Last month in August I had a great opportunity to attend Eben Pagans 2014 Accelerate Strategic Marketing Summit.
The seminar was held August 8th to the 10th in Chicago, IL.
It was held at the Westin hotel which made it a fantastic venue to hold an event of this size (I think about 500 people attended in total).
The upsides of going to events
Some people wonder should I attend events like these? Will they be right for me? What about just getting the courses and getting things cheaper than paying for all the hotel expenses, travel costs, and the additional time.
Well, I will tell you that I love attending events. Especially ones as prestigious as these because of the people you get to meet and connect with. Not only do you get to learn critical and valuable information, you get to rub elbows with some of the best in the industry. After all, not everyone can afford a multi-thousand dollar ticket to a conference.
I met a few people who were local and just getting their business off the ground to the head gurus and major players in the internet space making 7 and 8 figures and more flying in from Hawaii, Australia, and Denmark!
There are really so many great and motivated people that come to these events that it just takes your business, ideas, concepts to that next level. Just think about this… other fantastic brains and minds get to work on your business and give you great ideas for your business!
So do I think they are worth the money – of course… are they a bit expensive for some people… yes.
Who “I” believe should or should not attend…
If you are looking to network with people the Accelerate Strategic Marketing Summit is a must. If you want to refresh on some material then again its a must. Eben Pagan does a great job of presenting high-quality information and is an incredible teacher and mentor. One caveat with that though is that some information I believe is a bit over the top for some people….
If you are “just” getting started at creating a business, are just on the brink of moving forward, don’t have an idea in mind – then I still think you will find this even fantastic and it will get you off on the right foot. Unfortunately, for a beginner, it may be quite pricey as I heard for some people who didn’t even have an idea in mind.
Other people that I talked to who were still at the early stage of their business said they wanted to see more tactics and techniques to implement right now for their business.
So I think if you are a person who likes to go deeper into the material, learn the key concepts the things you will learn at events like at Accelerate are really important. However, if you want tactics and techniques this event or others like it is not for you and I think you would be better off just getting a general business course.
What did I learn at Accelerate?
You learn so much when you attend Accelerate… I have pages upon pages of notes, but I think the learning process continues when you start implementing and using this stuff.
I find that most times when you watch lectures, seminars, or courses on a video you don’t do the exercises. However when you come to Accelerate you are almost forced to do the exercises. After all, it’s for your own benefit. You get to work on YOUR business!
We talked about concepts such as:
- Marketing being the highest leverage thing you can do for your business
- How winners manufacture their own optimism to push themselves
- Two personality types (the “me” type and the “we” type) and how to sell to each
- Getting inside the mind of your customer avatar
- Nightmares of your customer and their secret fantasy and how to apply it in your business
- Transformational dilemma of your customer (leaving behind the old version of yourself)
- The 80/20 principle and then zooming further into the 80/20 principle again
- and much more…
There are so many things you could learn. Personally I always try to pick 3-5 things to implement quickly and the rest just keep in the back of my mind. It is very tough to implement everything very fast. Instead I focus on what I believe to me the most relevant and will give me the most output for my time.
Here are a few photos to take you backstage…
Here is Joe acting goofy. He runs rallysong.com which is a website that brings music artists and fans together through a crowdfunding concept.
Resources & Helpful Tools
