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| | The **The Business Consortium** Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | Comm Wed: Face to Face Communication -- Ya Gotta Get Out of the House! | Views: 443 | | Aug 06, 2008 3:35 pm | | Comm Wed: Face to Face Communication -- Ya Gotta Get Out of the House! | # | 
Felicia Slattery | | I recently attended my first live weekend event related to my business-- and it was truly priceless. Here are some tips for you:
9 Tips and Strategies for Attending Live Multi-Day Events
By: Felicia J. Slattery
The night before I attended my first live event, I was fortunate to have been invited to attend a teleseminar that shared strategies for attending and getting the best results from live events. The presenters of this teleseminar, Kevin Nations and Gary Ambrose were promoting a live event in Orlando, Florida that Gary was hosting and Kevin was speaking at.
The teleseminar was more like a conversation between Kevin and Gary, but I asked some pointed questions in order to get the answers I needed. After all time was of the essence! I was headed to my first event in a few short hours. After listening to that call, I was able to determine nine strategies for having success at live events. Here they are:
1. Make friends with those who connect well with others and take time with them on a personal level.
2. Be fully present. Don’t be working on other projects, checking email, looking around for the next “big name” to tackle. Just be where you are.
3. Know what you offer the world in terms of what their outcome is. My offers include teaching small, home-based service providers and entrepreneurs effective communication skills like credibility and public speaking so they can get more prospects, more business and more cash flow.
4. In each presentation, look for information that you can apply to your business, even if the presenter’s products and services are not exactly what you need. There is learning in every situation. Find it.
5. Go with an agenda. My agenda at my first event was to find an expert more successful than I was to help me look at the architecture of my business and find the missing pieces. I found that expert (and got a whole lot more in the process!).
6. Understand the missing pieces in your business before you go and while you are at that event, get access to that piece.
7. Make action items of what’s coming next. After the event, sit down and make a plan for yourself based on all the information you learn.
8. Be somebody who makes dinner plans. Be the “inviter.” Get a new small group of people together each evening and get to know others. By the final night, people will be seeking you out.
9. Go to the event ready to share some of your “secrets.” When you are willing to share your ideas, people will reciprocate. You’ll also get exposure to others in a different way. And you may find yourself being introduced to an influential person because someone heard your details, liked what they heard and thought their influential friend might also be interested.
Find a way to get yourself to at least one convention or seminar per year. Put it into your budget and save up for it. Opporunities abound. It's a worthwhile investment of your resources to go when you follow these strategies. The event I attended was literally life-changing.
Warmly,
Felicia
Felicia J. Slattery, M.A., M.Ad.Ed.
Want to know the best tips for effective communication in your business?
Go now to:
http://www.cashinoncommunication.com/Private Reply to Felicia Slattery | | Aug 06, 2008 4:10 pm | | re: Comm Wed: Face to Face Communication -- Ya Gotta Get Out of the House! | # | 
Susan McCool | | Great post, Felicia! Love the tips, very valuable and a few things I wouldn't have thought of doing.
I am going to make a confession...you are one of my featured experts on TBC, and I still do not have my signature speech. I don't know what I want to talk about! I don't know how to narrow down my knowledge into one signature speech. Sad, I know.
I have a hard enough time organizing my thoughts (in my head) to write them down for articles and web copy. I can't even organize my thoughts to ORGANIZE MY THOUGHTS.
Any tips for that?
You and the self-proclaimed "Wordy McWordster" (Julie Bestry), make it look soooo easy. And, while I can help anyone else pull out their specialties and important information, I can't do the same for myself.
--
Susan McCool
Spotlight Marketing & Design - http://www.SpotlightMarketingAndDesign.com
Virtual Office Associates - http://www.VirtualOfficeAssociates.net
Ryze Network - The Business Consortium - http://tbc-network.ryze.comPrivate Reply to Susan McCool | | Aug 06, 2008 5:39 pm | | re: re: Comm Wed: Face to Face Communication -- Ya Gotta Get Out of the House! | # |
Felicia Slattery | | Susan, my friend,
Well, well well. The truth comes out, does it? Tsk tsk. LOL!
I hear you about gettting started. It can be overwhelming to put together a speech (not after you get used to it-- like everything else in life, right?).
There's no better time to start than now. Let me tell you a secret-- at that live event I went to in July, I had not one but two opportunities to speak to the audience from the stage. One I grabbed myself during an informal after-hours session (so it was all good; I wasn't obnoxious about stepping on anyone's toes) and then later was INVITED to the stage during a huge guru-guy's talk in front of the entire crowd. Both times I was able to use aspects of my Signature Speech on credibility (you've heard it, I think). As a result of THAT, I am now a FEATURED speaker at Ken McArthur's Impact Boot Camp in Philadelphia August 22-24. http://www.impactbootcamp.com/Philly.aspx. I'm telling you it wouldn't have happened if I didn't have my speech ready to roll literally at a moment's notice.
Here's how you can get organized to get organized to speak (LOL!):
Ask a friend or colleague to interview you. Write 5-8 questions about your business. Whatever you want. Don't worry about writing an article or a speech at this point. Just think about some of the FAQs you get on a regular basis that you can answer off the top of your head. Then have your friend ask you those questions. Record it. You can either do it with just the two of you or have a free teleseminar and invite a live audience (why not, right?)
Then take that recording and have it transcribed. Or simply listen to it yourself. As you listen, think about the most valuable bits of information you want to share with your audience. That's one way to get started!
Have a look at my e-book, Cash in on Speaking http://www.CashInOnSpeaking.com for the format to follow. Once you have your thoughts together it's super-simple to add your content to the formula.
I hope that helps!
Warmly,
Felicia
Felicia J. Slattery, M.A., M.Ad.Ed.
Want to know the best tips for effective communication in your business?
Go now to:
http://www.cashinoncommunication.com/Private Reply to Felicia Slattery | | Aug 06, 2008 6:09 pm | | re: re: re: Comm Wed: Face to Face Communication -- Ya Gotta Get Out of the House! | # |
Susan McCool | | Ready for this confession?
I took 4 yrs of debate when I was in highschool and was just points away (tournament points) from lettering in it. Geeky? Yeah...lol. But, at that time I was on the law degree track and that was a major bonus on my transcripts. Why didn't I letter? My teacher got pregnant and our substitute was not allowed to enter us into tournaments - talk about bummed!
Now, that will be 10 yrs ago next yr (I graduated in 1999). And, while I was good at debate and have no problem speaking in front of a crowd. I find it harder to find my topics. Especially now that I have so many topics to choose from :)
_____________________________________________
Please pardon me for this brief interruption in thought....
I JUST HAD AN AH-HA MOMENT!
I think I have my signature speech topic ;)
______________________________________________
Ok...back to the regularly scheduled post...
My biggest issue besides organizing my thoughts, is trying to figure out what people need/want to know. To me, my knowledge is "common knowledge". Its hard to go back to a place where I didn't know anything and know what someone would need to know.
I think this comes back to Julie's post from this week about One being the Lonliest Number. Perhaps I need someone with absolutely NO IDEA about what I do that can ask me questions to get the juices flowing. That person used to be Marilyn, but I never kept track of everything I taught her (although, I bet she did)...and now she is a regular TECHNO MAMA.
--
Susan McCool
Spotlight Marketing & Design - http://www.SpotlightMarketingAndDesign.com
Virtual Office Associates - http://www.VirtualOfficeAssociates.net
Ryze Network - The Business Consortium - http://tbc-network.ryze.comPrivate Reply to Susan McCool | | Aug 07, 2008 12:01 am | | re: re: re: re: Comm Wed: Face to Face Communication -- Ya Gotta Get Out of the House! | # | 
Julie Bestry | | Susan, did you lose your "sent" folder in your computer crash? If not, that's the first place I'd look--look for the posts you've written to Marilyn! I occasionally make deletions, but I have kept almost all my "sends" (they're so neatly tucked away) for a decade. It makes it so much easier to not have to reinvent the wheel. By looking at the answers I've given prospects, clients, colleagues, reporters, etc., it gives me ideas for speeches, blog posts, TBC posts, TV appearance segments, etc.
This often surprises people -- I guess they think professional organizers throw everything away. :-) But because I'm such a prolific writer (Wordy McWordster, again), chances are good that I've already written SOMETHING on almost every organizing topic out there.
Don't feel too terrible about having difficulty imagining what it's like back at step one. Reread the post I wrote back in February about capturing those elusive thoughts, starting with what happens first chronologically and go from there. (Remember the example of the Sudanese "Lost Boys" and the electronically-opening doors?)
When I try to explain something technological, I know I understand it well enough to explain it (without jargon) when I can help my oh-so-cool 72-year-old mom get it. When you start with the person who knows nada ("Twitter? What the **** is Twitter?", she asked me when she heard about my time management for social networkers teleseminar), it makes it easier to take that deep breath and start than when you are trying to explain it from the middle.
Once you've written your signature speech, feel free to practice on me. I love doing that stuff. :-)
--
Julie Bestry, Certified Professional Organizer®
Best Results Organizing
"Don't apologize. Organize!"
organize@juliebestry.com
Visit http://www.juliebestry.com to save time and money, reduce stress and increase your productivity Private Reply to Julie Bestry | | Aug 18, 2008 12:37 am | | re: re: re: re: re: Comm Wed: Face to Face Communication -- Ya Gotta Get Out of the House! | # | 
Marilyn Jenett | |
Well, Julie, unfortunately those emails to Marilyn don't exist. Well, maybe there there were one or two, but the greatest value I received from Susan was her willingness and ability to talk to me and get the point across.
First, I am not an email person. Just because I do a lot of free flowing writing DOES NOT mean I can handle email conversations. In the same way, I won't do structured writing which is why I hired Karen to write my book proposal for the second book my agent wants. Karen made me realize that from all the material I showed her, the second book was ALREADY written over the past few years on Ryze - it just needs to be compiled. But there is no way you could get me to write a book proposal - my agent tried to push it for a year and I didn't budge. That's not free flowing, intuitive writing. A book proposal is a business plan and I don't do business plans :-) (And as I speak, Karen is wrapping up our first draft of the proposal).
And email conversations about technical things? Not on your life! No way!
So looking at the opposite end of that spectrum - I much prefer to be taught through a free flowing intuitive connection than by reading a structured tutorial - even as email.
On occasion, her emails did work fine. But I think most of what she gave me was through the spoken word.
Susan has a gift to be able to clearly communicate by voice in a very understandable way. But I would usually "get it" before she even finished. I intuitively understood her. Maybe part of it was my (surprising!) aptitude for what she taught me, but I do think it's primarily her ability to express it in a way that a non techie could understand and grasp easily. Just like my prosperity teachings :-)
For the past five years, I thought I was completely technologically challenged - I wouldn't touch that world. And yet Susan came into my life, and intuitively was led to teach me how to do things that have saved me a huge amount of time, helped me to draw on my creativity and empowered me so that I was no longer dependent on others for every little technical thing. What neither of us expected was that I would pick up the relatively "big" things as well!
That is one of her major gifts - to be able to teach non technical solopreneurs some basic skills that will actually free up their time. That's what surprised me the most. Being able to do in seconds myself what used to take a great deal of time relating to others what I wanted.
It wasn't about money in our association, but Susan's teachings could save many entrepreneurs a great deal of money by doing basic things themselves.
I could look at an email from her and it would usually get ignored. But the minute she told me what to do, I got it.
Yes, if she saved some of those emails, I agree, that's a foundation. But I think most of our communications was on the telephone.
Now one way to get great material from that is to record the calls. For $10 you can buy a little item from Radio Shack that you can plug into your phone and record on a tape recorder. I have saved special telephone calls in the past that way on a little Sony microcassette recorder (does anyone use cassette recorders anymore?)
Another very quick way I learned to do certain skills was with something that Susan and I never tried although we intended to. http://www.crossloop.com is a free service that allows you to share your screen with someone else at a distance.
For example, I wanted to learn how to convert an audio from a WAV to an mp3. Someone tried to write instructions but I couldn't understand. Then one of my students got on Crossloop as my guest and we were both looking at my screen - either of us could control the mouse. He walked me through it and it took about 2 minutes. Done.
I think one Signature Speech for Susan - if she wanted to do it - is to talk about how non techie entrepreneurs CAN learn basic tech skills which will save them time and money and increase their productivity and creativity - and they will no longer be intimidated by it.
Of course they will probably be "older" entrepreneurs. Weren't most of you born with computers attached when you came out of the womb?
Marilyn
Marilyn Jenett
Founder, Feel Free to Prosper Program
http://www.FeelFreetoProsper.com
http://prosper-network.ryze.comPrivate Reply to Marilyn Jenett | | |
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