so people don't trip and then sue you.

[00:28:48] Then sound systems well, in hotel rooms, frequently you can plug in to their sound system, but again, it may cost you. You need to check it out and and it may suck because, you know, unless they give you a mixing board and a way to adjust the volume and stuff. You know, you you you know, you're kind of at their mercy because you you might have to run a sound person. And that's a lot of money. Now, one of the reasons that I just one of the reasons that I promote handheld microphones is because most of this time when you're doing these small things, you don't have a sound person. You don't have a big mixing board and some buddy watching. That's very competent watching your audio. So with a handheld mike, you can adjust it. You know, just by moving it a little bit further or closer to your mouth. But if you have a clip on Mike, you're stuck and you have to keep running to the controls some wherever they happen to be, which they could be clear on the other side of the room. And then you're interrupting things all day long. So so that's no good. So that's why I like hand-held microphones or one of the reasons anyway.

[00:30:03] Now. It's handy if you're going to do a lot of these things to purchase a portable sound system. Now they make them for presenters, but they're way overpriced. All they did was put something together into a package for you and call it a portable presentation, sound system. And that's cool and they're nice and they work. But for years and years and years, I just went down to the music store and bought a very small portable amplifier speaker for guitars. Okay. And then I got made sure I had the right things to be able to plug into it. And then you can sit it under your table and it's good for 30 to 50 people. Now, if it gets bigger than 50 people, you got to turn it up so loud that the people in the front rows get blown out so that it's loud enough in the back row. So this is good for, like I said, up to 30 people or so. And you don't have to be screaming the whole time. And also, it's always good to have a sound system from me talking to you from a perspective as a top pro speaker that you want to be able to use your voice inflection. And if you have no sound system, you can't go up to somebody and whisper because the people in the back row won't hear it. So you're stuck with talking loud all the time. So so anyway. It's called a guitar amp. And they're portable. And I plug in some even have battery operation, but you're probably going to plug it in and then you just have to have a microphone to plug into it. I actually plug. It's got more than one input. So I plug my laptop into it so I can play videos off my laptop. And that sound goes through the the portable sound system.

[00:31:56] OK, then you got to think about if you are selling the videos, you've got to have a video setup, somebody to operate the videos. It's just it would just be terrible for you to try to do that yourself because you'd have to just stand in one place. And yeah, they have these motorized things that'll follow you around the room, but that would just be ridiculous because somebody else would stand up to go to the bathroom. And the thing would catch on to them and watch them go into the bathroom. So if you're gonna get video, you know, set up for it make sure the lighting is good and make sure somebody knows what they're doing is running the camera or cameras. We use two cameras at butt camp just as a backup because so many people bought the video. If the one camera failed or something failed, I had to refund all the money. I don't want to do that. See, so. So if you're going to video and you're selling the videos, then you probably need two cameras. So that's that.

[00:32:54] Let's see. Think of where you're if you're going to get a room, you've got to think about the ceiling height. Okay. Because most hotel rooms are 10 feet plus some are 20, 30 feet high. But I saw this guy one time. He had this really cool, you know, exercise he was going to do with balloons, but you needed really high ceiling height for it. And the ceiling height ended up being like a normal home ceiling, eight feet. The whole thing looked just stupid. Right. You know, you needed that 20 feet to make the whole thing work. But if I had eight feet. And so I looked as stupid. So check the ceiling height.

[00:33:38] Now, also, be careful and check the wherever the projection screen is to get make sure there's no lights. There's usually lights in the ceiling and they wash out the screen. So you have to take the bulbs out above the screen. Of course, you can't climb up there and do it at any hotel and you have to call ahead of time the maintenance people and they come with this long pole and unscrew the bulb. You know, that kind of thing. Luckily, sometimes if the room's set up right, they can turn a switch and turn that bank of lights off. So it's not washing out the screen on you because there's nothing worse having all these beautiful visuals that look like hell because there's light on the screen. You don't want light on the screen. You just want the projector light the hit on the screen.

[00:34:27] All right, now, running the meeting, I always have hand outside, I have all kinds of information on my wake him up system about handouts, but I always have handouts. Be careful that where you put the projection screen, usually if you're right handed, it's going to be off to the right side of the room. If you're left handed off to the left side of the room, a lot of people put him right behind you. And sometimes you have to if they're on the wall and stuck on the wall. But then you have to be very careful not to be walking in front of it all the time and causing your shadow across the screen. Also, make sure you repeat questions, especially if you're videotaping. So the people at home don't say I couldn't tell what you're talking about. Give me my money back. And of course, if you have guest speakers, you have to, you know, know they have to know all this stuff, too. And you can certainly remind them a lot of times I've had guest speakers in and they'll just start answering and question. I'll say repeat the question, you know, just to remind them so that doesn't ruin my video.

[00:35:30] All right, so before I get into promoting the thing, I really wanted to encourage you to go to that school of mine Web site and take the college rip off quiz. Now, it may not apply to you, but I guarantee you, you know, somebody that you got nephews, nieces, grandchildren, your children or somebody that's older that's trying to re-educate themselves. Pass it on to them, please. It only takes two minutes to take it. But it could save them hundreds of thousands of dollars. It could save the young people in your life being in debt forever, competing for jobs at Starbucks and coming out with no marketable skills, in fact. Google, Apple, Bank of America, IBM and hundreds of other companies have knocked out the requirement of having a college degree because you're getting all these people out of college have no skills. I mean, just because they got an A in art history, they can't do anything. And so these hundreds and hundreds of major companies are getting rid of that requirement because they want people that can actually do things. All right. And you don't need a college degree anymore for most professions. In fact, one of the presidents of the college said, you know what? Only 20 percent of our graduates even get close to working in the job they majored in, you know. So people have been brainwashed for 100 years that you got to get a college degree. But if you see that the way they're ripping you off when you take that two minute quiz, you're going to be mad because, you know, I have this TV show in Hollywood in development called Scam Brigade. You can see the trailer at scambrigade.com. So I know a lot about fraud. And these colleges and universities should be in jail, a lot of them for what they're doing. It's totally fraudulent, but they get away with it because the whole world's brainwashed. Oh, it's a college. You got to go along with it. That's crazy. There's a thing called the new collar worker. It's not blue collar with a jackhammer and it's not white collar working for a bank. It's the new collar worker. It's doing all this Internet stuff. And, you know, that's all the digital marketing, all the emails of shopping carts, all these things are where the money is. And that's why I have a school for that. So anyway go over there to IMTCVA.org/quiz and take the quiz only take your two minutes then pass it on to somebody.

[00:38:08] All right. Let's talk about promoting the meeting and things. You've got to think about the time of day and the day of the week is something you've got to think about. I can't tell you what is going to work best for you. It depends on your market and and it can totally make or break your meeting. If you don't consider these things. So, you know, I'm going to do a session for chiropractors. And so I'm trying to see I'm going to say, OK, or they closed on Saturdays so I can do maybe a three hour session on a Saturday for chiropractors. Or is it better to do it in the evening or better to do it early morning? I don't know because I don't know that market, but I'm going to think it out and I'm going to, you know, look at it what appears to be the best time when they could attend and the day of the week, same thing. You know, if it's somebody that's if you're going after a crowd of entrepreneurs, but they're still working jobs, chances are you better have it on a Saturday or Sunday, probably a Saturday or an evening seminar. So they can still go to work and then still come do your thing.

[00:39:17] So you've got to think about that and you need a Web site and the details and put everything you can on the details page and you must have a cancellation policy. If it's a paid event and of course, still, if if you're doing a no show deposit, if they don't show, you'll get people say, well, you know, I need the money back. You know, I didn't know it was a no show deposit. You turkey, lurkey. I mean, you didn't show up. That was the whole point. So. But you get people. Yeah. So just get everything in writing on your Web site. And so people know what they're expecting. And when they they register, what's going to be on a Web site, folks, if you don't have it on a Web site, you're looking kind of ghetto or ancient, you know, so. So you got to learn that. Get it on a Web site, but also list it at like Eventbrite and other ticket places because people might just trip on this by search. You know, seeing what events are coming up on the weekend and if yours is listed there may cost me nothing. I put it in Eventbrite and one other place that's, you know, big around Virginia Beach. And so it was free advertisement. That's that. And you can have Early Bird pricing if it's a paid thing and then pre registration pricing. And then at the door, it's much higher. So you want to know who's coming and get all that money and you're in your hands before they get there. Now, I don't have much luck with Craigslist. You get a lot of numb nuts on Craigslist that that flag you for everything because they got nothing better to do. So I haven't had much luck listing events on Craigslist, but there's community events sites in many communities. They just give you a free listing if you just tell them what what you got going. You can e-mail it to people. You can put Facebook ads in or, you know, we're just on your regular social media. You can put signs up. What if you already have a retail store, you put signs up in your store and take advantage of that traffic. Let them know what's coming up. And, of course, word of mouth.

[00:41:22] Now, when you register people, make sure you give directions. You know, after they sign up or actually before you can give it to cause some people might not come if it was too far away. But. But I also give them really explicit directions after they register and make sure that GPS works in that neighborhood. It's really wonky right where my school is. So. So I tell them that I say, hey, I give them landmarks in the directions from coming from various directions. So you want to do that, too. Then I give them details on the lunch time, the breaks we're going to have, what the dress code should be, reminders to layer clothes in case it's too hot or too cold. I tell them about the parking. I tell them about the location, the room, I give my list, the hotels, if they're coming in from far away, you know, and the no show deposits. I told you about that. You know, I make them make them stay till lunchtime at least before they get the no snow deposit back.

[00:42:24] So that ought to get you started on how you can do local events. And I have made 35 to 40 thousand dollars with no more than 15 or 20 people sitting in the crowd. Ok. You definitely can make a lot of money with these things, but you you can lose your shirt if you're dealing with a hotel. You don't understand the charges. You know, like I said, they could you could end up with three hundred dollars in coffee charges, you know, just from just without even blinking an eye. Plus gratuity plus service charge. Plus, like I said, taxes and whatever else they put on. So you got to keep your costs low, but you still don't want it to be a ghetto looking room and stinky. And, you know, so you actually should check out the actual room so that it's not all worn out and the carpet is all stained. That looks like, you know, homeless people, you know, hanging out there. It can be just like I said, extremely, extremely lucrative to you. And it can promote your business and it can make a cash flow right off the bat and you can get sponsors and all that. So. So if you're gonna do it, do it. And then, you know, that was like how to do it. But you better be darn good on stage. So get some of my darn training. My amazing public speaking is only ninety seven bucks for a year and it's a hundred thousand dollars worth of training, easy. And like I said, it's the culmination of 30 some years on stage all around the world. You grab that if you want something more intense. I have my pro speaker mentor program. It's intensive 24 week program. So you could check that out at screwthecommute.com/prospeaking. I've got my professional speaking system. Yeah. So I got all kinds of resources on that. And if you want to see all the stuff I have, you know, I'm just rattling off a bunch of resources, but I got tons of them. An Internet marketing and speaking. Just go to screwthecommute.com/resources and it's broken down into categories. I got free webinars, I got paid stuff. All it's stuff you need is there. I've been there and done that. And I want to help you to do it well, because I don't want to hear that some hotel took you for a ride and you spent a thousand dollars when you should spend three hundred, something like that.

[00:44:50] All right. That's it, folks. Catch y'all on the next episode. See ya later.

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