by Angella Johnson | Jan 31, 2019 | Biz Tips, Events and Workshops, Free Resources, How-tos, Marketing |
My guess is you know a lot about a lot of stuff. So why is it so hard to create awesome content that captivates our audience?
The newsletters. The videos. The blogs. The social media posts. And there’s friggin’ Twitter. How do we keep up with all of it?
Why is content important?
It’s the stuff we share in our marketing.
by Angella Johnson | Oct 22, 2018 | Biz Tips, Events and Workshops, Free Resources, Resources and Invitations, Speaking and Events |
Did you catch the intro, part 1 about Speakers and part 2 about selling in this series? Part 3: Hosting Yes, there are speakers who don’t care and their focus is to get as many sales as possible, whether it’s a fit for someone or not. I’ve been behind the scenes at enough multi-day events to hear the conversations about how to GET as many sales from people and it doesn’t matter who the person is, what they really need, or if what they’re being sold is actually a fit for them. In my experience, there are a LOT more people who actually care then don’t care. Remember in the very beginning of this article series and I shared that one of my events called THRIVE was more salesy than I was comfortable with? How did I let that happen? Why did I let that happen? The answer is simple: I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do. Fear or Out of Alignment? When I expressed my concern that it was too salesy to my mentor, I was met with “Oh that’s just your fear talking. I promise this will work.” That was one of the many experiences I’ve had that taught me the difference between being out of alignment and fear. At the time, I was experiencing both fear and that something was WAY off for me. I didn’t know how to discern it and I was paying people lots of money to tell me what to do and no one was asking me what was true for me. I now make very different choices when...
by Angella Johnson | Oct 22, 2018 | Events and Workshops, Resources and Invitations, Speaking and Events |
If you missed the intro to this article series, check it out here. Part 1 about speakers is here. Part 2: Selling at Events At one of my conferences, I allowed my speakers to sell something less than $200 and they could use the last five minutes of their 50-minute presentation to “pitch.” A friend of mine later told me that she “heard” my event was just a big sales pitch. Clearly, they had never been to a true pitch fest. I was happy to let my speakers sell and felt confident that they were focused on providing value. Even though that was my experience, some people felt that was just too salesy. I share this because I learned that I can never make 100% of the participants happy. One person will criticize the event or speaker while the next person is elated with joy. Is victimizing event participants the solution to putting more value and integrity into events? The real problem with these pitch fests isn’t the pitch itself, it’s the participants. How could I possibly say something so absurd??? After attempting to change the way events hosts were hosting and speakers were selling to be more authentic and getting nowhere, I realized that I cannot change events from the top down. I gave event hosts feedback. I asked= my coaches about their strategies that were more pitch fests than events and was met with a nice pat on the head. It was clear my feedback wasn’t going to change the way these events were being done. I had to go from the bottom up and from the...
by Angella Johnson | Oct 22, 2018 | Biz Tips, Events and Workshops, Speaking and Events |
If you missed the intro of this series, go here. Part 1: The Speakers In 2009, my vision of hosting transformational women’s conferences came to fruition with my first Ignite Your Spark conference. Since then I’ve had over 100 speakers on my stages and many more on my virtual stages for telesummits and podcast. Why am I mentioning this? Speakers vary and while there are speakers out there like Leonie’s article mentions, there are amazing speakers too. Unfortunately, I’ve seen the ugly side of speakers at events. Speakers who… … threw a tantrum (literal tantrum) because I didn’t have the right kind of tea in the speaker break room. … flat out lied on how much they sold so they didn’t have to pay me my percentage… … at the last minute changed their offer to a $20 offer from the stage so they only had to pay me my 25% of the sales and then quickly upsold people to their higher-priced programs but since the upsells weren’t technically sold at the event, I didn’t receive a commission on those sales. I’ve seen the absolute delight and integrity by speakers too, which is what I experience most of the time. The difference between the dramatic and the delightful? There is a big difference between speakers who want to speak to my audience to GET something vs speakers who genuinely desire to contribute value and CO-CREATE something with me. Get vs co-create. Do you get the difference there? Guess which speakers I have on my stage? Tip: when speakers ask me what my vision is for the event and how they can contribute...
by Angella Johnson | Oct 22, 2018 | Events and Workshops, Marketing, Mindset, Resources and Invitations, Speaking and Events |
What inspired this article series: Leonie Dawson, a woman I’ve authentically admired for years, posted a fantastic and brutally honest blog about attending a 1-day Gary Vaynerchuk event that you can read here. A friend of mine shared her blog on Faceboook and I commented: It’s why I started teaching how to do events differently. This is not just Gary but I can name dozens of events I’ve been to like this. I started hosting my events with more of a sales focus as this was ALL I saw where people actually made money. But I changed things. You can make great money by hosting events and they don’t have to be a pitch fest! And my hope is that consumers wake up and powerfully choose what’s aligned for them. No one forces anyone to use their credit card and it can feel that people have “no choice” and have buyer’s remorse. But we’ve got to speak up and choose what works for us! It’s the second paragraph that I want to emphasize here. Is anyone truly forced to buy something? While it’s great to educate people that events like what Leonie describes actually happen, I feel that it’s important to empower people to exercise their intuition and to learn how to say no. This goes far beyond being slimed or “forced” into buying something. No one is forced. Convinced? Yes. Coerced? Yes. Shamed? Yes. Persuaded? Yes. But actually forced, as in someone MADE them pull out their credit card? No. It can sure feel forced though, can’t it? Am I preaching to the choir? I think sharing experiences like Leonie...
by Angella Johnson | Sep 19, 2018 | Events and Workshops, Free Resources, Inspiration, Life!, Mindset, Resources and Invitations |
Ask and receive. You’ve likely heard this before, right? When I used to hear that, I rejected it. It couldn’t be that easy, right? So I didn’t ask for stuff. I was taught to be grateful for what I had and I could be happy with very little. I saw my parents work really hard and heard a lot of “someday… if/when we get a lot of money…” and we would dream about what we would do IF… Then I learned how to work really hard to create things I desired… I stayed at jobs that I hated. I even worked for a boss who was verbally abusive to everyone around him. His temper tantrums included pounding his fists on the conference room table when he got mad, which was all the time. My thinking was, “But I’m making $60,000 a year and I can’t make that anywhere else.” I worked 60+ hours a week at most of my jobs. I went to the gym five days a week and ate tuna out of the can (super gross) to force my body to change. There was a lot of force involved and I made stuff happen, yet I always felt like I was behind – I never quite got ahead and it was never enough. In 2014, I declared joy in my life. I didn’t know how I was going to get it but I kept “putting it out to the universe” to show me something different. I had questions like this go through my head hundreds of times, “What if I learned abundance through abundance?” “Can I learn...
