Welcome to episode 24 of Creative Collaboration: Conversations with Veronica and Jillian. Today, Veronica Guguian and Jillian Vorce engage in a practical conversation about the nuances of finding and attending professional events. Veronica and Jillian offer down-to-earth advice on event preparation, active participation strategies, and post-event activities. From using hashtags and joining communities to connecting on LinkedIn and sending personalized follow-up messages, the hosts provide practical insights for optimizing professional gatherings.
Today's conversation between Jillian Vorce and Veronica Guguian is all about finding events, and prioritizing event attendance. They discuss categories of events they are interested in such as sustainability, ethical growth, leadership conferences, innovation conferences, marketing conferences, women in tech events, TEDx talks. They also share sources for finding events such as LinkedIn groups and following organizations or accelerators that host regular events. Additionally, they mention the importance of networking at events and making connections with others. The speakers emphasize the value of attending different types of events to gain new perspectives and inspiration rather than just focusing on client acquisition. Lastly,Jillian offers tips on how to prepare for an event and maximize the opportunities it presents.
Jillian Vorce and Veronica Guguian discuss the importance of pre, during, and post-event activities. They mention strategies such as using hashtags, joining communities, connecting on LinkedIn, and sending follow-up messages to build relationships with attendees. They also emphasize the need for a post-mortem evaluation of events and suggest writing a recap or blog post about the event to share takeaways. Additionally, they highlight the value of including personal details in follow-ups to make them more memorable.
Veronica and Jillian share pragmatic tips on discovering events through platforms like LinkedIn groups and organizations that host regular gatherings.
Jillian's suggestion of post-mortem evaluations and sharing takeaways through recaps or blog posts adds a thoughtful touch to the discussion, making it a practical guide for those seeking to enhance their event experiences and navigate professional networking more effectively.
People & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About Veronica Guguian
- Website: https://spinideas.nl/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronica-guguian
About Jillian Vorce
- Website: https://thejilliangroup.com/better
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillianvorce
Credits
- Music Composed by BeeLa Music
- Voiceover by Amanda Balagur
Veronica Guguian: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Episode 24 of creative collaborations. Conversations with Veronica and Jillian. And as always, I'm Veronica, and I have Jillian with me. Hey, Jillian.
Jillian Vorce: Hello. Hi there. How's everybody doing? How are you? Yeah, we're going to jump into events today, right? Talking about events, some things from the previous year, and then just event planning and looking at this calendar year as well and a few other bits. But before we jump into that, we always do our check-in and whatnot. So I'm curious: what's on your mind? What's going on? It's still cold out. It's still winter, and it's still January. So, what's on your mind this fine day?
Veronica Guguian: It should be work and new projects starting. But honestly, like I shared with you before, it starts with dancing, salsa dancing, and bachata dancing. So, I did discover Satan Bachata last year, and I actually fell in love with it. It's so much fun. So what I'm doing now I'm just looking for events. While looking for events for our podcast that we want to share, I came across different events and met with a friend yesterday who was actually; he's a friend who took me to my first. He's a Colombian to my first salsa party, I think you call it. And he taught me how to dance.
Jillian Vorce: And I had so much fun.
Veronica Guguian: So we do plan to have a big party. A lot of people, the moment I start sharing, hey, who wants to join me for salsa? I realized I have so many people around me who love it and they want to join or even if they don't know it. I'm a beginner. I'm just barely learning the steps now. But everyone is so enthusiastic about it because it's just fun music and having fun and being with friends. And then I found out that you and your wife are just Frothy.
Jillian Vorce: First of all, it's perfect. It makes perfect sense to go from, oh, it's really cold to, like, let's turn up the heat and talk about salsa. That's a great place to go. Yeah.
Veronica Guguian: I love that.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, it sure is funny. So, yeah, salsa is a big part of, I would say, my daily life because. Yeah, I don't know. My wife would say, well, she's Latina. Of course. Salsa is a big part of our life, our daily life. But as far as an abbreviated version of my salsa story, it can be summed up with this fabulous scene in the movie. Along came Polly. So I don't know if you saw that or anybody listening. Along came Polly. It's, like, fantastic. With Jennifer Aniston and. And, yeah. And he shows up. They're, like, trying to date, and he shows up at a salsa club, where she's dancing with her best friend, who happens to be a gay male. And Ben Stiller's character sees her and is like, oh, no. And it's like, just how. That's exactly what happened to me.
Jillian Vorce: And the first time I went out with my wife's friend in her community, in this kind of nightclub dance event in Los Angeles years ago with all of her friends who were, like, excellent salsa dancers. And then there was me. Not blending in. So I seem to have lost you, but there you are.
Veronica Guguian: She's back. I'm sorry.
Jillian Vorce: Life is happening. Yeah.
Veronica Guguian: The delivery man came. So I'm sorry for the viewers.
Jillian Vorce: And what happens?
Veronica Guguian: I was hoping. I am listening to your story.
Jillian Vorce: I can not stop. No real life. Yeah, it happens. No, I have started.
Veronica Guguian: That will react to the postman.
Jillian Vorce: Oh, you start to hear the other barking. Yeah. So, I got my first salsa lesson. So the joke is in telling her, asking her if she's up for teaching some other folks. She said to make sure that you expect her to kind of hold you by the back of your pants because that's how she taught me. So we would be practicing, and she would be holding the back of my pants which was really kind of funny and a little bit surprising and a little bit like I'm a child. But doing that helped quite a bit. And so that's the secret to salsa dancing: to have somebody that can teach you or maybe come salsa dancing with us in a few weeks anyhow. So that is my salsa dancing story.
Jillian Vorce: So we're going in a few weeks, and then anyway, so let's shift gears and then jump into this topic at hand. Events. I love the story, and actually, I'm.
Veronica Guguian: Looking forward to meeting your wife and being guided into surviving steps and just great. I managed to record this and actually get my packages from the postman. I feel very accomplished today.
Jillian Vorce: Talk about what it's called. Really, what's it called?
Veronica Guguian: Multitasking. Multitasking.
Jillian Vorce: I'm like, what's that word? Yeah, there we go.
Veronica Guguian: So thank you to whoever invented the Airpods.
Jillian Vorce: Sure. Yes, I think with events I think there's so many different ways we can approach it.
Veronica Guguian: Like what we discussed, and definitely people need those in their lives. And then you have the business events.
Jillian Vorce: Yes, for sure. So the way I'm thinking about it, I'm just going to lay it out, and then we can just chat about it. So the way I kind of approach this and the way I was thinking about it is first is looking at perhaps as a starting point as always data shocking, I know, but I first would look at, okay so what was.
Veronica Guguian: My, listen to us regularly.
Jillian Vorce: I know this is me always. So, what events were on my calendar last year? What events did I attend? So, kind of an inventory of that so I can talk through that and then what conferences or events are on my calendar for this year or on my radar at least. So there's 1 second would be sources. So, how do you find out about events? The third is how you approach deciding or prioritizing events? And then the fourth is also not surprising, it is kind of at least how I do and recommend the mindset and process and just tips about how to maximize event attendance or registration, I'll say for now. So I've got some pieces there. So those are the four kinds of buckets I'll say that I think of or at least I thought of in preparation for this chat about events.
Veronica Guguian: So how about you lead this conversation? I'm just jumping into and editing, because as always.
Jillian Vorce: Okay, can I add to it?
Veronica Guguian: This is the perfect plan.
Jillian Vorce: All right, perfect. So I'll just chat and yeah, you jump in and actually you have some cameos in my calendar, I suppose.
Veronica Guguian: And I do have some events. So I do like the structure and why I said I'm going to let you lead and just add to them because I have a feeling probably half of the events that I will attend that I have, and you are actually more than half are the same. Let's see. And then probably you're going to have a couple of them that are slightly different because of course, you're focusing quite a lot on the B Corp. So I'm expecting to see some events around that. I do work quite a lot at startup boot camps, and some events from there. But what we did last year, actually, I did invite you to those events and you invited me to the other one. So we end up being at the same event.
Veronica Guguian: And that makes our life easier because one piece of advice that I will always give, especially if you are introverted or you're not very comfortable when you go to events, is just go with someone, especially someone who knows or has a network or is a connector, because then it's easier to make the most out of it, to meet people, to get introduced. Some people just need a wing person like that not to feel alone.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, for sure. So when I look at my calendar from last year, I have nine events on my calendar. I may have missed a couple, but I think there were nine events, and these are actual events that I attended. Because when you talk about events and conferences, it can then lead to online events. Sure. But then if you just do an individual webinar with somebody, is that an event or not?
Veronica Guguian: How do we define events?
Jillian Vorce: Yeah. So I feel like we could even follow up and talk about online events specifically in any case. So for me, there were nine events, I believe, that I attended last year.
Veronica Guguian: So I looked just to clarify physical events, like in real-life events in person?
Jillian Vorce: Yes, nine that I attended. So when I looked at them, I thought I looked at a few things. Number one, how did I find out about it? What was the cost? And then afterward, how did I rank all nine of them? Like, which one was my favorite or which was the best one all the way through? So I did that. So I have my kind of ranking to help me just see. And as it turns out, some of them were free events. Some of them I paid quite a bit of money to attend, as it turns out, just a kind of ancillary data point that for some people may not be useful, but to me, I love these things. It turns out that, you know how they say free has no value in some cases, that can be true.
Jillian Vorce: And for me, it turns out that my favorite, the most beneficial event I went to is the one that I did pay the most to attend. So I don't know if that's just an outlier or what have you, but that's that.
Veronica Guguian: Which one was I looking at actually?
Jillian Vorce: The Social Enterprise World Forum.
Veronica Guguian: Yeah, I do remember that it had quite a high entry cost.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, it was worth it and then some. Anyway, I really enjoyed that event. Anyway, so I looked at those. So straight away it helps me to then look forward to 2024 to see of those, the top four or five events from this year, or maybe all of them, would I like to do them again this year if they happen. Sometimes there's just individual, standalone events that do help me to guide which events I prioritize for this year. So that's just kind of a starting point, events on my calendar for this year. So I actually think I'm, I guess, wondering what overlaps. So you seem to think we're going to have a strong overlap, but I'm wondering, I mean, I'm kind of on the bleeding edge of some things and very, I'm looking at policy stuff, EU policy.
Jillian Vorce: There's an event in Belgium actually coming up in Brussels. Better business for a better tomorrow. It's happening.
Veronica Guguian: So I do want to diversify what I'm doing as well, because that saying is the definition of insanity, to keep on doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. And for me, last year was a transition year. So a lot of things changed in my personal life and also a little bit professionally. And I didn't attend so many events. I did towards the end of the year, but not the first three quarters, at least not the first half of the year. So definitely I do want to go, but I'm realizing the events I used to attend prior to the pandemic, let's say they are not the events that work for my company any longer because a lot of things changed. So I am looking for new types of events and I do tend to go, not necessarily for the classical ones.
Veronica Guguian: That will make sense. Definitely it's a marketing conference that I want to attend or things like that I do want to join or the women in tech. So there are a couple of things that, yes, make sense and I want to be there, but I do find you get clients or get inspired when you are going to things that you don't normally attend because those are going to take you out of your comfort zone or they will actually teach you something that you don't know. And let's be honest, I'm not saying I'm the smartest or we are the smartest, but after 20 something years of doing something, you have quite a lot of knowledge.
Veronica Guguian: So you do need to change the environment in order to learn new things or to get a new influx of information or a new way of thinking about things, to just sit things differently, right? Because.
Jillian Vorce: For sure, yeah, I certainly did that. I moved to a new continent. So most of the events, I mean, none of the events I went to this year had I ever been to. And so that is a factor. When I'm beginning to research and look for events for 2024 is, of course, I know there are a bunch of us events that I could certainly go to, but I'm also probably more so interested in attending events in Europe because of exactly what you said. It's new perspectives, new relationships, new companies, new content, all of these things. And it's my new home continent, really. So that's definitely a factor. So when I look at the event opportunities for 2024, yeah, I have a bunch in California, New York, and Austin, Texas, and South by is coming up. That's interesting. There are so many.
Jillian Vorce: But then we're going to talk about prioritizing in a few minutes. But I think. What else did I want to say about that? Oh, I was curious. So what category? So if we kind of just jump ahead for a second, or unless you want to talk more about other specific conferences, maybe we could spend a few more minutes. If there are specific conferences that you want to highlight or plugin, I think.
Veronica Guguian: There are smaller events; actually, when it comes to conferences and to events, I think you need to look at who you are targeting. What's the audience you want to target, and is the audience that you are targeting there? So that's one thing. If you go for getting new clients and being visible, then you have the other one. Conferences that you attend to gather information to grow. So those are for you in order to meet people, to get inspired, and to see how I can improve my business and what I am doing. One doesn't exclude the other because you can still meet clients in either of them or get inspired. And there are events that I like to attend that have nothing to do with my audience or with my area of expertise, but I just find them inspirational. Like, for example, TEDx.
Veronica Guguian: There's a conference that I do enjoy going just purely to be inspired and to meet people. And that's it. Like, I don't expect anything from that type of event. So I think it kind of depends.
Jillian Vorce: How you see it.
Veronica Guguian: And I do advise everyone to go to all these types of categories, not focus only on clients, for example, because I think you'll be narrow minded and as an entrepreneur, you need the bigger picture in order to be able to create. Does that make sense, what I'm trying to say here?
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, it makes sense. So then to try to grab something granular from that. So in looking at starting to research for events, what categories? Because I think all the things that you just laid out. Yeah, that's a part of it. I was going to get there in a few minutes, but it's all relative. I suppose you can do it in any sequence, but you need to know probably it makes sense to nail this down before we start looking into researching for events, but to be clear about exactly the things that you talked about. So I think what's the purpose of attending events in general and then specific events that you start to consider. Right. So again, you can do this before or after you start finding events, but in any case, so I think of it in terms of, am I going to learn?
Jillian Vorce: Am I going to network? Is it too. Well, obviously, if you're speaking at an event, you're there to speak. Or is it to evaluate potential future speaking opportunities? Same thing with sponsorship. Are you there because you're sponsoring or are you considering being a sponsor in the future? And then also are you looking to build partnerships or create partnerships? So those are the kind of five things that come to mind for me. I mean, I suppose you could add a 6th category, which is for inspiration or motivation, or it could be for a community related to that. So there are a bunch of different reasons or purposes that we may decide to attend an event. So considering all of those things, or just acknowledging those things and diving deeper in categorically, what keywords are you using?
Jillian Vorce: What types of conferences, like subject matter, are you interested in for 2024? I know you mentioned a moment ago, marketing and stuff, and also wanting to change it up, but what are some of the categories that you're looking for that are on your radar for this year?
Veronica Guguian: Sustainability, definitely. Ethical growth or purpose oriented? And here actually I had a chat with my team this week because until now we were focusing on entrepreneurs, but we realized, is it entrepreneurs or founders or ceos? Because the moment you grow, you can still be a founder, you can still be an entrepreneur, but do you identify more as a CEO? So I do want to attend more. I'm not going to say conferences because I think there will be more events where these types of people are joining just to chat, socialize, get to know each other, grow, just be curious. And actually this year we're going to have the second edition of the Real Life of Base conference. Actually, this will be the fifth edition of the Base conference, but because of the pandemic, we had to move online.
Veronica Guguian: But we do want to bring it in 2024 in real life again. And this is a question we are asking ourselves and we are looking how to better place it in terms of audience because the people are the same, but the question is which word will resonate better with who they are depending on that.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt when you're talking just like a sidebar, but when you're talking about, you said founder, CEO or entrepreneur. So any of those can be overlapping but different roles. But for the type of client you're looking for, would it be that role who would be hiring you? Because I think depending on the size company, sometimes it wouldn't necessarily be the CEO that would be hiring you.
Veronica Guguian: Excuse me. Actually, Wilton, be the CEO for where.
Jillian Vorce: You're going as the CEO.
Veronica Guguian: Yes.
Jillian Vorce: Okay. So the CEO may not be the entrepreneur because not all CEOs are entrepreneurs. And it may not be the founder. Correct? Yeah, correct. Interesting.
Veronica Guguian: It also depends where you are in your journey, because usually at the beginning, the CEO is the founder, but that may change in time.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah. Okay. So then you talked about ethical growth, sustainability. Then you were talking about events where ceos mingle. You mentioned B corps, which is definitely true. But also I'm looking at regenerative economy and also renewables. Really interesting. As I mentioned earlier, I've only been living in Europe for three years, so I'm trying to kind of learn as quickly as I can about the politics of sustainability here, et cetera, policy, et cetera. So that's the event I was talking about in Brussels in February. So I'm looking to attend that so I can meet more people and try to learn more.
Veronica Guguian: What else?
Jillian Vorce: Leadership events are interesting to me. Innovation is interesting to me.
Veronica Guguian: Oh, yes. Innovation is a good one.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah. And then I love articles, conversations, podcasts. I love talking about business operations. So I don't know that there's a whole bunch of conferences. Well, necessarily, I guess, Rev ops and whatnot. There are. But anyway, that's an area that I'm interested in. I'm not sure that it seems like it's more aligned with workshops and that kind of thing, but that's a topic or a category that I don't yet have on my calendar for the year and it's a topic that I'm interested in. It doesn't necessarily mean I have to attend an event for it. And that probably is going to lead into the online events or webinar or something that we already kind of talked about.
Veronica Guguian: And also, we need to consider that not all the events are up and running or published at this point. So some of them will happen. Yeah.
Jillian Vorce: The ones that I attended last year, the priority ones, none of them have their dates or registration pages open. Some of them have a waitlist. But anyhow, so how about sources for finding events? How do you go about this? So you have your ideas, you know who you want to be around, you know the type of vibe, you know your purpose, all those things. So then where do you typically go to find events? Or how have you found out about events previously?
Veronica Guguian: So there are a couple of ways. I am the dam. They have a calendar with all the business events. So that's a good resource to go. Of course, event wide. You do have meetup and usually I'm pretty sure you have the same, but you are registered or you're subscribed to different newsletters. Stand by. The organizations that you are interested in are organizing events. So just keep an eye on your inbox basically. Then you'll receive them. Also, an advice will be to just look at the organization like startups, incubators and accelerators because they do have regular events. So you can actually keep an eye on those and see what is happening or subscribe to their newsletter so you receive that.
Veronica Guguian: But I am stomp is actually pretty good and I'm going to share with you the link now because I know we're going to have it in the description so I don't show notes. Yes, they do a pretty good job of gathering all of this, so they are a good hub to have a clear overview of what is happening. I do know I'm actually subscribing, submitting, not subscribing, submitting my online networking events there and they do appear in the calendar. So definitely if you want to start from somewhere, that's a good place to start. Actually, a lot of people, apologies. Also a lot of people are actually sharing events with me because we do act as a media, we are a media partner to a lot of organizations.
Veronica Guguian: So I have to admit, I'm in a good position because people come to me with the events, so I don't necessarily need to do research.
Jillian Vorce: Sure.
Veronica Guguian: Another way for me to find out and join or be part of.
Jillian Vorce: So I would add LinkedIn can be great for finding out about events.
Veronica Guguian: That's a good one.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah. Like membership groups. And then it can also be like Google. Right. Google can be a good option then. You know, thank you to algorithms and AI and the creepy people of the Internet. Even Instagram pushes them out. They'll target quite well. So I'm getting targeted for different events there. But I have. Or maybe I'll tell you and then give you an opportunity to share one, if you think of one. Any surprising sources or unexpected sources of events?
Veronica Guguian: Are you asking me?
Jillian Vorce: Yeah. So I'll share one and then you share.
Veronica Guguian: Okay.
Jillian Vorce: So this is me flexing my nerd status here. Like proud nerd status. So I love public libraries. I actually wrote an article on public libraries anyway, so I love public libraries and it's a great place to look at the bulletin board because a lot of them are hosting events. And so doing exactly that, years ago, I found out about an event that was interesting to me. I went and I was 50 years younger than everybody in the room, which is par for the course in my life. But I ended up meeting the speaker at the end and just thanking him, and we connected and just made a joke about how I was there once again, blending in any case. So we connected and exchanged business cards or something, and that has blossomed into.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, so he's now my best friend and the big brother that I never had. He's the one that invited me to work on a book. So that's my book that I have. I wrote with him. There are co-authors in that book. He also invited me to be a lecturer at Boston College. So I was a guest lecturer in his class for six years at BC. All kinds of things. And like I said, most of all, he's like the big brother I never had. So. All because of this flier on a bulletin board at a public library many years ago, like 2009 or ten, somewhere around there. So long ago. Off the beaten path source.
Veronica Guguian: I must say, I haven't been in a library in ages. You just inspired me. Maybe I should.
Jillian Vorce: Let's meet at the library in Amsterdam. The big one there next to Nemo.
Veronica Guguian: That sounds good, actually. Yeah.
Jillian Vorce: I love it.
Veronica Guguian: Five minutes walking distance from me as well.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, I love it.
Veronica Guguian: Definitely need to meet there. I love that.
Jillian Vorce: I love it.
Veronica Guguian: Beautiful.
Jillian Vorce: So in terms of sources. Check this out. You are responsible for 30% of the events that I went to last year. Know that? Yeah.
Veronica Guguian: I had no idea.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, 30%. Yeah.
Veronica Guguian: All the listeners start following spin ideas. We do share good events.
Jillian Vorce: This is it.
Veronica Guguian: Yeah.
Jillian Vorce: 30% of them I found out from you, so I wanted to let you know about that.
Veronica Guguian: And they weren't only ons, just for.
Jillian Vorce: You to be clear. Yeah, no, they were not. Actually. No. One of them is because I met somebody in one of the ONS meetings. I met somebody there. I met Ryan, and then Ryan did another event. So I attended that, and then he then invited me or comped me on a ticket for another event. So it's like full circle and all the things.
Veronica Guguian: This is what we are trying to say about partnerships and meeting people for so long. Like, this is the best example. Don't dismiss anything. If you find a person that is interesting, go for that conversation. You have no clue what will come out of it.
Jillian Vorce: Absolutely. So the last section I had in my notes is just a couple of tips, or at least the way I think about how to prepare for events and how to maximize the event opportunity. Right. So the way I think about it, and this is what I do for myself, full disclosure needs improvement, but this is the concept. But this is what we do with clients. So I'm guilty of doing this better, consistently with clients and not as consistently with myself. So that's my Jessica story. Yeah, the cobbler story. So, anyway, with events, I think for me, it feels like this can be captain obvious, but just from doing this for so many years, I think a lot of us know these things, but it's really not about what we know. It's about what we do.
Jillian Vorce: And so with events, it's not just about the actual event. It's about the pre, the during, and the post. So on the pre, the kind of preparation for the event, it's things like, does the event have a hashtag? Does it have some type of a community attached to it? Does the event publish the registration? What's the word? I want to say the registrants. Registrant.
Veronica Guguian: Registrant. Or do they have an application where you can already start seeing who's attending and set up meetings with them? Yeah, a lot of the big ones actually have that.
Jillian Vorce: Absolutely. So I did this years ago for an event that I was planning to attend, and then I wasn't able to, but because the event had published this list or had made it available when I registered, I went through and sent some messages to some people and said, I really was looking for this event. I couldn't make it any highlights. And one of those people became a really good friend of mine, and we've done lots of business together over the years as well. So another kind of off the radar, overlooked opportunity source is the events that publish, or you could meet people through, like I said, through the communities or hashtags or they have a LinkedIn group or whatever it is.
Jillian Vorce: So a lot of the pre stuff, just, even just publishing that you're attending such and such event, that can be helpful, too. So that's the pre, during, obviously, most people know what to do during an event. You have your plan, you know who you want to meet or what sessions you want to go to. You take some photos, you take some notes. The one that I feel like probably a lot of people know of, but in the events that I've been to this past year, not everybody was kind of as automatic about it. And it's not.
Jillian Vorce: Certainly other people may have different ways to do this, but it's a really convenient way when you meet somebody to just connect on LinkedIn or something so you can have a follow up discussion later because it's really hard to have full length conversations at an event because there's so many things going on. So doing that is a great thing. And then, of course, when you're connecting with these people on LinkedIn, for example, to just send a quick message and just tell them it was great to meet you at insert name of event, because then it's there for you to remember as well. Because at the time you think, oh, you won't forget, but you'll forget a year or you're going to forget it.
Veronica Guguian: One week, let's be honest.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, it definitely happens. And then, yeah, I think one other piece there is just to point out, because also just an observation from events that I've attended this past year and in general, is to just balancing, again, in terms of the mental preparedness for being at the actual event is to kind of balance that idea of seize the opportunity with also humility. Right. So when there's speakers that you want to meet, you want to seize the opportunity. You want to get a photo with them or chat with them or whatever, to just also be cognizant of the humility side and that this is a human being. And if they're in line at the bathroom, or if they're in the bathroom, or if they're whatever it is, let them be. Sometimes it's just let them be and so I often will say that.
Jillian Vorce: I'll say, listen, you're probably spent. You've been picked apart by everybody. You're a hot topic at the moment. I'd love to have a follow up with you. What's the best way for me to reach out? Is it email or is LinkedIn better? And just say something like that. And they usually really appreciate that. And that sets the table for a future conversation that they're expecting anyway. And then the last category is post. And this is the one most people fall down on because you can chalk it up to follow up, and most people don't do a whole lot of follow up. So the first thing is making sure that the new contacts, the new relationships, or the new relationship seeds that were planted, that they're added to your CRM or whatever tool you use to manage your relationships.
Jillian Vorce: And then I recommend including what the event was, maybe the month or year and where it was, possibly, because again, over time you forget. And it's helpful.
Veronica Guguian: I will add something to this. Sorry, what you said makes sense, but what I'm trying to do always to remember something personal from the discussion, be that we have dogs and we discussed about dogs, or was a particular session that we liked, or a specific speaker, or usually you connect with that person on a specific level, you have an element, and if you can write it down and remember and include it, that will make it much more personal and the chances to have a proper follow up afterwards.
Jillian Vorce: And that helps them to remember you.
Veronica Guguian: As well and you remember them as well. So it's actually both ways.
Jillian Vorce: Both ways? Yeah. I had just two last ones. So one would like to do a post mortem after the event, because we forget and move on. So after the event, just think, were your expectations met? Was it a high value event? Was it not? Did it boost your energy? Did it give you motivation? What was the result of the event? Did you make a bunch of new contacts? What was it that happened? So just jotting that down, like having a simple spreadsheet or someplace to record just little tidbits after the event, is great. And that can be useful for writing blog posts and all of this stuff, which is my last point, which is to write and ultimately publish a blurb, as I call it. It's a very professional language, a blurb at a minimum.
Jillian Vorce: I attended this and such an event. It might be a social media post at a minimum. And here were my takeaways. Here's who I met, here's what I liked. Just something of a recap. It could be a blog post, could be a newsletter, it could be whatever podcast episode. But I think those last two pieces most people don't do, they don't do the post mortem and they do it, but not properly.
Veronica Guguian: What I will add to this one is when you do that post mortem, make sure you take the people you met or you spoke with or you really connected during the conference. Make sure you are taking the conference using the hashtags as well, and you follow up. And remember, actually, LinkedIn is the best moment. You'll not necessarily sit when you're posting. You're going to sit a couple of days later, up to one week. So you'll be surprised, like, how the post will still be seen and people will respond to it later on. Don't be disappointed if you don't see the reaction immediately and go back to the data and look and you'll see. Actually, the conference we attended was exactly the same. Very similar. Yeah. And it really works also for events. Actually, you mentioned the LinkedIn events.
Veronica Guguian: I do see we start promoting our online networking with the spin differently and what we noticed, actually, we have more and more new people just because they saw someone from their network responding to our post.
Jillian Vorce: Yes, that's what happened.
Veronica Guguian: Very important.
Jillian Vorce: Absolutely.
Veronica Guguian: Good piece of advice. Absolutely.
Jillian Vorce: So I think that was quite a bit. I think we covered a lot of ground about events for a topic that.
Veronica Guguian: Should have been a short one. Again, we have a very long episode.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah. So I think that's all I have on this topic. So I'm ready to wrap.
Veronica Guguian: Very well. I feel like this was your episode and I was just here to add the company, actually listen, to make sure we go to NASA, they think.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, I know. I always have kind of notes or agendas for all of my meetings to help me, because remember what I wanted to talk about, put a place to put ideas and whatnot. So that's what I do for our podcast, too. So hopefully it was helpful and hopefully there was at least something that people heard today that is relevant to their business or to their life and what have you. But for now, that's all I have. So we'll see if we can wrap up episode 24 in 24 and 24. 24 and halfway to 40 listeners.
Veronica Guguian: Yes. If you have an event hosting or you know about an event that could be interesting, just share it with us and maybe we can meet there and have a coffee.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, if it's in person in Amsterdam. All right, we're done.
Veronica Guguian: Thank you, everyone.
Jillian Vorce: All right, cheers.
Veronica Guguian: Till next time.