Seminars Can Make Or Break A Coach

Fortunately it’s pretty simple to nail them

Have you ever looked at meetup.com, all of those groups with thousands of members, and wondered, how do I get on their stage?

“How do I get them to promote me?”

I had a pretty similar thought 3 years ago.

I’d look at these meet-ups with hundreds of people attending, thinking how in the hell do I get on their stage.

How do I get in-front of the right kind of people to get on their stage and get coaching clients?

This is what I’m writing about today.

I’m going to be teaching you

1. How I’ve gotten dozens of meetups to promote me on their stage.

2. How on each of those meetups I’ve averaged $30,000 in coaching clients.

These were a few that I’ve done in the latter half of this year.

The process to nailing meetup is pretty straight forward.

But I warn you now, this will not work if:

1. You’re not a people person

Getting on somebody else’s stage means that you need a relationship with them.

No relationship = no gig.

Don’t be the grumpy cat.

2. You want to get a VA (Virtual Assistant) to do the work for you

This is suicide. For sure, you can get someone else to do the work for you. BUT… In the beginning, always do it yourself. When you know how to do something, you’ll know how to outsource it properly.

Alright… Ready?

What you’ll need:

1. An excel spread sheet

2. A Facebook account

Step 1: Define Your Meetup Niche

What kind of Meetups do you want to speak on stage with?

For me it was simple, I was a dating coach for men, so singles networks were PERFECT.

Not only did they have everyone I could ever want, BUT they were always consistently the LARGEST meet ups out there.

If you’re a life coach, go into personal development groups.

Remember not all groups are created equal. Some groups have NO interest in what you’re doing.

Thank you Yoda, for the wise insight!

Leave them alone… Trust me on this one, the audience will not even sign up for the talk, let alone sign up for your coaching.

Step 2: Find Your Meetups

This is critical, you need to find your meetups.

But you may be saying: “How do I find them?”

a. List down all the major cities you’d want to speak at, (or at least do webinars at).

b. Go to the meetup.com homepage. And select within 50 miles of (your target city)

c. Click in the ‘All Meetups’ box, and you’ll see a drop down list come up.

d. Select the right genre for your niche.

Step 3: Create A Log Of The Best

Once you’ve found your niche, you’ll now get a whole list of relevant meet-ups.

Awesome sauce!

Now its time to ‘Write down all of the meetups you’d want to speak at’.

“What do I write?” you say?

Well… Here’s what I look at.

Firstly, I look at,

a. How many members does each of these meetups have?

Anything about 1,000+ members is perfect.

Unless its a hyper targeted niche.

What do you mean exactly, what I’m saying, is lets I find a meetup which says: London Coaches Group.

Nailed it.

Now even though that group has 200 members, vs. the 1000 cut off point.

Its PERFECT because we have highly motivated people in this group. Even though its small, I’ve seen small groups get massive sign up rates.

b. How many people are signing up on their talks regularly

Getting 50+?

Anything less than that. That group probably has a low number of events, so people ignore the messages which come up out of it.

Step 4: Follow The Owner

Remember how we said earlier that getting any talk with a meetup group, is all about the relationships that you keep with them.

Well, lets think about this for a moment, what kind of people would meetup owners like?

…

Did you get it?

Well people that remind them of themselves!

This is where finding out about your meetup group owner is critical.

Its like going into a conversation, knowing everything about the person you’re speaking to. You know their likes their dislikes, you know how they talk, and what kind of style they use, you know everything about them.

Did that little voice in your head pop up yet? You know, the one that says..

“Yeah Sai… but I just… y’know what it to flow, and be natural. I don’t like to do all the background checks before hand”.

In fact this is something  3 years ago, which I didn’t want to do. I wanted conversation to be natural. I wanted it just to flow.

Here’s what I found out over the years when getting meet up owners to put me on their stages.

If I showed an interest in what ‘THEY valued’, they showed an interest in what I valued.

and… (heres the critical thing).

The owners of the biggest meetup groups had the least amount of time. So unless I knew what they valued IMMEDIATELY, and showed an interest in it I’d never get the time to flow naturally.

Here’s how I did it:

For every meetup I wanted to speak at, I did my research on the owner:

1. On their meetup page, you’ll see the “Organisers name” on the left.

Copy that name and paste it into Facebook, and find someone with the same profile picture.

2. Add them on Facebook (for use later on).

They’ll add you back 90% of the time.

3. Go through their profile.

Find out
a. What they like
b. What they dislike
c. What they’re talking about
d. What’s important to them.

Make notes of all of that info. It will be very useful when making the first approach.

Step 5: Make First Contact With Them on Facebook

Remember that these guys are ‘celebrities’ in their own world on meetup. Everybody contacts them on meetup, and thus as a result, they have next to 0 headspace to take anymore people there.

But on Facebook, for some reason, I’ve found beyond email, beyond contacting them on meetup. I always get replies when I message them via Facebook.

Here’s the exact message I used for Entrepreneurs in London:

Hey Patrick,

Its good to get introduced to you, my friends Daniel and Matt talk highly of you. How long have you been running the Entrepreneurs in London club?

I’m not sure how much Daniel mentioned, but in a nut shell, I run an online business, called Double Your Database , its aimed at people in business who want to create an impact while living anywhere, working when they want, and living a lifestyle they dream of.

I’m doing a talk with Matt on the 21st, I’ve gone through what you are doing with Entrepreneurs in London, If your game, lets have a skype chat, and see whether I’d be able to create some value as a speaker with your network.

Eitherway is fine, would be good to connect with other game changers

I can do tomorrow morning 9am GMT, does that work?

If not, please suggest three other times,

Thanks in advance

Sai

Did you notice something here, I’m not selling him. I’m not saying PLEASE select me as one of your speakers.

Why?

Well, because that’s what everybody else would do. You’ll get lost in the noise.

As Warren Buffet says:

“Don’t do what the crowd does.”

Lets do something a little different.

I call it the two tone approach.

The first part is all about validating him, as the meetup owner.

Remember, for the most part these guys crave validation from their audience, which is why they do what they do, they do it for validation more than anything else. And here I am, validating them. It automatically makes them more receptive before I go in with the ‘BIG question’

Here’s his reply:

Notice how I did a ‘two part’ approach.

This was a little while back now, but as a result we’ve done 5 different gigs together over the last year. And we’re due to do two more in the next month.

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Step 6: Get on Skype

This is the final stage, before you’ve closed the deal. And its critical that you do it right.

Remember earlier when we talked about finding out everything you possibly could about your meetup owner.

This is where it comes in handy.

In the many dozens of calls I’ve had with meetup group owners. I can tell you one thing.

If they like you,

Your in.

On skype, that is your primary focus. Get them to like you.

You want to hear a ninja trick for this.

OK… Maybe not that Ninja…

But its pretty close.

Ready?

To be interesting for them, you need to be interested in them.

Remember the topics you talk about, need to be based on what you know they’ll like.

Spending a good 50 to 70% of the call really showing that interest.

If you’ve booked in 30 minutes for the call, spend about 20 minutes, creating rapport. Be interested in them and the topics you know they’ll love.

On the last 10 minutes, transition with.

“I know you need to go within the next ten minutes, are you good to go through a potential talk i could do to bring value to your group.”

Notice my focus here is on bringing value to the group.

If you’ve already researched this group in depth, this won’t be too much of an issue to get a YES. As your topic will be completely relevant to what they do.

What they’ll need from you,

Potential dates.

The topic you’ll be talking about,

Why would that topic be interesting for them.

Are you going to be selling anything?

If so, what are you selling?

Are they going to get any commission?

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Step 7: Getting a repeat GIG with the same person.

The first time you speak at any one meetup is the toughest to get.

The second, third and forth times are easy.

Which is why, I make sure that every-time I do a speaking gig, and I get high end coaching clients from them.

I always negotiate for about 10% commission, where I give the meetup owner 10% of the money I make from the coaching clients I got from speaking at their group.

Then what I’ll do, is surprise them. And say

“As a thank you for taking me on for the first time, here’s an extra 5%”

I always give them more than what they were expecting, and NEVER mess them around on the first time.

The reason for this is because if they get more than what they were expecting, they always will favour you, over others going forward.

Every single time, I always surprise them, it may be a bottle of expensive champagne, it may be taking them out to dinner.

Its purely a surprise, to build up that level of “When ever I see him/her something good happens”.

Try to set expectations low, with the meetup owner, then break them.

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