In Episode #404, Eric and Neil discuss whether or not you should throw live events. Live events are excellent opportunities to expand your network. Tune in to learn why Eric throws his live events and dinners monthly and the reason he does them for FREE.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:27 – Today’s topic: Should You Throw Live Events?
• 00:39 – Live events can serve a broad audience and can be a lot cheaper
• 00:51 – Eric throws live events in LA
• 01:06 – Eric has a “happy hour” event once a month with his small group of marketers and entrepreneurs
  • 01:13 – The purpose is just to get people together
• 01:32 – Eric has generated revenue from his live events which are free for the attendees
• 01:41 – Eric received a $120K deal from one of his events where he only spent around $12K to organize it
• 02:03 – Eric has done two live events every month for the past seven months
• 02:16 – Eric has learned a lot from his live events
• 02:26 – The invited guests are targeted
• 03:10 – Jayson Gaignard of Mastermind Talks will give you a template for how to throw live events and a mastermind dinner
• 03:26 – “When you’re inviting people, you want to make sure that everyone’s on the same level”
  • 03:47 – You can use revenue as part of the criteria for who are invited; that’s what EO (Entrepreneurs’ Organization) and YEC (Young Entrepreneur Council) do
• 04:02 – Eric has two sets of dinners: one for marketers and one for entrepreneurs
• 04:19 – The main reason Eric has live events is NOT to generate customers
• 04:45 – The highest ROI Eric made was from these dinners
• 05:00 – You can consider charging people because they tend to take it more seriously if they spend money on it
• 05:25 – Eric usually has maximum of 9 people during the dinners to make it really intimate and 25-30 for happy hour
• 05:55 – Marketing School is giving away a free 1 year subscription of Crazy Egg which is a visual analytics tool
  • 06:35 – Go to SingleGrain.com/giveaway for multiple entries
• 06:45 – That’s it for today’s episode!

3 Key Points:

1. Target your guests for your live events—make sure people are on the same level so everyone can benefit from one another.
2. You can offer free live events, but consider charging so people will take the event more seriously.
3. Don’t focus on the money that you can generate from your events, focus on the value that you can get from it.

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Connect with us:

• NeilPatel.com
• Quick Sprout
• Growth Everywhere
• Single Grain
• Twitter @neilpatel
• Twitter @ericosiu