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Lessons Learned From Our 1st LIVE Event
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The SOLARPRENEUR podcast is here to help you close more deals in the solar industry, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully, have a much better time and situation.
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Transcript
Introduction and Journey of Taylor Armstrong
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
00:00:08
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
00:00:10
Speaker
I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
00:00:19
Speaker
I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a solopreneur, you might ask?
00:00:33
Speaker
A solopreneur is a new breed of solopro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery, and you are about to become one.
Reflections on Recent Live Event
00:00:41
Speaker
Hey, what's going on, Solpreneurs?
00:00:43
Speaker
We are back with another episode and we just wrapped up our first live event.
00:00:48
Speaker
I'm going to be talking about some lessons learned, little recap of the event, and just really appreciate all those that were able to join us.
00:00:58
Speaker
It was a great event and I'm going to tell you all what you missed out on.
00:01:02
Speaker
So let's jump into it.
00:01:03
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
00:01:04
Speaker
We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals.
00:01:08
Speaker
And hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry.
00:01:13
Speaker
And I apologize up front if I sound a little out of it.
00:01:17
Speaker
Because we just got done with our live event.
00:01:20
Speaker
We just got done with SolarCon.
00:01:23
Speaker
And actually just got back from Disneyland, little recovery day.
00:01:28
Speaker
So I feel like I need a recovery day after all this, a little out of it.
00:01:33
Speaker
So I apologize if I sound beat up, but I'm coming at you and was excited to just recap a little bit.
00:01:40
Speaker
So once again, thank you if you're able to join us.
00:01:44
Speaker
If you were not, I hope you can come to our next event.
00:01:48
Speaker
We're planning on doing more in the future.
00:01:50
Speaker
We got great feedback from everyone that was able to attend.
00:01:53
Speaker
And I thought it was some super valuable presentations that were given.
00:01:58
Speaker
Great food, great networking.
00:02:01
Speaker
Overall, I thought the event was a huge success for the most part.
00:02:08
Speaker
Always looking for improvements, but I'm going to talk about it.
00:02:11
Speaker
So I want to hit you with six or seven lessons that I learned from doing this event.
00:02:18
Speaker
Looks like possibly eight.
00:02:21
Speaker
I just jotted down some notes before I hit record here.
00:02:24
Speaker
And my overall thoughts are that events, they are no joke.
00:02:29
Speaker
They take a lot of planning, a lot of preparation.
00:02:32
Speaker
It's not for the faint of heart.
00:02:34
Speaker
Overall, they are very rewarding.
00:02:37
Speaker
So we did our event Wednesday, April 17th.
00:02:40
Speaker
It was the day before SolarCon.
00:02:43
Speaker
And we did it at the aquarium, got great feedback from that.
00:02:47
Speaker
We had sharks swimming in the background.
00:02:50
Speaker
We even had scuba divers come down in that tank during the presentation.
00:02:56
Speaker
Maybe a little bit distracting when they came down, but it was pretty cool.
00:03:01
Speaker
It was unique.
00:03:02
Speaker
Drew some attention.
Commitment and Attendance Insights
00:03:05
Speaker
And so my first lesson that I learned was the people that pay, pay attention.
00:03:11
Speaker
And what I mean by that is, as many of you know, we included this boot camp as part of our offer for SolarCon.
00:03:23
Speaker
Anyone that bought our SolarCon tickets with the coupon code, they got a free ticket to our event, which was great.
00:03:31
Speaker
But the downside of that is...
00:03:33
Speaker
Technically, they weren't paying for our events.
00:03:38
Speaker
Those that came weren't paying for our events.
00:03:41
Speaker
And all the people that did buy a ticket outside of that, they showed up great.
00:03:46
Speaker
But I was a little bit surprised that a lot of people that took advantage of our solar con offer didn't show up to the events.
00:03:54
Speaker
And it was just a reminder that that's the power of paying for stuff is you take it more seriously.
00:03:59
Speaker
You do what it takes to get there.
00:04:01
Speaker
And I think there's more growth involved.
00:04:04
Speaker
So maybe a little adjustment.
00:04:05
Speaker
Maybe I need to charge more.
00:04:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's just how it is.
00:04:09
Speaker
And that's why, you know, people in our coaching program, they're charged for it.
00:04:13
Speaker
That's why any top coach that you work with, they're going to charge for it.
00:04:17
Speaker
Because really, I think it's necessary for people to grow, to take action, to
00:04:22
Speaker
At the end of the day, people that are paying are going to take it more seriously and put more effort into it.
00:04:27
Speaker
So that was my first lesson.
00:04:29
Speaker
Hey, we did have, it wasn't a huge event and I wasn't expecting it to be massive.
00:04:34
Speaker
I was hoping we didn't quite reach our goal of how many people I wanted to attend, but we had about 25 people there.
00:04:42
Speaker
So, you know, kept it up close and personal and the people that were there got a ton of
00:04:50
Speaker
valuable contents, gave us great feedback.
00:04:53
Speaker
So I think it was actually more valuable keeping it tight knit like that for the people that came because we were able to customize it, do a little more Q&A, stuff like that.
Event Budgeting and Sponsorship
00:05:03
Speaker
And then the second lesson I learned is these events, they are expensive.
00:05:08
Speaker
They cost more than you think.
00:05:10
Speaker
If you're not careful, money can just start flying off the shelves.
00:05:13
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:14
Speaker
So yeah, learned the lesson.
00:05:15
Speaker
Definitely wasn't a moneymaker for me.
00:05:18
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:18
Speaker
So those that think events are moneymakers, most of the time they're not.
00:05:22
Speaker
You talk to anyone that runs events, a lot of these events aren't making money.
00:05:28
Speaker
A lot of people go in the hole to get exposure, to get their name out there more.
00:05:32
Speaker
And that's really what it was for me.
00:05:35
Speaker
Definitely winning the hole.
00:05:37
Speaker
I think there's some things I can tweak to, you know, monetize it to hopefully break even.
00:05:42
Speaker
That's the goal on these.
00:05:43
Speaker
They hopefully can at least break even, but they're more expensive than I thought.
00:05:48
Speaker
So if you are planning events for your company, for your team, make sure you budget accordingly and
00:05:54
Speaker
And realize that there's probably going to be stuff that comes up.
00:05:57
Speaker
It's probably going to end up costing more than you think.
00:05:59
Speaker
And there's going to be surprise expenses for sure.
00:06:03
Speaker
Hey, lesson number three.
00:06:05
Speaker
Our sponsor for the event was Repcard.
00:06:08
Speaker
And they are the bomb.com to work with.
00:06:12
Speaker
Would definitely recommend them for any event you have.
00:06:16
Speaker
And if you have not heard of RepCard, if you're not using them, go check these guys out.
00:06:20
Speaker
Was super grateful that Brad Morton and his team could sponsor our event, help us out with it.
00:06:28
Speaker
They helped us out with some super cool name badges.
00:06:32
Speaker
Funny enough, I actually had one of my buddies that came.
00:06:35
Speaker
And he wore his name tag to SolarCon on accident.
00:06:40
Speaker
He wore his solopreneur name tag to SolarCon the day after, which I thought was pretty awesome.
00:06:46
Speaker
You know, the people letting him in weren't so happy about it.
00:06:49
Speaker
They didn't want to let him in.
00:06:50
Speaker
But that's how cool they were.
00:06:51
Speaker
So thank you to Brad.
00:06:52
Speaker
Thank you to Repcard.
00:06:54
Speaker
And if you don't have a way to follow up with your leads to track them,
00:07:00
Speaker
or you need a solid door knocking app, dual knocking tool, definitely go check out RepCard.
00:07:05
Speaker
They're sweet.
00:07:06
Speaker
Okay, lesson four is make sure you make it obvious where your event
Logistics and Event Management
00:07:14
Speaker
is taking place.
00:07:14
Speaker
Hey, this is something I didn't really think of beforehand, but make sure you have signs pointing to where people need to go for your event or someone out hurting people to where they need to go.
00:07:26
Speaker
There was quite a bit of confusion on where the event actually was in the aquarium.
00:07:31
Speaker
So hindsight should have made it more clear where the event was and had signs or had a welcome, something like that.
00:07:40
Speaker
Because, yeah, there was a lot of confusion.
00:07:42
Speaker
So apologize if you were confused when you got to the event.
00:07:46
Speaker
Lesson number five, and this is kind of a funny story, but I had to buy quite a bit of food for the event.
00:07:53
Speaker
These venues, a lot of times they require you to buy a certain amount of food.
00:07:58
Speaker
So no matter who showed up, I had to buy the food.
00:08:01
Speaker
So we actually, just to meet the minimum food budget, had to do breakfast, lunch, and a snack after.
00:08:09
Speaker
So it was tons of food.
00:08:13
Speaker
It was great.
00:08:14
Speaker
Breakfast barely got touched.
00:08:15
Speaker
So we had tons of leftover for that.
00:08:18
Speaker
Lunch was a lot better.
00:08:19
Speaker
But the lesson I learned is if you want to take leftover food, make sure you tell them right after the event.
00:08:29
Speaker
It was kind of funny.
00:08:29
Speaker
I had all this leftover food.
00:08:31
Speaker
Now I'm thinking, okay, well, we spent all this money on food.
00:08:36
Speaker
And, well, you know, I'll just take some home for dinner.
00:08:39
Speaker
Not a big deal.
00:08:40
Speaker
Because we had, you know, some barely got touched.
00:08:44
Speaker
And I go after the event.
00:08:46
Speaker
I'm talking to the chef people.
00:08:48
Speaker
And I'm telling them, hey, can I take this in boxes, whatever?
00:08:52
Speaker
Be cool.
00:08:53
Speaker
Let's have some for dinner.
00:08:55
Speaker
And they're like, oh, you know what?
00:08:57
Speaker
We gave it to the employees.
00:08:59
Speaker
It's all gone.
00:08:59
Speaker
Yeah, we get rid of it after.
00:09:03
Speaker
If we don't hear anything, then we typically just give it away to the employees or trash it.
00:09:08
Speaker
And I'm like, are you serious?
00:09:10
Speaker
I drop all this money.
00:09:11
Speaker
It's just down the drain.
00:09:13
Speaker
So lesson learned.
00:09:15
Speaker
If you do want to take your leftover food,
00:09:17
Speaker
People that know me know I love taking, you know, I'm a food guy.
00:09:22
Speaker
Like I like taking my leftovers if I got leftovers.
00:09:25
Speaker
And so if you want those leftovers, make sure you tell the people right away.
00:09:29
Speaker
Otherwise, it's getting thrown in the trash or it's getting eaten by the other employees, I guess.
00:09:35
Speaker
So, yeah, kind of a funny story, but that happens.
00:09:39
Speaker
Lesson number six, make sure you plan out a good intro to the events.
00:09:44
Speaker
This is something that I was scrambling to.
00:09:46
Speaker
I didn't think about till the last minute, but it was my job to introduce the speakers to kick off the events.
00:09:52
Speaker
And I did plan something, but I didn't think about this till the night before.
00:09:56
Speaker
So I was up, you know, pretty late planning on how I was going to introduce the events, how I was going to intro the speakers, because it's just not something that I really thought about.
00:10:07
Speaker
So might be obvious to other people, but yeah, I didn't think about that a ton.
00:10:13
Speaker
Number seven, I have a marketing plan to get people to the event.
00:10:18
Speaker
As I mentioned, I didn't quite hit the goal for how many people I wanted there.
00:10:22
Speaker
And I think if I would have come up with a little better marketing plan instead of just relying on posting on social media, talking about it in the podcast, a few other things, I think I could have got...
00:10:34
Speaker
I think I could have met the goal on how many people we wanted there.
00:10:37
Speaker
But, you know, lessons learned.
00:10:41
Speaker
Just because you have some people on social media, just because you got a podcast doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get the word out to tons of people.
00:10:49
Speaker
And I did have people at SolarCon after the event.
00:10:53
Speaker
Quite a few people came up and had no idea I was even doing an event.
00:10:57
Speaker
So that just shows to me that that's on me.
00:11:00
Speaker
I need to make sure I market it and really get the word out.
00:11:03
Speaker
to everyone and make sure they know that I'm doing an event.
00:11:09
Speaker
And then last but not least, one of the other issues with my events is
00:11:16
Speaker
I don't know if there's an issue, but I started at 9 a.m.
00:11:19
Speaker
the day before SolarCon.
00:11:22
Speaker
And as I started thinking about it, I'm like, OK, what were some other reasons why maybe I didn't hit the goal for the attendance?
00:11:32
Speaker
And really starting event at 9 a.m.
00:11:35
Speaker
SolarCon didn't start until the next day.
00:11:38
Speaker
That meant that people really need to show up the night before, in most cases, to even make it to my event.
00:11:44
Speaker
So I think in hindsight, it made it maybe a little tricky for people to get there.
00:11:49
Speaker
They had to adjust their travel plans by quite a bit just to make it to my event.
00:11:54
Speaker
So yeah, and I did get that feedback from a handful of people that couldn't make it that had tickets.
00:12:01
Speaker
So yeah, next, next year, um, or next time I do an event, just something I'm going to be conscious of, um, just the timing of it and the, uh, planning around when people can make it.
00:12:14
Speaker
And I know you're never going to be like, it's never going to be convenient for everyone to make it, but, um, yeah, possibly kind of tweak the schedule on it to get some more folks there.
00:12:24
Speaker
So anyways, those are just a few lessons that
Event Success and Future Plans
00:12:27
Speaker
I learned.
00:12:27
Speaker
Overall, the event was a great success.
00:12:30
Speaker
So much value.
00:12:32
Speaker
We are going to be posting the recordings in our Soul Society training platform.
00:12:39
Speaker
So if you're interested in signing up for that, you can go to soul society.co and she can take advantage of those if you were not able to attend.
00:12:49
Speaker
But just so many nuggets.
00:12:52
Speaker
We're probably going to do the next episode.
00:12:55
Speaker
I plan on doing just a little recap of some of the content in the event and then also a recap of SolarCon.
00:13:02
Speaker
But I wanted to keep it brief and wanted to just share a couple lessons that I learned from the first event that I've planned and that I've made happen.
00:13:12
Speaker
So thanks again for supporting it.
00:13:14
Speaker
And thanks again for supporting the podcast.
00:13:16
Speaker
It means so much.
00:13:18
Speaker
I really appreciate those that were able to attend the event in person.
00:13:22
Speaker
And all I ask, if you're listening to this podcast and have not left us a review or have not shared it, please go do that.
00:13:29
Speaker
That's how we keep the podcast spread into more people.
00:13:33
Speaker
And that's how we increase the impact with it.
00:13:35
Speaker
So tune into the next episode.
00:13:37
Speaker
And I promise I should be a little more recovered.
00:13:40
Speaker
Hopefully I sound a little less zombie-ish on the next show.
00:13:43
Speaker
And we'll see you on the next one.
00:13:44
Speaker
Peace.
Promotional Content and Podcast Episodes
00:13:46
Speaker
What's up, solopreneurs?
00:13:47
Speaker
Hope you enjoyed the episode.
00:13:49
Speaker
Before you run out and start selling more solar yourself, wanted to let you know about an exciting new cheat sheet we created specifically for you in mind.
00:14:00
Speaker
One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start?
00:14:07
Speaker
What episodes should I listen to in the podcast?
00:14:09
Speaker
And
00:14:10
Speaker
You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
00:14:15
Speaker
So what we've done, we created the top 10 most downloaded, most listened to, and I would say widely accepted, most useful podcasts that we've done here on Solopreneur.
00:14:28
Speaker
We put them together all in one sheet so you can go, you can hit the ground running, especially if you're new, you do not want to not have this sheet.
00:14:37
Speaker
So go download it right now.
00:14:38
Speaker
It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com.
00:14:42
Speaker
Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com.
00:14:47
Speaker
Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs.
00:14:50
Speaker
We will have that in the show notes.
00:14:51
Speaker
Go download it right now.
00:14:53
Speaker
And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them.
00:14:59
Speaker
That's going to show you how.
00:15:00
Speaker
So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.