So I’ve weirdly enough decided to stop doing talks at events that are not my own. Even I’m surprised because talks used to be one of my favourite ways to connect with my audience and generate leads and sales.
But lately I’ve really looked at the way I do business and focused on maximizing everything I do… especially thinking about how I’m investing my TIME.
So here are 5 reasons I’ve decided I’m going to stop doing talks. If you are doing talks PLEASE take a serious look at these… it might change your business.
1) Often the audience is not really targeted.
There are many reasons people go to events. Honestly I’ve experienced many people at events that didn’t know the subject of the talk or didn’t even KNOW that there WAS a talk at the event…. They simply came because there were some networking involved and didn’t read the description of the event.
BUT the worst part is IF it’s a multiple speaker event, many people will not be there to see me or hear about MY subject.
2) It’s quite time consuming.
Here is what’s involved.
– Talking to event organizer about details of the event…
Sending stuff about you, talking again, maybe even writing something
about your talk specifically tailored to that event…. 1 hour +
– Preparing the talk. It could be hours but obviously if I’ve done that
particular talk before then this is not going to take any time… so I’m not going
to count that.
– Getting ready to get out the door (printing stuff, ironing shirt etc. etc.)…. 1 hour
– Traveling to the talk…. 1 hour 15 min
– Buffer: Arriving before my talk to count for traffic problems…. 45 min
– Talk: … 1 hour +
– Travelling home (it takes longer home because of the way my trains work)…. 1 hour 30 min
The rest of the evening is typically gone because I’m too tired to do anything else.
I could have probably worked another hour at that time.
Even without possible preparation time and time lost time at the end of the evening.. that’s 6.5 hours… almost a days work that could have been used serving customers, closing leads over skype or creating more products and AUTOMATED sales funnels.
3) Cost.
Travel …. £25
A sandwich on the way…£ 5
Printed material: …. £ 10
Possibly hiring staff to go with me to take care of orders .
Then the costs will of course go bananas.
£40 doesn’t seem like a lot, but wait a moment… when you compare to online
lead-generation, it’s super expensive.
4) My social and family life gone.
Typically talks are in the evenings and as I’m getting older I’m starting to realize that time is the most valuable thing for me… and spending it with people I love is number 1 priority.
5) NOT SCALABLE.
We only have 24 hours a day so there is a limited amount of time I can use on doing talks AND there are a limited amount of talks around
Now, I’ve been happy doing talks … it has grown my reputation, I’ve generated lots of business from it… it has been super fun, I’ve made an impact AND I will probably continue to do it from time to time at very carefully selected bigger events.
BUT consider it against doing lead-generation online.
1) Cost. For £25 I could easily generate 25 leads. In fact when you consider that doing talks is to get leads for the higher end services… then actually my lead-generation ONLINE is FREE… because my lower priced products will not only cover the costs of lead-generation … I will actually make a PROFIT on lead generation, making leads for my higher end services FREE.
2) Time. It’s virtually automated. When you have set up a PPC campaign… it runs AUTOMATICALLY 24 hours a day… from time to time you might need to tweak campaigns and landing pages… but this take minimum time.
3) Targeted and qualified. Leads will be super targeted… they are specifically looking for what I have.
4) SCALABLE. This might be the most important. I can scale it INFINITELY. When the campaign is profitable I can simply just buy more and more clicks. I only have my own 24 hours a day to do talks… I cannot scale myself. Scalability is such an important factor in building a REAL business. If you cannot scale a business… it’s not a real business it’s just a job where you are working for yourself.
5) Potential GLOBAL audience instead of just local.
ok I could also do talks globally, but then the cost and time involved is going to sky-rocket.
6) At the same time, I can do “talks” online via hangout and webinars where I save travelling time and can completely control how targeted the leads are… AND they are there to learn specifically from me.
So I actually feel free that I’ve made this decision and I believe I will be able to serve my clients and the entrepreneurial community much better this way.
Talks might be a super good way to go for you, but consider this: Are you only doing them because you don’t know how to set up online automated sales funnels? If the latter is the case I
would suggest you are losing out on HUGE amounts of business.
I hope that was helpful – Have a brilliant day. Pat
