Many of us chase the one golden nugget that will change everything. We’re after the one tip we think will change our business’ fortunes – the one secret to rule them all as it were.
I’ve fallen trapped to this as well. I thought if I just learned this one thing, if I just do this one event, if I just attend this one webinar, I was going to get what I needed to improve my business.
The harsh reality is that there is no Golden Nugget that’s worth a million dollars in your business if you never do anything with what you learn.
This idea of some pot of gold waiting beyond the rainbow is why some people never learn. They think that if they just go to another webinar and learn more, or download something new, or attend another summit, it’s going to be the jackpot.
Don’t get me wrong. Books, courses, and events are good things we should encourage. But as long as we don’t practice what we learn from them, we’ve wasted our time.
Today is your lucky day. I’m going to give you a plan for actually putting into action the things that you learn. I use to struggle with this as well, so I feel your pain.
Always be prepared
The first thing to do is gather materials. I’m a pen and paper gal, so I would get a notebook and pen. If you’re a computer person, make sure you have Google Docs, or a board app like Trello running.
Whenever you go to an event, make sure you take a couple of pens and a highlighter with you. For the computer folks, make sure your devices are powered up and you’ve downloaded the necessary software.
At the event
Take your notebook with you. Techies have your laptop with you.
Always try to compile your notes in one central location. When you take those notes, write down what potential action items you might have.
There are three types of action items.
- Follow-up items are action items you can do without much hustle. They can be people to call or research to do on software and investments discussed at the event.
Following up is what you’re going to do first, seeing as it can be done immediately. If it’s a live event, when we can have those again, spring for the Wi Fi first thing. I’ve actually done it while I’m waiting in the airport or sitting in a hotel room.
- There are also action items that can be done straight away. For instance, logging into your campaign manager to change a single tag.
- The third type of action items are big strategies or plans you need to make. This is for actual long term strategies from the conference you know you want to implement in your business.
Maybe you decide you want to follow what a speaker said, and start an email series. So you have to sit down and start planning everything from beginning to end.
The plans are where people get hung up. Because they think, what am I going to do next? What steps do I need to take?
Here they are:
- Map out those plans as best you can while you’re still there.
- Decide what has to be put together.
- Visualize how the results will look like.
- Come up with a list of resources you will need to implement the strategy.
Let’s say you want to come up with an email series. You will need to develop the content, write the emails, and upload them on your email system so they can be automatically sent out.
Those are your three deliverables. Those are what will go on your to-do list.
Why does it work
There are two reasons why this process works.
Firstly, when you review your notes, you’re going to see things that you didn’t see before, because you’re hitting it with fresh eyes.
If you try doing this in the middle of an event, you’ll get overwhelmed. Whether it’s a 1 hour talk or a 10 day summit, it’ll be too much information to deal with.
So by waiting, you’re giving yourself a minute to come down from what I’m coining the info high.
When we consume content, we get excited, our brain starts thinking about everything that can happen because of this information that we’re consuming. This leads us to favoring the emotional instead of logical part of the mind. That’s the info high.
The second reason this works is that by waiting until we’re leaving, but not waiting longer than that, we’re actually making it happen.
We are leveraging that excitement, motivation, and everything that we’ve been building up in a way that’s going to drive us to action.
The half an hour to one hour after the webinar is a magic window.
If it’s a three-day virtual event, or a five-day challenge, that magic window is going to be the following two days.
And if it’s a live in-person event with a ton of different sessions and networking, it’s going to be the entire following week.
That magic window starts as soon as you’re done, because your brain is still in overdrive.
So we want to leverage that excitement, but not try to overload our brain when it’s on the info high. This way, we can be sure we will implement what we’ve learned long after the high is gone.
If we haven’t used it, if we haven’t made a plan, if we haven’t done anything to move ourselves forward, the high leaves, and so does all the motivation.
All the excitement and brilliant ideas dessert us.
When we go back to look at our notes Two weeks later, we might not even remember what we were so excited about.
Maximizing the excitement from an event
To get the most out of an event:
- Take notes.
- Start working on action items immediately after the event.
- Don’t wait until the excitement is gone.
Do you have any words of wisdom to share, or do you profoundly disagree with something I said and want to let me know? I’m all ears! Comment below and let’s talk about it.
