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147. Sound Bite: Why Hosting Events May Be A Solopreneur's Best Marketing Tool Yet · The Life-First Solopreneur

• 0:00
  Carly Ries: Let me tell you, hosting events has been an absolute game changer for lead generation and building genuine connections. Joe and I are huge fans of taking something as simple as a webinar, giving it a little makeover, and calling it an event. Trust me. It makes a world of difference. And when you frame it as an event, it instantly feels more exciting and engaging and not just for your audience, but for you too.
• 0:22
  Events create real value for participants and foster a sense of community that's hard to replicate. There's just something special about coming together, sharing ideas, and making connections that stick. That's why Joe and I are always encouraging solopreneurs to lean into hosting events. It's the perfect way to connect with your audience and show that human interaction is way more powerful than just another piece of content. So tune in to this episode to find out more.
• 0:48
  You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for those just taking the bold step or even just thinking about taking that step into the world of solo entrepreneurship. My name is Carly Ries, and my co host Joe Rando and I are your guides to navigating this crazy, but awesome journey as a company of 1. We take pride in being part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all aspects of solopreneurship that has empowered and educated countless solopreneurs looking to build a business that resonates with their life's ambitions. We help people work to live, not live to work. And if you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the show for you.
• 1:27
  So if you're eager to gain valuable insights from industry experts on running a business the right way the first time around or want to learn from the missteps of solopreneurs who've paved the way before you, then stick around. We've got your back because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. So, Joe, we I can't remember if it was during our sound bite bite or recent interview that we were talking about hosting events, and I I say that with an emphasis that you'll clarify in a second, as a form of content. People always say, oh, I need to create a PDF. I need to create an infographic or whatever.
• 2:04
  And events are a great lead generation tool and piece of content that you can use to really connect with your audience, and we have seen such such success with that in our own business, but we we call them events for a reason. Would you like to elaborate?
• 2:21
  Joe Rando: Yeah. Because, some research that Jay Schwedelson did said that calling it a webinar reduces open rates on your emails promoting the the webinar drastically. So you really don't wanna call it a webinar because webinars are perceived as kind of boring. So you call it an event, you know, somebody says, Do you want to come to a webinar? Or, You want to come to an event? it sounds a lot more exciting to be an event or, I don't know. You can think of a whole bunch of different names, but webinar is just, you know, I mean, it comes from seminar, and nobody ever got excited about a seminar. So why would they get excited about a webinar?
• 2:59
  Carly Ries: So people often wonder, what our biggest lead gen tool is for LifeStarr to reach solopreneurs, and it is these events. this is not supposed to be a shameless plug, but we have 2 events a month, that are free to solopreneurs. 1 is called Solopreneur Problem Solvers. 1 is called Solopreneur Success Sessions. Problem Solvers is for established solopreneurs, and it's a brainstorming event where people can help solve each other's problems.
• 3:25
  Instead of just throwing spaghetti at a wall, like, it's a great place for people to get feedback from those that are in a similar boat. They're also solopreneurs. And then Success Sessions is probably more of your typical, webinar format from a presentation standpoint. we have a guest every month that comes and gives educational information to our community and our listeners and viewers and solopreneurs that wanna join, and people get excited for these because they provide real value. It's not boring.
• 3:59
  It's informative. It genuinely helps these solopreneurs, and they keep coming back. And so many people think that they don't have the ability to put on these events, whether they're too small or they don't have a big community, and that just isn't true. And so, Joe, I want you to elaborate a little bit. I've kinda gone off You run it.
• 4:20
  Joe Rando: I mean, the one that you said is much more like a webinar, we call it a micro conference, which sounds a lot more, in my book, exciting than webinar. But the idea here is you're adding value.
• 4:38
  it's not a sales pitch masked as an event or a webinar or whatever you wanna call it. It is truly something that adds value. We give a quick, you know, minute long, hey.
• 4:50
  This is what we do, who we are, what we do. There are no strings attached, But, you know, what happens is when people sign up, they give us their email address because that's the only way to get the invite. And once we have the email address, they're opted in to receive emails from us. We don't spam them, but we do send them stuff. And, you know, over time, if they don't want the stuff, they unsubscribe, and that's fine.
• 5:17
  And if they do, great. We've got somebody engaged. But it's a pretty simple process. I mean, putting the events on took a little time to kinda work out all the different inner workings of doing it smoothly, but a lot of fun. I mean, it is a lot of fun too.
• 5:34
  I mean, when you get right down to it.
• 5:35
  Carly Ries: And once you get the technological side, the logistics, and all of that down, it really doesn't take a lot of effort. I mean, honestly, Joe, like, you have to do the promo emails and all of that, but the actual running event, especially if you have a guest speaker on, it's a time saving compared to if you're creating an infographic or something. This is such a great way to connect with your audience so easily, share your personality, share your knowledge, and not have to come up with content that you just aren't innately good at. But the other thing I will say is you can create other content from these events. You could take clips and repurpose it to YouTube, social media.
• 6:15
  You can get testimonials. We ask for testimonials after our event from people just so we can share that with others. It's just such a time saver, and I feel like it's something that a lot of solopreneurs don't think about because they think it's slated for these bigger companies, and it's not true. As long as you have an audience and a targeted audience that you know you want to talk to, this is just such a great way to connect with them and to generate those leads. And since they've already seen your personality and who you present yourself as, they'll be more likely to work with you than if they were downloading a PDF or something.
• 6:46
  So we are huge fans of this.
• 6:48
  Joe Rando: Yeah. It kinda humanizes you. It's not just, you know, you have a nicely designed PDF of something valuable. That's great. But when you when you start interacting with the actual person, that's a lot.
• 6:59
  And, you know, one of the things we do too that we kind of just decided to do it, for some reason is after the event ends, we just stay around because it's on Zoom, and we just stay around and let people network and we just kinda hang out. just like you would if you went to a real event, right, and the event ends, you know, you might hang around and chat with people for a while afterwards. And so we do the same thing, but it's on Zoom. And not everybody stays, but a lot of people do, and they really enjoy it.
• 7:29
  They drop off as they need to over the half an hour, but you know, it's a really neat little thing to do to kind of build more connection with people, connect people together, and, I like it.
• 7:41
  Carly Ries: What's the saying? The proof is in the pudding. This isn't us trying to do a shameless plug for the entire episode. We just wanted to share that it works, and we have seen firsthand that it works. The people that we've recommended it to say that it works for them, so I say give it a shot.
• 7:57
  Joe Rando: Absolutely.
• 7:58
  Carly Ries: Well, listeners, thank you so much for tuning in to this soundbite episode. We so appreciate your support. If you could leave that 5 star review, subscribe on your favorite platform, subscribe to our YouTube channel, we would so appreciate it, and we will see you next time on The Aspiring Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go.
• 8:24
  So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com. That's community.lifestarr