The Benefits of Creating Your Own Events with Rich Brooks.

Welcome to Public Speaking with Peter George. Do you want to be calm, confident, and credible every time you speak in public? Then stay tuned as Peter and his guests discuss public speaking tips, techniques, and tactics that help you increase your impact, influence, and income. Here's your host, Peter George.

When it comes to getting speaking gigs, most speakers are invited, hired through bureaus, respond to a call for speakers, or make their own prospecting connections. But there's another way. Rich Brooks is going to share why it might make sense to produce your own event — and if you decide to do so, how to best navigate the process.

Rich is the founder and president of Flight New Media, a digital agency in Portland, Maine, in business for over 24 years. He's a nationally recognized speaker on entrepreneurship, digital marketing, and social media. He founded the Agents of Change — an annual conference and weekly podcast focused on search, social, and mobile marketing — and recently co-founded Fast Forward Maine, a podcast and workshop series for growing Maine businesses. He's also the author of The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing.

Peter: Rich, welcome to the show.

Rich: Peter, thank you so much for having me.

Why Rich Started Producing His Own Events

Peter: Back in 2012, you produced the first annual Agents of Change Conference. What made you decide to put on your own event?

Rich: I started attending live events around the country on digital marketing and social media, and they genuinely changed the trajectory of my business. But I noticed I was almost always the only Mainer there. Nobody else was traveling from Maine to these shows. So I asked myself: wouldn't it be great to take some of these amazing speakers and bring them to Maine? That was the impetus — instead of going to it, bring it to them.

Peter: Based on your experience, do you think it's a good idea for other speakers to produce their own events?

Rich: Absolutely — if it matches what you want to do. I love to present, and this would give me the chance to do it in front of a home-field crowd. Bringing in well-known speakers also helped elevate my personal and company brand. And I'm always looking for ways to stand out. Anybody can post on LinkedIn or add something to Facebook. But it takes real time and coordination to put on your own event. That barrier to entry works in your favor — your competitors probably aren't going to do the same thing.

Rich: Some of my first events were glorified lunch-and-learns. I rented space at the chamber, talked about something I was passionate about, and started promoting it. That's how I began to build a following in Portland. It always comes down to what your goals are. A lot of my speaking goals are about lead generation for my business. When someone gets up on stage, people think, they must be the experts — I could learn it myself or just hire them. That dynamic has real value.

The Three S's: Speakers, Sponsors, and Seats

Peter: When you explain what goes into an event like Agents of Change, how do you break it down?

Rich: It really comes down to what I call the Three S's: speakers, sponsors, and seats.

Speakers — is it just going to be you on stage? At the beginning it often was, in a small room. As I built the events up, I brought in other experts with related but non-competing specialties. Sponsors — you don't need to go this route if it's a free event, but if you want to generate some revenue or offset costs, finding companies that want to get in front of your audience is its own revenue stream. Constant Contact was one of ours for years, because they talked to the same small business and marketer audience we were reaching. And seats — you've got to fill them. If you're starting from scratch without an email list or social following, it'll be harder. That's why building your list should be happening long before you think about producing an event.

Peter: I always feel like for the greatest stretch of time leading up to an event, I have to channel P.T. Barnum — I'm not a speaker or trainer during that window. I'm a promoter.

Rich: That's exactly right. There's a lot of marketing and advertising behind it. If you have other speakers, they may want to help promote. Sponsors can sometimes be written in to promote on their own social channels or through their email. And partnering is a great accelerant. For Fast Forward Maine, we co-produced an event around hospitality with a local organization called Hospitality Maine — they had over a thousand paid members. We were able to tap into their list and got much bigger attendance than we ever could have on our own.

The Real Pros and Cons

Peter: What are the pros and cons people should expect if they decide to produce their own event?

Rich: The pros we've covered: authority, brand elevation, lead generation, and the virtuous cycle of building an audience and email list that opens doors to more opportunities. People have told us they'd been attending Agents of Change for years — it was only today they were ready to hire us. That's the long game of it.

The cons are real. It takes time — a lot of it. When we looked at the profitability of our conference, depending on how we accounted for the hours, we'd either made or lost $10,000 on the same event. We were often putting in over 500 hours between promotion, production, and post-production. We hired a videographer, did a live stream, made videos available on demand — all of those were expenses and hours that couldn't go toward anything else.

There's also the endless logistics: Is audio equipment included? Do you need to provide food? If there's a bar, do you need a special license? Do you need to hire police — which, as we discovered, you do at the University of Southern Maine if you're serving alcohol. We had a DJ one year playing guests on and off stage, and learned mid-event that you need ASCAP and BMI licenses to play music. These things catch you off guard.

So always ask: what are the opportunity costs? What could I be doing to grow my speaking career that I won't be able to do while I'm worrying about room acoustics?

Finding and Selecting Speakers

Peter: How do you go about finding speakers for Agents of Change?

Rich: Maine has a certain fantasy attached to it, which helped. I'd be at a conference in Vegas or L.A., chatting with speakers, and they'd say, I've always wanted to go to Maine. That opened doors. But not everyone has that. Sometimes you'll need to pay speakers — another cost to factor in. My advice is to start with local people who have related but non-competing specialties: public relations, copywriting, TV and radio advertising. Then, as you grow, consider going after bigger names as a way to draw an audience. Sometimes they'll come for travel expenses only; other times they have fees of $5,000, $10,000, or more.

One thing that works in my favor now: nobody gets on stage at Agents of Change without first being a guest on my podcast. That 45-minute conversation lets me hear what they have to say, how they communicate, and whether I think they'd deliver real value in a breakout or keynote slot. If I think they do, I reach out and invite them to Maine.

Peter: I love that — the podcast as a kind of audition.

Rich: Exactly. And to your question about keynote versus breakout: for us, keynotes are inspirational and big-picture — they get people fired up about ideas, not deep into tactics. A breakout on LinkedIn prospecting isn't a keynote topic. But someone like Jay Baer or Pat Flynn, who can get people excited about marketing and building an audience? That's keynote energy. And the last presentation of the day is usually someone who can wrap everything up and send people home with a clear next step. The middle slot? That's usually me — because I want to make sure I'm speaking to a full room.

One Last Piece of Advice

Peter: What's the one piece of advice our listeners absolutely cannot skip?

Rich: Recognize the time investment. You cannot create an event out of thin air. Think carefully about where it will be, whether you'll charge, what food or drink might be involved, and — most importantly — make sure it's in alignment with your professional and personal goals. Maybe you don't charge anything because there's a sales component and getting people in the door is the win. Maybe you charge upfront because there's no back-end offer. Either can work. But if your event isn't in alignment with what you're actually trying to accomplish, you've lost before you've started. Get that part right, and you give yourself a real chance to succeed.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Public Speaking with Peter George. Are you ready to be calm, confident, and credible every time you speak in public? Then visit petergeorgepublicspeaking.com and let's make it happen. I'll see you next time.