It is almost the end of July 2023 as I work on this short podcast episode. I’m sitting on a coffee shop patio (no surprise) and just counting down the final U. S. based conferences that I plan on attending this year. Then I’m just saying “no” to U.S. based conferences-even though I absolutely love attending these transformative events. I’ve been pretty vocal about needing a break and wanting to spend my time focused on a different type of travel. Now, I will still attend small in-town meetups wherever I happen to be, but I won’t be attending conferences and I’m so happy about this. If you’ve been thinking about taking a break from extensive conference attendance and are curious about how I made this decision-listen on.
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What I love About Conferences and Similar Events
Welcome to the Brand Building Lab, I’m your host Michelle Jackson and I help content creators monetize and build empathetic online brands. Here’s the thing, I really enjoy attending conferences.
There are so many upsides to attending one. Here is a list a few of those upsides.
- Making in person connections-This type of connection has been the most impactful personally and professionally. It’s just easier to work, shout out and share people that you’ve met in person.
- Expanded business opportunities-Conferences and other large professional experiences provide community spaces typically filled with the ideal customer for the products/goods or services that you would like to share with the world (if you’re picking the right conference)
- Highlight your personal expertise-It’s not a coincidence that I’ve spoken at a large number of the events that I’ve attended. Running a session, moderating a panel or even asking significant questions from the audience is a great way to share your expertise.
- Learn new things-I’ve lost track of all of the new things that I’ve learned because of attending conferences. I’ve learned about:
- How to grow a community
- How to Monetize My Podcast
- Confidently speaking in public
- Networking naturally in a high energy space
- Why Podcasters Need a Website
Dealing with Growing Conference Friction
Around 2017 or 2018 (I can’t remember when) I started noticing that I was dealing with what I could only call “Conference friction” There were so many amazing events that I wanted to attend that I was beginning to struggle with where to go and what to focus on next. In fact, I found all of the conference attendance slowing down the grow of my online business because it took up so much time in unexpected ways.
- Alternating Event Attendance-Because there are so many conferences I began attending my favorite events every other year so that I could have enough time to attend all of my favorite events. There was just one of me and a billion of these events.
- What events you ask?
- Local meetups and conferences
- Online events and conferences
- National events and conferences
- What events you ask?
- Event attendance has the potential to be disruptive to the business you’re building for yourself. Every time I got into a work flow, it was time to hope on a flight and make my way to a new event.
This didn’t include personal travel. In fact, conference attendance was impacting my personal travel as I tried to combine personal travel with professional. For example: if there as an event in a state with my relatives in it, I would add on time to see my relatives.
The Issues that I Was Having
In the past couple of years I began to recognize that the issues I was having with event attendance weren’t going away.
- So many conferences-It took energy to decide which ones to go to, pacing of events (how many is too many)
- The cost of travel and the stress of travel-If you’re traveling out of state to attend an event-it gets really expensive really fast. I have a hard and fast rule to leave each event having earned back the money that I paid to attend. I talk about that in my Afros and Audio Conference Review.
- Time needed to apply lessons learned from each event-It was clear that to really apply the lessons and strategies learned from a conference, I would need at minimum at least 3 months to apply and observe results from those strategies.
- I tried to address some of these issues by alternating my event attendance BUT I still was experiencing the same frustrations. I had only so much time to allocate towards event attendance.
What Surprised Me
- Not attending events every single year did NOT harm my business and brand
- There are other ways to stay connected with the niche community you’re in-I am in the fortunate position that people visit my town so often that I wasn’t missing out on in-person connections with people who lived out of state but were in my content space.
- I belong to an online mastermind group that organizes in-person retreats. In 2022 we met in Denver, 2023 we went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park. For 2024 we’re heading to Puerto Rico.
- Focus on growing your own community-I’m in the process of growing my Podcasters Getting Paid community. It is a tool that I’ve designed to help Podcasters (Hosts and Producers) of smaller shows monetize their work. It also functions as a community as I host in-person and online events.
- You can “Show Up” virtually for in-person events. In fact, I created helpful guides from my numerous times attending well-known industry events for people who would be attending in-person. This was a great way to share my brand with attendees through being helpful.
Ask Yourself the Following Questions
If you’re thinking about taking a year off from active in-person event attendance or even eliminating certain events from your rotation ask yourself the following:
- Does the event align with your current professional goals?
- Growing your subscribers
- Building brand authority and expertise
- Connect with Short and Long-term opportunities
- Make sales and earn money
If the event isn’t connecting with your goals-why are you attending?
What I’ve Also Discovered
- There is an energetic labor connected with upcoming events in the year before the event happens.
- Making the decision to go
- Deciding to pitch to speak or not
- Managing the cost-Setting money aside in your Digit Account
- Organizing your travel
- The Actual Travel
- Choosing what sessions to attend
- Socializing (and I say this as an extrovert)
- Decompressing
- Returning home
- What to do first from what you’ve learned
- Then, the next event.
I’m so excited to say “no” to conference travel in 2024. The two exceptions would be if I’m overseas and an event happens to be in the place that I’m visiting for example: I’m visiting London and there’s a podcasting conference. I would be up for that because I’m ALREADY VISITING LONDON LOL! Or, I’m staying in New York City for a month and there’s a local meetup there that I would like to attend. That’s the only way I’m attending industry events.