After an enjoyable airplane conversation where I revealed that I was a motivational speaker and executive coach, my seat mate told me, “We need a trainer to come in and present a series of five leadership modules over the course of a year.” “Great!” I said. “I would love to send you a proposal.” Just two years before, I wouldn’t even have been able to say that. I have been a corporate trainer since 1999 but have relied on small booking agents to match me with clients. “Well,” he said, “I think you’re a good fit for our culture, but I really need to do this on a larger scale. We have offices in eight cities. We would also need some assessments and up-front consultation as well as follow-up coaching…Can you do that?”
“Yes, I can do that,” I said, panicking behind the confident smile. “Here is where networking really pays off,” I thought.
Maybe it’s because we travel and can’t have normal daily interactions at home or maybe it’s because of the gregarious nature of what we do, but traveling speakers tend to stick together. In my almost 20 years on the road, I have attended Big Money Speaker bootcamps, local meetups, and mastermind groups galore. Facebook pages and LinkedIn groups filled the need between live events. Through that networking, I have amassed quite a pool from which to shop for help in fulfilling large contracts. I put the word out to my network and got the assessments, trainers, and coaches on standby within two days of submitting the proposal.
After being recruited by others in my network to collaborate on similar ad hoc engagements, we started thinking, “Maybe we should make this official!”
We had already created a support group for speakers, trainers, and coaches called the Star Marketing Summit where peers who had achieved success shared what they did to give a leg up to colleagues they cared about. Now we were emphasizing leveraging the team created through the Summit to build an infrastructure that could rival a large training company.
As an organizer of this twice-a-year event, I started scheduling professionals who could provide not only training and inspiration, but also substance. The Star Marketing Summit has grown a second pillar – The Star Performance System. The Marketing Summit trains and supports the growth of its attendees while the Performance System acts as their infrastructure.
Over the 9 years I have been meeting with colleagues in this way, I have been able to say, “Yes,” to hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts I never would have been able to fulfill on my own.
Whether you are interested in camaraderie and fun, improving your presentation skill, finding more business, or taking on the corporate world, you will find the Marketing Summit to be a consistent resource. We do not profit from your registration and do not allow presenters to “pitch” from the front of the room. This event is as different as it is game changing. Please check us out at www.StarMarketingSummit.com and register for the next event in Dallas January 5-6.
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