I am here to share with you some insights today around my top tips for terrific talks and events!
I am just on the back end of one of the biggest events I’ve ever run. It was so extraordinary – like beyond my wildest dreams extraordinary!
So I thought I would share with you where it all began, what it’s like to run any talk, whether online or offline, and the things I’ve learnt from running talks in the online space going from literally by myself in an office with nobody on the webinar to standing in front of 120 of my nearest and dearest practitioner friends and associates, people who I don’t know at all, with sponsors and exhibitors and all of the things that go with that.
So many of you have so much incredible knowledge to share but it can be a real hurdle to move from one-to-one to one-to-many. It’s not for everybody but if it’s in alignment with you and you’ve got that little inkling inside you that you want to share with more people, then I want to share my tips with you today.
The Origin of the Natupreneur Experience (“NatEx”)
NatEx started with me all by myself in my clinic practice, the one that I have told the stories many a time of being by myself and not knowing when the next client would come in, but knowing I had lots of information inside my head about the human body and a whole bunch of other stuff.
I was really excited to share it and because there was no one actually coming into my clinic I wondered about the online stuff.
I didn’t have an event space or anywhere I could actually share this information. So it was me and my computer and that’s where it started.
I was there in front of my computer and I knew about this thing called webinars (at the time they were called teleconferences because I’m that old!). Teleconferences were really hard to do at that time. They cost a lot of money every month to pay for the platform and there were all sorts of tech stuff. But because I had all the time in the world (because, again, nobody was coming to see me then), I got to figure all that stuff out.
While I was figuring it out, I started to really think about what I wanted to bring to the world of people who didn’t even know I existed. I had heaps of information in my head and plenty of time to figure all of these things out. The cool thing is that now those platforms are essentially free or maybe $15 a month to do what you want to do. And you can turn them off – they’re not like a recurring thing anymore, so you can actually turn them off for a month and then revisit it when you want to create another webinar.
So I sat there creating this amazing presentation. I was all over PowerPoint and I was just verbally vomiting everything that was in my head onto these PowerPoint slides. Then I decided that my presentation was perfect so I was going to tell everybody about it.
I sent it out to my very small email list and I also put it in a couple of Facebook groups at the time. I was super keen that 27 people signed up for it!
27 people for my first ever thing! I thought, “Wow! That means I’m gonna have 27 people in there with me!”
But not one person showed up.
I was sitting there talking to my computer like I am now. But I’m really used to it now, plus I can see you guys like this. I can see you and talk to you.
But at the time, it was the weirdest experience, sitting there talking to my computer and not getting any feedback. No one smiling at me. I couldn’t even tell whether or not the sound was working or if it was recording.
I was overwhelmed. Everything was running around in my head. I was pressing buttons, hoping the recording was going to work, hoping that all of this incredible information and this amazing PowerPoint presentation that I’d presented worked, so that I could send it to the people who had signed up.
The interesting thing was that nobody showed up. I had planned to go for half an hour but I had gotten so scared that I got the whole thing done in about 12 minutes. And because there were no questions or answers, that’s how long it was.
So I sent it out to everybody and I got two wonderful feedback saying it was amazing, thank you so much, and that they were looking forward to seeing what else that I had coming up. At the time, I didn’t think to offer something else so I got to interact with these two people and I just asked them what else they would be interested in hearing about.
Now, in February 2019, I ran an enormous event with:
- 4 major sponsors
- 15 exhibitors
- 18 incredible speakers
- 120 practitioners
And this incredible co-creation with my team, my event manager, my VA, my online graphic design team, my extraordinary online marketing manager, and the A/V team and events team over at the site. It was huge and amazing.
One Step At A Time
What I’m saying to you who may be considering doing this is that you can’t go from one straight to the other. There is no great glass elevator. It’s not Charlie in the Chocolate Factory.
Just take one step at a time. This is you, showing up and feeling really weird and really uncomfortable like you have completely failed because nobody is watching or giving feedback.
It goes from that point to whatever you want to make it, however you want to make it, in whatever format you’d like to take it.
From the feedback we’ve received about NatEx, the format that we’ve done is extraordinary and like none that’s really ever been seen before in our profession.
And this is the thing! You can make it as weird and as wacky and as profound and as whatever as you like. But you do have to start somewhere.
So I wanted to share with you some of the smaller things that you need to do, the little steps to get to the big steps as you start to create your terrific talks or extraordinary events.
Tips for Terrific Talks and Events
As I described to you, back in the day I perfected my presentation. I got all of that amazing information out of my brain and I made the most extraordinary slides and it took me three months to extract all of that goodness from my brain exactly the way that I thought it should be before I did anything else.
Unlike that, my biggest tip and suggestion now, after helping so many practitioners just like you, is to pick a date.
#1 Pick a Date
That is the first, first, first step.
It’s bizarre, right?
I know you’re thinking, how can I pick a date if I don’t have the thing ready? How can I pick a date if I don’t know how many people are coming?
Here’s the thing – it’s a mindset issue. Just like we tell our clients, there isn’t ever going to be the perfect time to start an exercise plan or to start your diet.
And there’s never going to be a perfect time for you to actually present all of this amazing information in your head apart from now.
Think of it this way. If somebody in front of you asked you the questions that you’re about to present on, you’d just answer it – because that information is there already. It doesn’t make any difference to actually pick a date.
Some of you are gonna have thoughts about:
- but what if the moon isn’t right
- what if my adjunct to this and this and this
- what if I’m in the middle of my period
Or whatever it happens to be. There isn’t going to be a perfect time. So just pick a date now.
The gold of picking a date is that there is a finish line. You’re not just randomly working towards something that never actually occurs that stretches into tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
Once you’ve got a finish line (don’t call it a deadline, you’re not going to die from it!) in the sand, you can then work backward into what you actually need to get done. Any events manager will tell you that there is a timeline that you need to stick with so that everything ends up lining up on the finish line.
Make It Real
The fascinating thing about creating a date is it becomes real. Creating a date and letting other people know about that date makes it even more real. It’s called external accountability and I live by it. I rarely get things done unless somebody else knows about it and they can hold me accountable.
So that’s my number one tip – pick a date.
Suggested Timelines
Now, the caveat to that is you need to allow enough time to make it happen and to allow your audience to get ready. The amount of time people will need depends on whether it’s a free event or if they’ll need to save up money for it. If it’s a big life-changing type of scenario such as our Bali immersion, people have to really spend time working towards those five days plus travel time away from their families and businesses. So for an event like that, we give six months notice.
If it’s a webinar, you can give as little as six days notice. But it depends on how many people you’d like to attend, so my general rule of thumb is about six weeks.
So give yourself six weeks for a general talk or workshop that you might run at your gym, your space, or even online. That gives you two weeks to talk about that subject and let people know that you like talking about a particular subject so they associate you with that subject. And you’ve got two weeks to tell them some things about that subject that might spark their interest to sign up for your event. Then, during the last two weeks, you can present the sign-up form inviting people to come and join you for the event. Give out all the little tips and tricks and logistics about getting to the event, getting there on time, getting all of your responses, getting feedback and all that kind of stuff.
If you’re trying to get 10 to 20 people at a talk or workshop and you don’t already have a list of people who would be interested, the minimum lead time is four weeks notice. Especially a lot of you who train families and mums, to get somebody out of the house it takes a bit of effort and coordination, and it needs to be scheduled in to get those people across the line.
For instance, if you’re launching your clinic, you’ll be doing a talk at your launch. The cool thing about that is if you’ve got that six weeks lead time, traditional media such as radio, television, and newspaper, usually work two months in advance. They’re not looking for stories for now because they’re already full up for now. They want another one for the month after, so that six weeks kind of fits you in.
If you’re doing something like a clinic launch, a talk, you’re about to create something in your local library. or some other program that’s coming out that’s a game-changer for your community. Those six weeks give you that leeway.
#2 Pick a Topic
These things seem really simple, but in this format, you’ll get it across the finish line.
If you pick a topic that people aren’t interested in, and you just think you would like to just word-vomit on everybody, then you’re not necessarily going to get as many people as you’d like and be able to help as many people as you like.
My first webinar was something along the lines of, “How Detoxification Pathways Stop You From Losing Weight.”
You’re all practitioners, so you’re probably like, “Oh yeah, awesome. Detox pathways, yeah cool.”
For the general public, on the other hand, ‘detoxification pathways’ isn’t a term that would generally just roll off the tongue over coffee with friends. So, you’ve got to consider the way in which the person who’s going to come to your event or your talk, the way they speak in their head and the thing that you can help them with. Because that’s the topic that they’re going to respond to and sign up for.
I also ran a series in our larger multi-modality clinic. The first year I was there, we decided we would run lunch-and-learns. I learnt so much about speaking about what we were offering in client- speak, rather than practitioner-speak.
You’ll start to notice that when your clients or other people ask you questions, it’s the exact words that they use that is then going to attract them to come and see you. So when you’re picking a topic, first think about your client, not what you have in your head. Secondly, think about what you have in your head that matches up with what your client is asking.
If you don’t have any clients yet – here’s a huge tip for blogging, vlogging, webinars, seminars, or whatever you want to create. Go to things like WellBeing Magazine or some of these other magazines that you see in the newsagents, and look at the topics on the front page. They have spent millions of advertising and marketing dollars on researching what is going to get somebody to buy that magazine. Those exact words have been looked over time and time again with teams of people to see which one is actually going to trigger someone to buy it. So you can easily take any of those, see whether or not they resonate, and tweak them a little bit for what you have in your head and what you can offer.
I often have a listen to how everybody around me is speaking because you can get real insight into the way that people are thinking and talking about their health and well-being. For example, people don’t say they’re “fatigued.” That’s now how people speak, generally. Instead, they say things like, “I’m exhausted! I’m tired all the time.”
That exact kind of feeling is what you’re trying to convey so that when they see the topic of your event or talk, they will think, “That’s how I feel. I’ll go to that talk.”
So pick a topic and make sure you are using words that resonate with how your clients speak. Or look for tips from places with big marketing budgets, or those clickbait articles that people click on all the time because they’ve already done the research for you.
#3 Decide How Many Attendees You Want
Number three is to pick how many people you want at your event or talk.
I know you’re thinking, “Tammy, how do I know how many people are gonna come? I’ve never run an event before!”
Okay, I’m gonna go a bit woo-woo on you all, as I do.
If you don’t put it out there, how on earth do you think the universe or your subconscious is going to know what to look for? In your mind, you have an idea about how many people you would love to see at your particular event or talk. As you start thinking about it, other stories will come up for you, and you’ll think, “But I don’t know, I’ve never done one before.”
If it’s coming down to that, just pick a number. Just pick a number and then work towards that number.
I’m also a big fan of shooting for the moon and landing amongst the stars. If you think, “Oh gee, I’ll go for 10 people.” But in actual fact, you end up with say, five or six people, because you went to the effort of trying to find ten people but you landed ‘amongst the stars’ with six. Then you may as well go further and aim for 20 people. Then, maybe you’ll end up with 12.
And see? That’s actually more than the 10 that you were originally planning to get in the first place. But you’re putting in so much more effort to get the 20, that you end up going over the first number that you thought of.
I can talk to you about rocket science and it takes 80% more effort just to leave the energy of the Earth’s orbit and then you’ve only got 20% of rocket fuel to get you back around. Because we put in so much more effort for whatever the particular number is and it gets us over the line a lot further than if we were just going to go for the smaller numbers.
So don’t dull down your shine or your sparkle just because you think you can’t possibly do that. You have the capacity to help as many people as you truly want to and it’s totally okay if you don’t get the numbers.
What I have found personally is that you will get the exact number that you need for the next step, the next little learning, and the next thing to take you where you need to go. So don’t freak out if you don’t get the numbers. I think it all turns out in the end. Maybe you didn’t have the capacity to hold those other things at that time.
I’ve had webinars where I wanted 200 people on the webinar and I only got 50. But then the webinar broke, the recording didn’t work, or something else happened and if I’d had the 200, it would have been a shemozzle. But only having the 50 meant I could save it. I could figure out a way to work it out and then the next time I ended up having 500 people on the webinar. So don’t get disheartened when you don’t get the numbers because as long as you shoot for the moon, you’ll land amongst the stars.
On the flip side of that, pick a number and if there is no one that shows up, here’s my little tip. Especially for a webinar or a talk, here’s my little tip. Make sure you’ve got questions and answers prepared. “Oh, we had this question thrown in just before we started. . .” Have the question and the answer there as though somebody is there because if it’s a webinar, it’s going to be recorded. If it’s a talk hopefully, you’re leveraging that either by taking some photos or having a practice.
We heard from the amazing Amie Skilton on the weekend who shared with us about her presentation skills. She’s talked on incredible stages all over the world with some of our “natstruck” types of gurus that we really look up to in our profession. One of her biggest tips was to practice. If nobody shows up, do it anyway. I am not kidding! When you do it, you get a cellular memory of you showing up anyway, of practising what you actually produced. It puts you in a really different state biochemically then if you just felt defeated and didn’t do it because nobody was there.
So, pick a number of how many people you want to help. You’re there to help them and if they don’t show up, that’s okay, you’re still there to help.
#4 Pick a Platform (or Venue)
You might think you should pick the venue or the platform first.
Generally, once you’ve picked a date you’re able to move that either way. But as long as you’ve picked the date, you’ve got a line in the sand. Once you pick the venue or platform, you can make sure that everything lines up with the date you picked.
When I’m talking about a platform, I mean an online platform. If you are creating a webinar, my top picks are:
- WebinarJam
- Zoom Webinars
- Zoom Calls
- Loom (to pre-record and send out via email)
Whether you’re talking about an online platform or a physical venue, you need to choose one.
When you are planning for a physical venue, you’ll need to know how many people you expect to attend and that’s going to change the price of the space that you utilize. Some places will ask for a deposit up front and some places wait – it really depends.
Community centres are an amazing place to start. At least in our area, they’re really coming forward with the development that’s going through in New South Wales and so there’s money going into these places. They’ve got really cool tech and audio visual that you might not get if you’re running an event in your clinic room or your kitchen.
But that’s a good place to start if you really want to start. Start with what you’ve got the funds for, make sure it’s got enough space for the people you expect, make sure it’s lined up with the time and date, and make sure you’ve got some type of contract or confirmation that you can use it on that day.
#5 Make a Sales Page
You should complete all 5 of these steps before you begin working on your presentation.
I know what you’re thinking, that it has to be perfect before you do all these things. That’s fine, you can do it that way, but what I’ve learned from myself and others is that unless you’ve got the space and the place to do it, unless you have people who are coming to actually see it, you’re going to waste a whole bunch of time making the most perfect thing that anyone has never seen and will never see.
So create your sales page first.
A sales page (aka lead page) is an online page that captures someone’s information or payment details to register them for your event. You can create a sales page with a free MailChimp account and then pop it onto your Facebook page. You can create an event using your Facebook page. Or, the best place I think to do it is to put it on your website and link it to your email software (MailChimp or whatever) or link it to your customer management system so that you have all of their details together.
Then send out an email to everybody who’s registered and make sure they have all of the up-to-date info for when the event is actually happening.
I’ve done videos on sales pages before so definitely check my YouTube channel for those. You’ll find literally every single detail that you need and all the questions you need to answer. You’ll get more people signing up for your event if you answer all of the questions I identify in my training. It’s not quite as simple as saying, “Hey, I’m running this thing on this date and time, sign up here.”
Especially if it’s a paid thing, you’re going to have to create an opportunity for people to be aware of why they need it and why it’s important enough for them to either give you their email address or money.
Don’t forget to create a payment button, too.
The thing that you are creating is of value. When you create something of value, it may be costing you:
- money to rent an event space or venue or sign up for a platform
- time away from your family
- time away from other things
- time away from your practice
As a practitioner, you should be charging $120 an hour minimum and that means that you could be making $120 seeing clients, or you could be spending time with your family, loved ones, or furry friends. So your time is valuable.
So make sure that you create that payment button and get paid accordingly. Not only are you covering your cost, you’re also covering the energy it takes to hold the space for all of that.
The easiest is a PayPal button. It’s super easy to stick that on your website. Second easiest is something like Eventbrite or similar. These are companies that set up to give tickets to an event but you don’t get the payments instantly for that. Whereas if somebody signs up via your PayPal button, you’ll instantly get that money in your PayPal account. Eventbrite and similar hold onto the money until after the event.
So if this is one of your first runs or you’ve got to pay for say, catering or a venue, it can be a little bit of a cash flow juggle. So it really depends on where you’re at but it’s something to think about.
#6 Share Your Sales Page
Once you’ve got your sales page up, you need to tell people about it! Otherwise, no one will come to your event.
Make sure you’re sharing it on all of your social media platforms. Yes, it will feel weird.
The likelihood is that only one in seven of your shares is actually going to be seen by one person. Only a very small percentage of people will actually see even half of those shares. The vast majority of people will only see one out of seven shares for your event.
So you need to be sharing it on social media, whatever platforms you have. You need to be talking to other people about it, sending out emails, and reminding them.
And it’s not just, “Hey, come to my event.” You need to be talking about:
- why this thing is important to you
- why you want to share this information
- how it’s affected you in your life or your clients’ lives
- what could potentially happen or how you can potentially help the people who are coming to your event
Share this story and share it in slightly different ways on different platforms.
You can also utilize Facebook groups or Facebook Ads if you’ve got enough ad spend to do that.
But you don’t need to do all of that. Don’t convince yourself that you need to spend all this money and then nobody shows up. You can actually do the whole thing for free. Speak to people about it. If you are a clinician and you have your clinic in a local area, maybe get some posters and see if local shops will put up a poster for you.
Make sure that you’re letting people know and mining your network of people – associates, people you know past work, people you might know from school – there’s a whole bunch of people in your world that could probably benefit from the health-related information that you’re sharing and if they can’t, they probably know somebody who can.
Don’t be shy and definitely share it otherwise you’ll be sitting there all by yourself with the best piece of amazing content that you’ve ever created and no one will get to hear it.
Share it minimum of seven times because the majority of people will only see that once and most people need to see it 3-12 times before they actually press the button to go and pay for it.
Seth Godin’s book, This Is Marketing, talks all about this. Even when marketing is done really well these days, we have been trained to see things and not take the action even if it’s in our own best interest. So make sure you are sharing it because people just aren’t going to click and it has nothing to do with you or your message. It has to do with the way we’ve been conditioned to consume information online. So don’t get into a spiral of despair because nobody signed up for your thing.
#7 Get Help
This one seems really weird and random, right?
But you will need help. You can’t do everything by yourself, so don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Whether it’s online to find a VA to help you with the tech stuff, somebody to manage questions during the online presentation, or a helper to assist when you’re on stage making a presentation. There are going to be things that you need and when you are presenting, that’s your job on that day, so there needs to be at least one person to help you.
When I did a workshop on making bliss balls. I did all the work leading up to it. I did all the shopping and all that other stuff. But my husband was an incredible help on the day of the workshop. He put the Thermomix in the car and helped set everything up. Then he took photos for me while I was doing the workshop, as well. So don’t be afraid to ask for help.
At the incredible conference that we ran this past weekend, I had a team of over 20 people in all different areas doing things that are just not in my zone of genius and not things that I am good at. It made things so much easier. Things went so much smoother and those people did those jobs way better than I possibly could have.
The first time that I had a bookkeeper, it was a huge leap for me to ask for that type of help. But now I can’t possibly imagine doing it any other way. Clearly, my bookkeeper is way better at numbers than I am and clearly, my Events Manager is better at holding the space for an event than me. And like she said, she couldn’t possibly stand up and do the presentation that I did.
That makes total sense, right? So don’t be afraid to ask for help.
#8 Leverage It / Record It
When you do an event or a talk, your audience thinks they will only experience it once. On the other side of that, as the presenter, we feel like we are only going to present it once.
But there are so many ways to leverage those moments so that it can last and last and last so that it’s not just a one-off thing.
One way to do this is to take photos – it’s the minimum. Whether you’re doing a talk at a gym, a workshop at your clinic, or a webinar, make sure you take photos. Get some behind the scenes photos, etc. For example, I got my partner and even my kids to take pictures of me. You presenting is a very different viewpoint for as a practitioner. So make sure you’re getting some photos and if you can afford a little bit more money, get some professional photos done that you can really leverage online, in other spaces, and for other events or courses.
Secondly, you might want to record your presentation. This can be done super easy these days. The first time I did this, my son was like seven at the time. He just got his iPad and we stuck it on a tripod and recorded my talk.
Now, of course, the audio wasn’t the best but it was recorded and I could share that with even more people who weren’t actually there and the people who couldn’t make it. It can be as simple as doing that. The super duper new iPhone that’s coming out has amazing sound and visuals for recording. There’s also Bluetooth lapel mics that you can use.
There are all sorts of ways that you can leverage what you’re doing so that it’s not just done and gone. This is super helpful for those of you who are just starting to do the online stuff. Instead of just doing a talk or video and then it’s done, you can leverage it by recording and getting it transcribed.
Transcription is when somebody types out the words that you say. You can leverage that and turn it into:
- an e-book
- a magazine article
- a chapter of a larger book
- a blog post that goes with the video that you just did
There are so many ways to leverage that piece of content that you just spent so much time creating so it isn’t just over once you’ve done it. Each different talk you do could turn into a membership site or a resource library for your clients. When you start thinking this way, then you’re not going to just show up for the one thing but you’re gonna show up and see how it can create a whole different journey for your clients rather than them just absorbing one little bit of information.
#9 Testimonials
Ask everyone who attends your event or your webinar for feedback.
It feels awful, to begin with. It’s so scary at first, the thought that somebody could write something horrible back. But the reality is, the vast majority of people will give you amazing constructive feedback. Most people will say, “Oh my goodness, that was amazing! I can’t wait for your next thing.”
But your brain is going to find the thing that you feel unsafe about because that’s what we do as humans. The place that we feel most unsafe or the most scared is where our focus is going to be because that’s us from prehistoric times.
My invitation to you guys is to ask for testimonials and feedback. Because you are then going to get better and better. Once you’ve got that feedback, you are going to take those things on board – and not take to heart – but take it to a logical conclusion and resolution on how to apply those things you’ve heard and to create an even better thing for next time.
How do you ask for testimonials?
The question on your feedback form should be something along the lines of, “How would you describe my talk (or webinar or event) and what you got out of it to a friend?”
That is going to create an opportunity for them to think about how that would work. So make sure you ask for that and don’t freak out. That’s the last little piece you need to come back around after setting it all up, presenting it, getting it out to people, and sharing it the way you have, There is the last little bit to get you all the way around to complete a full cycle of what it looks like to create something and get the feedback and then create something even more extraordinary or more aligned next time.
#10 Follow Up With Attendees
Follow up, follow up, follow up!
The vast majority of people who have come to your talk or webinar got some gold nugget out of it. With that gold nugget, they can run with that only a certain amount of time.
Just like we can run with a certain amount of motivation to change our diet or the way that we’re doing things, but then it slowly drips off. So make sure that after your event, that you are consistently talking to them.
Think of it as if you’ve started a big conversation with them. If you don’t then send them anything or follow up with them about what changes they’ve made from it, the conversation just stops. You’re giving them all this love while they were there at your talk or your presentation but then you go into hiding about it.
So make sure you follow up and are consistently offering your help because that’s what talks are about. You’re going to create an opportunity or an experience for them in a one-to-many environment so that they eventually will connect with you further and move to something else you’ve got available for them to create the change they want in their lives. You have to keep that conversation going.
Take Action!
I hope that these tips are helpful. If so, please share it and take action! Don’t just sit back and think, “Oh, those are nice. I’ll put it on my to-do list.”
Take that action now, within the next 24 hours. Do the thing you’ve been thinking about creating. Pick a date and share it with people. Whether you’ve been considering creating a webinar or an event like a retreat or something else, pick the date, do what it takes to get it in. If you’ve already picked a date and you’re backtracking and haven’t told anybody about it, go and create that sales page right now and share it in seven places.
If you have already done all of that and you’re still not getting people to sign up, start sharing and getting on the phone to people. Do the things you need to do. The information you have in your head is incredibly powerful when it’s out in the world helping other people. But when it’s just in your head, it’s not helping anyone.
I believe in you and in our profession. I’m really hoping that you can take one of these little gold nuggets on board to shift and change something that you’re creating in the world. Looking forward to seeing it!
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