Voice: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors, Neil Patel and Eric Siu.

Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.

Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel, and today, we're going to talk about what we learned by throwing our first conference.

Eric Siu: So I guess I'll kick it off a little bit. Neil and I had an idea a couple months ago. We've had over 6 million downloads to this podcast. It's been a little over a year, so we're really grateful for everyone that's listening.
And we thought, Hey, it'd be really cool if we can get people in Los Angeles, which is where I am based and where Neil is based occasionally, to get people together and just be able to meet people in person, right? It's always better to build relationships and go a little deeper, and it just happened yesterday, and I guess I'll let Neil speak to it a little bit. Neil, what did you think?

Neil Patel: Yeah, it was a good experience. We got to connect with people who listen to Marketing School and just general entrepreneurs and marketers. We got to teach them more about marketing and answer any questions they had about entrepreneurship. But the main purpose of it was to connect with people.
See, when people are listening to your podcast, or they're watching your videos online, or they're quote/unquote "visiting" your website, you have to keep in mind it's a person in front of that computer screen.
If you don't connect with them in real life, you're not really going to get to know the people who are behind those monitors, who are browsing your website, is listening to your podcast or watching your videos. And if you don't really network and connect with those people, you're not going to learn what makes them tick, how you can provide a better experience and how you can increase your sales and grow your business.

Eric Siu: Yeah, and so, the other thing I talk about all the time is the concept of throwing dinners or happy hours, things like that. Again, you're connecting with people. People like doing business with people. You're listening to this podcast because you want to do more business, right? Well, You've got to build more relationships first.
And when you're able to build relationships, other things happen, right? Sometimes when you're just doing phone calls with people, that's fine. I like phone calls mainly, or emails, even faster. But when you're actually able to have a person in front of you, you talk about multiple things, and they might be able to help you with things that you might not expect.
And for example, or not for example. But another kind of benefit is that Neil and I maybe get to see each other probably once a month, something like that. And just by having a conversation for that one hour with Neil before we actually go on is really valuable.
Honestly, every time I go speak at conference, I don't know if it's the same thing for Neil, but every time I go to a conference, the most value I get from speaking is getting to hang out with the speakers, going to those private dinners. That's by far the most value because these people are people that are accomplishing great things, really smart people as well. Neil.

Neil Patel: Yeah, in person events are amazing. You don't have to throw your own event. Just go to them. The more you go to, the better. Funny enough, I charge for public speaking. And I was thinking the other day. I'm like, "Should I just go to two to three conferences a week, not charge for public speaking anymore, just do as many as possible, [inaudible 00:03:12] for the biggest audience, and then, go for it a whole 12 months and see what happens?"
I would lose quite a bit of income, but I was really considering it because for me, my goal is to connect with more people, and the long-term benefit, at least I believe, will outweigh the income that's generated in the short run.

Eric Siu: Yeah, I totally agree with that. I actually think that will work really well. And so for us, the one thing I'll add is if you are looking to do your own live event, don't expect to be making a lot of money on these things. The conference I was at the week before that I spoke at, they maybe lost $500.
Actually, the funny thing is we lost $500 yesterday when we could have actually lost a lot more, and this is our very first one. We actually probably could have gone a little bit into the positive, but at the end of the day, we're not looking to make money out of this, right? It's really a drop in the bucket. I think it's, again, it's about connecting great people, putting them together, really grateful for that and just make sure that whoever's helping you with this ...
I was grateful enough to have, or lucky enough to have, my team put it all together. You want to make sure that you have everything covered, have a checklist of the things that you need to do, and maybe Neil and I will talk about a conference checklist down the road. But a lot to consider there, and there's a lot of variables, right? You want to make sure it's a good experience for everyone. Neil, anything else to add?

Neil Patel: No, that's pretty much it.

Eric Siu: Great, so that's it for today, but before we go, we have a 90-day free trial of Crazy Egg to give away to each and every one of you. That's a heat-mapping tool to grow your business. Just go to singlegrain.com/giveaway, and you can actually win a one-year annual subscription. Just go, again, to that url, singlegrain.com/giveaway. And we will see you tomorrow.

Voice: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow right here on Marketing School.