3 Reasons You Need to Attend Entrepreneur Events in 2020

It’s no longer enough to sit down and grind at the computer for 8 or 10 hours a day. Truthfully, anyone with a strong will can do this.

Combine that with the fact that there’s a new technology or marketing hack released every day, promising to “change the game”. Instead, what often happens is we just end up in a loop of hustling at our computer for hours or days on end, hoping to gain an edge. But, something important gets missed.

Technology and novel marketing strategies provide a temporary edge for the early adopters. But that knowledge eventually reaches the masses. And once your competitors learn it, it’s no longer a differentiator. 

With such open access to these powerful business tools, you’d think running a business get easier. In fact, the technology and strategies just become a new baseline we must adopt to just to play in the game. 

But to win, we need a sustainable way to differentiate ourselves and grow faster than the competitors. That differentiator is human contact.

Why You Need to Attend Entrepreneur Events in 2020

1) Serendipity: Events create organic human connections and unlock unforeseen opportunities

In a digitally-dominated world, the way to continually differentiate your brand is to be human and to show up in person. 

This is why the real winners today are going to entrepreneur events and building real human connections that lead to word of mouth, marketing groundswell, and direct sales.

There’s an array of events you can attend, including seminars, conferences, masterminds and retreats, networking events, and more. 

Even non-business-related events can be a great source of brand building and lead generation, including lifestyle events, parties, and fundraisers. 

At our company, we host monthly mindfulness and marketing events in LA to deepen our community and drive organic sales.

More importantly, we host Masterminds for our top contacts, clients, partners and role models, creating a hand-picked group of winners, who work on bigger deals once the gloves are off. These private groups are where the bigger deals are born.

For example, if you attend a Mastermind, and meet an influencer in your niche who has 1.5M followers and is eager to work with you, you could circumvent countless hours of recruitment, audience building, and media dollars, and reach a huge new audience that might double your sales in a moment’s notice.

The point is this, events are serendipitous.

However, grinding away at your desk, and only speaking to people online doesn’t allow for organic conversations to form near as easily with potential investors, acquirers, partners, or customers in segments you aren’t marketing to.

Similarly, only contacting prospects via sales and marketing creates a “what can you offer me” environment, instead of “what do we have in common?”

2) Your customers are at events

There are events for everything you can imagine. Have a dog? There’s a corgi meet up in San Francisco’s Delores Park that garnered thousands of dogs and their owners on a little city block.

Interested in marketing? There are more events than you can imagine teaching you the secrets of online marketing success. Mindfulness? In my neighborhood, there are sound baths every Tuesday.

Just scan something like Meetup or Eventbrite, and you’ll find hundreds of options in your city.

What better way to meet your customers in person and research their perspective, language, objections and more than to have a conversation?

3) Build a personal brand and magnify trust

Trust is the backbone of every brand. When customers trust you to deliver on your promise, they buy from you. It’s that simple.

The easiest way to establish trust is through genuine human connections. Think of it like this, the further you get away from face-to-face, the less someone feels empathy for you, and therefore the less they attempt to relate. In turn, they doubt, distrust and distance themselves.

Like famed negotiator Chris Voss says, “never negotiate in an email”.

The essence of an effective personal brand is having a true connection to your audience. Meeting people in person allows your personality to unfold for people and for them to see the real you. And that’s all they ever wanted!

So give yourself and others a chance to experience all that you have to offer – stories, insights, expertise, and humor. This is what draws people to you, not just what you have to “offer”.

In closing

It can be a bit daunting to storm into events you’ve never attended and just start networking. I get it. But that in itself is a great challenge. So lean into your edge and start meeting people! You’ll be surprised at how much positive regard you get, and how many opportunities sprout from it.