Powerful Business Strategies - Live Events and Webinars

0:04 Hi, you have done too sensu. Wow for you. It's the pipe Man here on the Adventures of Pipe Man W four c Y Radio, the Positively Pipeman segment with powerful business strategies from Michael Barbarita the c Would I call you the CEO of Next Step CFO or should we just stick to President? I like the ring of how it said the CEO CEO of Next Step cring.

0:45 There's no question about that. I'm doing great. And you know, coincidentally, we are doing a live event right now, and today we're going to talk about live events and webinars, so that's direct to do it. All right. So, in today's global markets, you know, connecting with people all over the world has actually become easier than ever. And you know, webinars and virtual events are an excellent way to connect with people without having to physically be there. It also provides you know, small business owners with multiple ways to scale and build connections with people not just in their local area but anywhere in the world actually.

1:28 And then live events, on the other hand, are one of the best ways to bring people together and it's a great way to leverage your time using what I call a one to many strategy, and the webinar does the same thing. It's one meeting that addresses many, hopefully prospects. And as a business owner, you can create, really you can create an amazing experience for your audience while leveraging your time by making one presentation to however, many prospects that you can find with customers, clients and attendance. And we'll talk about a little later the challenge of getting people to these events. But you know, with both live events and webinars, they provide leverage and that if that's that one to many kind of thing, and and there are some key differences. Of course, a live event creates more of a personal connection that's kind of hard to replicate for in a virtual setting. And I think a live event also allows the opportunity to build trust and credibility faster and on a more personal level.

2:34 But you know, on the. Downside, live events can be expensive. There's you know, the travel, there's a combinations, there's venues that you have to set up and so forth, and you have to get people's fannings in the seats, uh, you know, which can be a challenge. Uh. And you know, virtual events they're a little simpler they're less expensive to host, they don't require any travel or accommodations or even a venue other than Zoom or something similar to Zoom. And you know, the geographical limitations are totally eliminated, but still allow an opportunity to connect with people all around the world. And you know, the personal interaction that comes with a live event can't be fully replicated in a virtual setting. However, I believe what's happening in the in the webinar a world is that people are starting to make them more interactive. Because if you're just gotting on there and touting whatever it is that you're you know, doing like a seminar where you're talking all the time, it creates it creates some boredom and on the part of the audience and your dropout rate, which is something that you have to deal with mostly with virtual events, not as much with live events, but with virtual events, your dropout rate is accelerated because you're not making the webinar interactive mm hmm. And and there are a number of ways. One of the things that I do to make webinars interactive is I have

4:06 what I call the virtual roundtable, and what a virtual round executive roundtable and what an executive virtual roundtable is. As I talk about the strategies in my book, I'll present strategies that I have from my book, and then I will let the audience give us their opinion on whether or not the strategy would work in their industry. And it allows for dialogue. I mean, after you know, I present a strategy and then all of a sudden, there's dialogue among everybody and people chime in. Even people who sometimes are more fearful of talking are participating in these uh And sometimes at the end they'll tell me that they can't believe they participate it to the level that they did. But you know, when you ask the right questions and you present the right things, it can create questions, even if so Boddy is and it happens to me, you know, it has certainly happens to me when I'll present a strategy and somebody says, see, I don't think it'll work in my industry because of this and that. But that's valuable input, not only for me, but also for the rest of the audience. Sure, and so the more interaction that you can make in a webinar, the better you're your your attention rate the people who stay on is a lot longer, and there's the bottom factor is virtually eliminated.

5:30 I'll give a perfect example of that. So I go and do these coverage for these podcasts and broadcasting events, and when there's virtual ones, they have literally like a it's kind of a chat room, kind of also meeting room, kind of also you know, everything combined, a networking room. They call them all these different names, but basically allows people to do is not be bored because they're interacting with other people through these chatrooms, networking rooms, meeting rooms, and everybody's feeding back and forth and then they're feeding their questions into the presenter, and the presenter.

6:20 Can see all that stuff and interacts. And even on radio, Okay, I have always been a big proponent personally on my own show that if people chat during the show, you know, whether it be commenting or we use even on the radio network when we were just radio in the beginning, when there wasn't all this. Technology, we had a chat room. And basically it's interesting because people would just come because they loved the chatroom, and that got them listening to these radio shows because they loved the chatroom. Okay, but also so.

7:01 It did it create where like they were part of it. But also when I would read the chat room or now if I see comments, I will talk directly to those people, even though they're not talking back to me because they're not in the show, they are because they're chatting. And I've literally with the chat room, weigh with radio, and now with commenting, you literally can have a whole conversation on the air live by doing that, and then people are engaged and even the listeners that are not part of that are more engaged and less bored because it's not just somebody talking to them. I love that. Yeah, No, I find that to be the same things.

7:43 I think that's what makes a webinar special when it can be interactive, because it gets very monotone when just one person is speaking and kind of you know, there might be a lot of education value that that person is offering. I mean, if you listen to Great Court cardone, he'll do a whole fifty three minute podcast, uh you know, and and and it just be him and but but and you know, he doesn't have a chat room or anything, so he's not taking there's no interaction at all, and you know he's really good at it, so he's probably he probably gets very high ratings and a successful at it. But I think it depends on the personality, for sure, it really, it really does.

8:27 But to the common man, you know, I think it has to be more interactive then yeah, and then uh, you know, making an offer at a live or virtual event significantly increases your chances of closing a sale. By the way, every time you do a live event, there should be an offer of some sort. That's a real must black in the room. Yeah, it's right. A lot of people have live events, webinars and so forth and don't even make an offer. I think, Well, let me let me give you a personal example of that. When I left the financial business and became a speaker. Yeah, like, being a motivational person was the way I was all my life since I'm eleven, So it's kind of a strange transition to make that what I was doing for a living. So the first year I would do all these seminars and never try to sell anything or promote anything because I was so engrossed in the message and helping people. Okay, until one of my mentors gave me one of the best advice ever, best pieces of advice. Ever, he said, he asked me two questions.

9:44 First one is. If you truly are giving value and truly are helping people, don't you deserve to get paid? Number one? Number two, if you're not getting paid and you're not making money and you can't pay your bills, how many how much can you really help people? And those really hit home because I had this blockage in my head is what it was, and that really hit home, Like, Okay, I like people ask me, even in this business, when do I have the right And this goes back to you know, previous show you did, when do I have the right to ask for sponsors? Or the other question I've heard most of my career when do I have the right to ask for referrals? And they always think that when you first make the sale, you don't have the right. You know, you don't have the right yet.

10:38 My viewpoint is this My answer to those people is the minute that you wake up in the morning, because you know, the bottom line is is you have the right right ways. So many people are like, well, I can't ask for sponsors because I I haven't even uh you know, I don't even have any listeners yet because I only did one episode. Doesn't matter, you know, it's all about what you present and the value you present to people. But again that's why they're on network like mine that already has built in listeners, So it doesn't matter if you have listeners, right, So true that you're part of something, right.

11:27 And you know, the other thing is the other challenge that business owners have is getting people to a live event or a webinar. And you know, I found a couple of things. Number one, I found that email marketing is usually the best way, or one of the best ways, I should call it the best. It's still considered one of the best ways for sure statistics, right, And so that's. A good methodology. And the other the other methodology is using social media. And one of the things that I learned uh recently, uh Dean, was this program that LinkedIn has called LinkedIn Events. And a LinkedIn event is a webinar or some type of live some type of live event where you can actually promote it through LinkedIn and if you develop enough of a following, LinkedIn will promote.

12:25 It for you. So it's a it's an interesting it's an interesting angle to getting people to a webinar. You can also collaborate with influencers, industry influencers, speakers, or other business partners to expand your reach. And you can also use you know seo and pay per click methodologies to get people to. A webinar. One of the things that one of the things that I've learned about this process is you have to kind of be careful because there's some people out there that are talking about what's called a calendar hack. I don't know if you ever heard of it, Dean, or if you encountered it, and let me let me explain what it is, because I think I think it's not I don't think it's legal. But I'm not a lawyer, and I can't get a lawyer to say it's legal or earlygal.

13:23 I can just get a lawyer to say, don't do it. But but what it is is it's actually an email that that is a calendar invite, and so it goes into your calendar, so it affects a second system and now the calendar in your the invite in your calendar is is great out a bit because you haven't accepted it yet. But what people have found is that it's been an excellent way to get Unfortunately, an excellent way to get people to a webinar. It's worked extremely well. I've never done it because I just don't like the ethics associated with it, and I feel like, if you know, B to B email is not considered sparing. Okay, as long as all of the things like opt out opportunities and and and your your address, your uh, your your addresses in there, your phone numbers in there, all that stuff makes it makes it legal B to B. But when you talk about email and a calendar invite, that is impacting a second system. You have to really think about the legality of that. And there are a lot of gurus out there that are recommending the calendar hack because it works so well. But when you do it, there is a lot of blowback as well from people who are aggravated that their calendar was consumed by this.

14:54 Event. And I have my opinion on it too. Could I get your opinion on that? Sure, I would love it. Apparently they've been promoting that a lot lately because recently I've had it happen many times in the past month. For some reason, It's happened like multiple times, and it's usually spammers, So you know that or I call them spammers. Okay. Second of all, I've had some from way back. So let me tell you two of the issues that I have. I don't like it. Don't force things into my calendar. I already have a very busy calendar, okay, And that kind of screws up my scheduling in my calendar. Number one okay, So it pisses me off there being blunt okay, And I immediately view that this person is a spammer or scammer because they hacked into my calendar. Something else I've noticed that makes it really bad. I have a couple that I cannot for any way, shape or form, no matter how they set it up as a recurring thing, these spammers, and you cannot delete all events. You can only delete like the one. And so there's a couple that every single month, these things are showing up in my calendar, and there's no way for me to get rid of

16:26 them at all, like I've tried, and I'm a techie, and there's no way to get rid of them at all, even if you do something like I had one that hadn't shown up in a couple of years because I feared a way to stop it. I bought a new phone, and now they're reappearing again. You know. It's like and yeah, they're just putting it in your calendar. So it's more than an invite in my opinion, because they're putting it in your calendar. It's like to me, it's almost like somebody putting mail in my mailbox without sending it through the US Postal Service. Yeah, yeah, right, I mean, you know so, because I see it as an invasion of a second system, I think it's illegal, but I don't know, and of course I don't do it.

17:16 People are already annoyed by getting too many emails. Now you're going to have this all over your calendar, Like. I know, the calendar. It goes into the calendar, and unless you you know, say you don't want to call, you know, you deny the attendance. That's the only way it comes out of your calendar. But in the meantime, an important person can't schedule. Time in that blood exactly. And it's, uh, it's really annoying. I haven't heard of the of the ongoing like you know, once a month. Oh my god, that's going to be annoy really annoying. And really like think of the possible prospects you could have that are going to do business with you, that you start doing that stuff. Like, if you start doing that, I'm never doing business with you, no matter what your product is. That's meant some people would. Now you take another side of it. You know, it's like people get scammed on the tax phone call and people get scammed on the dating sites. Yes, it will be effective because people are gonna think it's because what happens is when you first see it in your calendar, you think it's an actual.

18:26 Thing that you schedule. I know That's what kills me, right. Yeah, so I'll be like Simon from uh, you know, America's most Talent. I'm voting no, not going on to the next round, am I. But anyway, Dean, I I'd like to offer your audience an opportunity to get a free workbook called this is a free implementation workbook too. This isn't just education. I mean you can go to AI if you want you want to let about life events and webinars, you go to AI or you can go to Google. This is actually a step by step roadmap on how to implement live events and webinars and so to get that you just go to NEXTSTEPCFO dot net, hit the contact button at the top of the website and then fill out the contact form and in the message box put live events and webinars workbook.

19:21 I'll send it to you a free chot nice. I love it. I love you. Always give the listeners something free because they need all the help they can get. In my opinion, and that's not a bad way. It just means we have so. Much game thrown at us right now that you need the assistance of somebody like you more Michael Barberita. And so that's why I'm thankful you're on the Positively Pipe Mam segment here on the Adventures of Pipeman and. Thanks for being here. Thank you, dainty it next week you got it. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of pipemin im W for CUI Radio.