391 – Increase Your Learning ROI At Live Events

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Timothy Moser

In the interview:

02:17 – Why you need to get the maximum return
03:32 – The most essential thing you have to know
05:16 – Do this before you go
07:09 – A way to take on new action
09:00 – How to avoid overload
10:09 – When sitting in the audience…
12:45 – Do a mindmap
13:48 – Fast fact
14:09 – Avoid this attendee rookie mistake
15:16 – Using spatial memory techniques during an event
18:32 – Imaginative listening
19:00 – Tips to remember people’s names
20:06 – How to get full value from your experiences
21:18 – Doing your checklists
22:00 – When to take action
25:07 – Are you committing these mistakes as an attendee?
28:15 – Techniques to be memorable
31:27 – How to change the way people think
33:34 – Quick summary
35:31 – Action steps

Listen to world-class experts speak at JamesSchramko Live events. CLICK HERE

Tweetables:

Come with an empty glass. [Click To Tweet]
One single note can be infinitely valuable. [Click To Tweet]
The early action is the real action. [Click To Tweet]

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here, welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, we’re going to delve into the mind, we’re actually going to be covering a topic of memory. To do that, I’ve invited a special expert guest, Timothy Moser from San Diego. Welcome.

Timothy: Hi James, thanks for having me.

James: It’s my pleasure. Now you run a website called masterofmemory.com, and we got to catch up on a boat cruise in Cebu, the Philippines, when I attended an event, and you were there, and we had a fascinating conversation – it certainly was for me, anyway – about how your brain works and different learning styles, and I thought, you know what, Timothy, you need to come and share this information with the SuperFastBusiness listeners.

Timothy: Yeah. Well, you know, the brain is very interesting because we all think that we can remember things and then we can’t. We say we’re going to remember something and then we don’t, and then it can be the simplest little things and it can be the most complex things, it doesn’t matter. It really all comes down to thinking about the way that the mind really wants to remember things, and applying that as broadly as possible.

James: Right. So one of the things that was relevant for us was, we were at this event, there were a number of presenters each day, there were, I think, three main presentations each day over three days. And I said to you, “Timothy, with all your knowledge of how the brain works and all the best ways to learn, how would you structure things to help people get the best result from a live event?”

And I had my own selfish needs in mind because I run an event every year, and I’m always trying to tune that and make it the best possible result for an attendee. You gave me some good ideas and I thought, that would make a great topic, how you could actually go to a live event or attend a presentation and then actually retain some of that information to be able to take action on it so that you get the maximum return on your investment from attending something like that. So we’re going to dig into that topic today, OK?

Timothy: Yeah, for sure. It does sound like an ideal situation, if you go to an event, you’ll actually get something out of it.

James: Exactly. That’s why it’s important, because look: to go to an event overseas, you’re going to invest some money in travel, accommodation, meals. You’re going to put aside whatever else you could be doing in that time to intermix with other people who are attending the event. You’re going to commit some concentration time to sit there, listen to the messaging coming through.

I suppose as people are talking, we’re processing, the whole time thinking, how does this apply to me, what do I glean from this, how does this compare to my understanding of this topic, what is the instruction for me to do? And then we have to somehow compile all that into an actionable format to get a result from this. Now I’ve got my own techniques, but I imagine you’ve got some better ones on how to do this.

What value are you seeking?
Timothy: Well, I don’t know about better ones, but I think that actually in some ways, the most important thing…Actually really for me, the most essential thing that you have to know if you want to get value out of an event, or really out of anything, is you come in in the very first place knowing exactly what value you want to get from it. So that value might be specific actions that you want to take, whether they’re quantifiable or not quantifiable.

There’s a possibility that you’re going to a live event specifically to find out about, let’s say, growing your email list. And so if that’s your number one goal, if that’s your number one result that you want from that event, then you have to be focused on that in the event. But maybe that’s not your goal. Maybe your goal is to meet people, to hang out, to network and to get to know some people, to build some relationships that will be valuable for you later on. And then in that case, maybe you should be more focused on that.

So I think that really it mainly comes down in the first place to being really focused on that one specific, most important value that you want to get out of the time that you’re spending there, and that money that you’re spending on getting there together in real life. I mean really, a live event is a pretty valuable thing. Like you’re saying, you have the travel, you have the time that you’re spending. It can be an enormous catalyst for action, but it can also be just a big time-suck and a big drain instead, so knowing that value is essential.

Getting clear before you go
James: Well, one thing about live events is the amount of energy involved in attending and paying attention. Often different diets, different time zones, all these new relationships and communications, even interpreting a different language can be difficult when you’re traveling. So one of the techniques that I like to do is to get really clear before you go, and that’s to partition off that time.

You know when you’re there that you’re going to be busy, that there is going to be a limited ability for you to manage the most basic of things, like even replying to emails or any time on the computer. You’re going to have to dedicate time to sleep. Invariably these things have late night drink sessions and everything else.

So you could be coming at this from a difficult point of view, and for a lot of people, especially if they don’t travel often, the lead up to travel is huge. All this packing, passports, get into the airport, 8 hours, 10 hours, 15 hours, 20 hours on a plane, airport transfers, currency exchanges, even trying to get immunization shots – all these things can tax you before you even get there.

So I like to have the best onramp possible, to clear your desk before you go, get your to-do list down to just one or two items that you can write on a whiteboard so that they’re there when you get back and you can just let them go from your mind, and try and come to the event with an empty glass. That’s a good setup technique, right?

Timothy: Yeah, I totally agree with that. In particular, with the last event that I was at, where I met you, I actually had no agenda except to relax and to hang out with the people that I wanted to hang out with. So I came actually not with, and this may sound contrary to the advice that I seem to have been giving, but again you have to come with the value that you want, and I treated that particular event as more like a vacation. Unplug from my business, unplug from everything. It was after a lot of other travel, and I just emptied my mind and was ready to fill it with the relationships that I built there and just to enjoy the time, and so that’s the value that I sought to get out of that event.

James: I’m glad you said that, because I noticed there were some people at the event, because they’ve paid money for a ticket and because they’ve been promised time with experts, they’re really going for their pound of flesh. And I say that kindly. It’s not unreasonable to think that they might.

Expecting to learn what you don’t know
But I was just going to ask you about things like the Johari Window that, the quadrant where we don’t know what we don’t know, and maybe some people know things that we don’t know and we’re going to expect it. When we get there, we’re probably going to learn things or reorient the way that we’re going to move forward from that point.

And that kind of happened with me. I had this crazy presentation that kind of pulled people completely off the path they might have been on, and I think, to my benefit, it’s probably going to help them a lot more than where they might have gone. And that was really my goal as an expert presenter, it was to move people from where they were at to where they need to be and to have them be moved to a new action point.

Now the people who had an empty cup who were ready to take on new stuff, were able to capitalise on that and since then dozens of them have been able to take on new actions that they couldn’t have actually considered or even programmed as coordinates before they went because they just didn’t know this stuff existed.

Getting the most by getting the least
Timothy: Right. Right, that makes a lot of sense and yeah, coming with an empty mind that way, it’s so much better than coming with a crowded mind. And just as far as what we’re talking about, the mind goes, you want to have the least on your mind as possible. One of the benefits of getting something or one of the most important tactics for getting the most out of a presentation is actually to try to get the least out of the presentation.

James: Oh, I concur. It’s about excluding and disqualifying and getting down to the minimum possible elements, right?

Timothy: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

James: If you go to any sort of event, even if it’s a one-day event, there’s going to be like hours’ worth of content, and we have to have a mechanism to be able to sift, sort, filter and see what’s relevant to us and discard the rest. Otherwise we risk just getting completely overloaded, burnt out, strained from it.

I actually tell people, take notes, but only write things down in the form of an action so that we can later review all of the actions and from that work out which of the actions will make the most impact and then we only go for those. The rest doesn’t really matter because there’ll be so much benefit from just doing the one or two things that was going to be worth coming to the event. The one or two things.

And quite often it’s used in a sales line, you know? “Come to this event, just one or two ideas could really change your future.” It’s actually true. If you think about the Pareto Principle, only one or two items will have a significant impact compared to the other ones, because some are just not equal. All ideas are not equal, right? And it could drastically change the course, it’s a matter of being able to identify that, and then act on it.

So let’s talk about what are some of the specific things we can do if we imagine that we’ve gotten to our event, we’ve got a pretty clear mind, we’re all set and then the first sort of session starts. What are some of the things we can do as people are speaking and we’re sitting there in the audience?

A minimalist approach
Timothy: Well, one of the most important things you can do is definitely, like you’re saying, taking minimal notes. Because as you’ve mentioned, I mean really, one single note that you take action on is literally, infinitely more valuable than pages of messy notes that get stuck in a drawer or thrown away as soon as you leave. I mean really, just getting down to the exact value that you want to get out of it.

So I would say, when I sit down and I’m watching a speaker, if I can just take one thing away from that presentation or if I can aim to take just one thing away, I might have an idea at the beginning of the presentation what that speaker wants to leave me with or what I can probably get from that speaker, and I may have an idea of what I don’t really need to get from that speaker.

For example, if there’s a big presentation about, the speaker’s presenting how they do this huge email sequence and their whole lead funnel, I would choose just the one thing that I’m going to do to my autoresponder sequence that’ll make the biggest difference for me. Now that would be just one presentation, right?

James: Maybe the one thing is like, get a hold of that mind map, or you know, the only action you need to know is go and look up that big thing they flashed up that is impossible to write down. And I don’t know why speakers do that, just as an aside. It’s a crazy thing.

Timothy: Because they expect people to take pictures of it.

A rookie mistake
James: Well, a lot of presenters are not trained to deliver information in a way that’s useful for people to actually digest. Probably one of the biggest rookie mistakes is to dump so much information because they have to try and get it out in the minimum time. Whereas when I’m preparing I just want to cover maybe three points so that I’m actually pre-curating the presentation to just hit hard on just the one or two things that actually matter, and to use multiple examples and drive it home and really get that point across rather than have a hundred things.

And I certainly started out by over-delivering on my content. It takes a lot of discipline to remove things from a presentation because you know a lot more than you can share. But if you could actually have someone move on just one or two points, then they’re going to come looking for the rest anyway.

Timothy: Yeah. Well if the speaker hasn’t done their job in removing the extra details from the presentation, then that can be your job. So you can make notes like a, some people call it a tree and branch system or a mind map, where you have the main idea and you have other things branching off from it.

Now one of the main weaknesses of this type of notes where you have the main idea in the middle, little ideas branching off, and then small ideas branching off from that, is… I think what ends up happening when people take that kind of notes is they do end up with those really messy pages. Whereas the best thing would be to have that one central idea be more than half the page, and then the little ideas branching off are extremely insignificant in relation to the one main idea, as long as that idea is actionable. Otherwise, just forget all that. Write down one action that you’re going to take, and just enjoy the presentation for what it is.

Because there’s a huge deception in seeing all this information pouring in, we think that that’s really valuable but it really isn’t. Your mind isn’t going to remember all that stuff. Your brain is not programmed to remember lots of numbers and names and information. And the fact is, in particular, if you have more than one presentation that you’re watching, and you’re getting all these great ideas and making all these messy notes, it’s all going to be a big jumbled mess by the time you leave.

And I think that an attendee rookie mistake is to walk away from the event with all those great ideas bouncing around in their heads, and they feel very high-energy, because that’s what events do, and they go away going, “Wow, I’m going to take so much action.” And by the time they get home, it’s all just one jumbled mess. They think back to the event, and it’s all in one place, it’s all in one messy page and their minds.

So there are tactics for actually taking that information and literally sorting it out geographically so you can think to different things at different times, even regardless of your notes, if you lose your notes. I might be able to dive into some examples of how that works out.

James: Yeah, maybe we could do this as a case study. So when I was at the event, I opened up the workbook, and I put the notes from each speaker underneath their picture on their page so that it was at least categorised. And the picture instantly reminds me of who that person was and I have the minimum possible notes. Would I go about this a different way using your technique?

Using spatial memory
Timothy: Well, there are other ways. I mean, they’re still pages in a book, and unfortunately in a book all pages look the same. I don’t know if you ever get this thing where you open a book and you are trying to remember where something is in the book. And you can remember where on the page it is, but you don’t even know if it’s at the beginning of the book or the end of the book. So the fact is, all pages are the same, even though you’re still thinking spatially.

Now when we talk about spatial memory, this is one of the most fundamental principles for accelerated learning and for mnemonics. Just think about all the places that you’ve been in your life. If you’re a traveler, if you’ve lived in more than one place, you have so many more memories than someone who’s lived in the same place their whole life, somebody who’s lived in one house from infancy to adulthood.

All their memories are crammed into that one house, and they aren’t going to be able to remember different years, you know, you say 1991, and they won’t remember where they were that year. Whereas somebody who’s moved around a lot more, they just think of the place they were, and instantly the memories come back. So if you can take advantage of this fundamental aspect of the way that we remember things, and apply that to what we’re doing here, then one of the ideas is you can place your speakers literally in different places in your imagination.

Now at our particular event, so you have these pages that you’re looking at with the faces of the speakers, you could place those speakers, even though they were all speaking in the same room on the exact same stage, you could place them in different places throughout the event. You could imagine that one was at the pool, and gave the presentation there, or at least place the ideas from that presentation there. And one was on the boat, and one was in a different place.

Even just thinking about it right now, you know, I interacted with all of the speakers, and every interaction that I’m thinking of took place in a different place.

James: It’s like, our interaction happened on a boat.

Timothy: Yeah.

James: It’s really easy to remember that. So even the event organizer could theme the stage differently, even with different lighting might help people, it could maybe have a color association or just something to differentiate, will help people remember it because it’s different, it’s now separated from something other than just the facial recognition of the speaker.

Timothy: Right, right. Now colors actually as a little detail aren’t as memorable as people think, because you’ll remember that there was a color but you won’t remember which one it was. But yeah, differentiating them that way, and really, if you’re just using this in your own techniques, or I mean if you were the organizer you would theme it after what they’re talking about. Or if you’re not, if you’re just a consumer, you can relate somehow the thing that they’ve spoken about or the tactic that you want to take away with the place that you put them on.

I put you on the boat, and I’ve decided that I’m going to change something in particular about my sales funnel. I place exactly the tactic that I’m thinking about on the boat. I make it visual and memorable, and then any time I think of you and your presentation, I’ll remember exactly what it is I need to do because it’s right there, not getting mixed up with anything else, and it’s very clear.

Making things memorable
James: So this is kind of a, imaginative listening. It’s like, as we’re hearing stuff, we’re playing with our thoughts to make it special.

Timothy: That’s right, yes. Because the imagination really just is projecting as reality or as something memorable something that isn’t necessarily memorable. You know, you think about numbers or you think about even names. This applies not only to the presentations, but let’s say that you’re just there for hanging out with people and making connections. You can apply mnemonic techniques to remembering people’s names. You just turn the name into something memorable, associate it with something on their face that sticks out at you, and you can remember as many names as you want.

For this particular event, for example, using my own case study, since there were only 50 people at the event, I actually learned everybody’s names before getting there, because we all had a Facebook group ahead of time. So I just learned everybody’s names before getting there and didn’t have to worry about it once I was there, I just got to interact with them.

James: Yeah, that’s going to leverage everything you do once you get there, and it’s also going to be a nice lead into your memory specialty when people are curious how you do remember their name.

Timothy: Yeah, that’s right. And it’s just a very, very practical application. People go, “Well, who really needs to remember numbers and historical dates in practical everyday life?” We can always look that stuff up. But if you have to look up somebody’s name when they walk up to you, that’s a pretty strong argument for memory.

James: OK, so let’s imagine we’re sitting there in the audience, we’re taking notes as people speak, we’re imagining them in their special environment, we’re being fairly economical, like writing down things that really resonate, and then what else can we do? Should we put away our iPhone?

Timothy: Oh, yeah. For sure, yeah. Once again, it’s just like clearing your mind. I mean, put that phone at least in airplane mode if you still want to know what time it is. I mean this is a general life principle, I think. If you can think of one thing at a time, designate any given time for the value that you expect to get from it, be completely focused on the one thing that you’re focused on.

And if you aren’t getting value from the presentation, if it just doesn’t interest you and you don’t think that you’re getting value from it, maybe there’s something else that you can get value from, but restrict it to your environment, don’t turn to your phone. Look around the room and see what other people are doing, or just explore in your mind other things that you know or other notes from the presentations.

James: Right. Maybe you can apply a scoring system to your notes from the previous presentation.

Timothy: Sure, exactly.

James: Is it important to be able to go back through the things that we’ve learned, and then decide which ones we’re going to give more gravity to?

Timothy: Possibly. Gravity is a little bit of an abstract term, I tend to think of things more in terms of checklists, myself, so I would say, this is the first thing I’m going to do when I get back, and I may even assign that a day. I won’t put it on my calendar, I’ll just assign a day when I’ll get that done after settling in back at home and so I’ll just, maybe I’ll order them numerically, this one first, then this one. And I would do that in order of priority, because once again, if you get just one thing done and it’s the most important thing, then you’ve gotten value out of the event.

After the sessions
James: Yeah. And ok, let’s talk about after the sessions are done. What can we do, do we do something straight after the session before we hit the bar? Or do we do it before we leave the venue? Do we do it at the airport, do we do it on the plane? From my perspective, I like to get back to my house with the actions already deployed to my team, or to my calendar, so that I don’t have to get back, just throw the booklet down on my desk, and then never look at it again.

Timothy: Oh yeah, you want to harness the energy from the event, for sure. Because once again, you’re going to walk away from that event feeling like it’s such a great accomplishment. But if you haven’t actually taken any of those actions yet or set them up to be done, then you’re deceiving yourself, for sure. So put them into your system at the very least, so that you are pretty much guaranteed that they will happen, before you leave the energy of the event. I totally agree with you on that.

James: I sat down the next morning after the event, at breakfast, pulled out my notepad, and then I just started circling the things that are going to have the most impact, and then I deployed them, sent them off as items in my team’s Slack, and a lot of things are done.

And it’s also interesting to see how many of the participants mobilised at different speeds. I invited a couple of them to share ideas on a podcast, and some of them like yourself were very quick to mobilise that. A good bunch of them, maybe half of them, have joined my community, and some of them were joining while we were at the event. Other ones joined like yesterday, you know, a substantial time after the event, 3 weeks later.

Timothy: Yeah.

James: And then there’s still people who are probably yet to join. So it’s interesting to watch how long it takes people to get home, life gets in the way, sort out through their stuff, and then get to the things on their checklist, and one of the things on the checklist must have been, OK, “join SuperFastBusiness membership.” And two of them came into SilverCircle, one of them was while I was still at the event, the other one was about 10 days later, and to see the compound interest of taking early action is fascinating.

Timothy: Yeah, for sure. The early action is the real action. The delayed action is probably, it’s just so hard to harness the energy after the event is over, so while your mind is clear, while you’re still in there with the other people, take advantage of that energy, for sure.

James: And it’s like while people are at the event, they’re like, “When can I rebook my next ticket?” and the longer it goes, there’s a decay rate. And I learned this from selling, with follow-up. If someone comes in to buy something today, they’re pretty hot. Tomorrow, it’s about 50%, and it decays about 50% per day by the experience that I’ve had.

You go back months later, they’ll be, like, “Oh, did I go to that thing? Is that right?” You know, it’s really going to fade. So I think there’s a definite situation where the faster you can implement, the better. And if you can select the right things to implement, the better.

Now we’ve covered a couple of the mistakes. Let’s see if we can find a few more mistakes that people might make. So I’ve nominated a couple, maybe people being distracted, thinking that they’re the best multi-tasker in the world, catching up on Facebook while they’re sitting in a presentation, taking too many notes, like just regurgitating everything that’s said back onto a piece of paper so that they’re paralyzed with too much data, is a common mistake.

Not acting on any of the information until later or if ever, like too far down the track, and lumping everything into the same bucket or the same pad without differentiating. So there’s some of the mistakes. Can you think of other horrendous learning mistakes that people make that really attack their ability to succeed?

Attending too many tracks
Timothy: Yeah, I think that one of the big mistakes for some conferences, this wouldn’t apply to the one that you and I were just at, but actually one of the things that I think people make a huge mistake with is at large conferences where there are multiple tracks and all these different sessions and things like that, they go and attend as many of those tracks as they can without really knowing what they’re getting from them. They just go, “Oh, look, that looks interesting,” and they go attend them.

And they frankly conference too much and don’t hang out enough. I went to an event last year where I literally attended two sessions. Actually, I attended one session and one keynote. And that was despite obviously paying the ticket, going to the event, staying at the hotel and everything. I just decided that standing in the halls between the conferences was the value I wanted to get out of it.

So if you know what value you’re running to get out of the event, maybe attending the sessions isn’t actually the best way to get that value, unless you really know what you’re getting out of them. And so, that’s one thing actually.

Human interactions
And then another one is, when you are interacting with those people, not really getting any value from that interaction. So you take the analogy of the notes that you’ve written down, you know what your aim is in writing those notes down. You’re interacting with a person, do you know what your aim is in interacting with that person?

I’m not talking about getting your pound of meat or anything like that. I’m just saying, if you want that person to be a friend of yours, if you really want to get the value of hanging out with them, then giving them your business card isn’t the way to do it. And asking them for something, or also kissing up to them, those just aren’t being a real person. If you want to get the value of hanging out with people and being a real person, then the value is probably not necessarily what most people do at conferences, where they’re just trying to see as many faces as they can, or get as close to the big names as they can.

James: Yeah, in fact getting close to the big names is probably one of the primary goals of people, and almost always they’ve got a motivation that they need that person to help them in some way, to either educate them or promote them or publish them on their site, sell lots of their course. There’s a lot of ways that this could be done and I’ve seen a few that work and a few that don’t work. Are there techniques that you can use to be memorable, for the right reasons of course, for these experts?

Timothy: Yeah. Absolutely. I think so. I mean number one is just being very genuine. Don’t be fake, don’t be something you’re not, but be very genuine. But then also be an interesting person. You know, don’t just expect that if you’re a smart person or if you’re a successful person, that people will want to hang out with you. Because that’s frankly just not the case.

Be interesting
Be an interesting person. Be the kind of person that people want to hang out with. Find more ways of building charisma, building ways of being more funny, more interesting to people. Find more synonyms, and look at the people around you. If the value that you’re wanting to portray has to do with being a likeable and memorable person, look at the people around you who are likeable and memorable, analyze what it is that makes them likeable and memorable and makes you really gravitate toward them, and see if you can replicate that in your own way.

But then again, I think it’s really being genuine and then of course being, to the extent that you can, portraying the things that people like besides that. Like remembering people’s names and things like that. But just portraying general intelligence and common sense. That may be just a little too simple of an answer, but again, it is common sense.

James: Well, a simple answer, one thing I’ve seen that’s very effective, there’s this guy called Ben and he wears a silly hat at every conference he goes to. It’s like this ridiculous, plastic, brightly colored hat. And within minutes, the event people know this guy’s there. They call him out to the whole audience, because it looks so ridiculous, and everyone knows who he is. And he’s like, the life-of-the-party type of guy.

It’s a really simple technique to stand out, is to dress differently. And I imagine there’s a lot of memory technique happening there. You don’t even have to imagine him in a funny costume or in a strange environment, because he’s created it for you.

Timothy: Right, yeah, exactly. Memory techniques are about taking things that aren’t memorable and turning them into things that are memorable. You don’t want to have to force other people to do that. You just want to be memorable and people will remember you.

James: Had this other weird thing happen at this event. Even some of the experts started having this saying, and they said they wanted to “Schramko-ise” their business, and other people came up with this saying, they got “Schramkoed,” and they even put a picture and it started going viral on Facebook, that “I’ve been Schramkoed.”

Timothy: Or “I’ve been Schrammed,” I thought it was.

James: Yeah. And other people in the past have said, “Schram-KOed”. Memorable because the presentation had impact, which is as someone delivering a message, that’s actually kind of cool because I know that people will get it. They get what I’m trying to convey, so it’s like a tick in the box for, OK, people understand what I’m talking about. But it’s going to be memorable for them because I’ve changed the way that they were thinking.

So how else can we change the way that people think when we interact with them?

Keep it simple
Timothy: Change the way that people think. You mean making things simple and make sense? Taking everything that we’ve talked about so far, not throwing all the information at them but just saying two words that clarify everything.

Because the fact is, you just take the idea of trying to use your cellphone while watching a presentation, multi-tasking doesn’t exist. Your brain can only think about one thing at a time. And if you take advantage of that fact, then you lead people down a very clear path, just like in sales. You lead people down a very clear path, and then you can make them understand something. If you try to throw too much at them, then they’re really not going to understand really anything.

And a lot of information that isn’t acted on is completely valueless. A little information that does make sense and does click is worth everything.

James: I think that’s a really important thing you just said, that a lot of the actions that you don’t take is valueless. In other words, we really shouldn’t beat ourselves up about this feeling of paralysis and overwhelm for the 300 items we wrote down in our list of things to do, because 298 of them probably aren’t going to shift the needle on the business anyway, just let them go.

Timothy: Yeah, that’s definitely true. I have so many people say, entrepreneurs are always thinking of so many different things, they have their entrepreneurial ADHD. And the fact is, I’m sure that there are actions out there that I could take to do something to my business to get some crazy result.

But I’m going down a specific path, I know exactly what it is that I’m doing, and I know what results I’m getting at the present time, and I’m satisfied with that. There may be other ideas out there, but if they don’t align with what I know that I need to do, then those will definitely just end up being actions that I don’t take. More actions you don’t take aren’t worth anything.

A brief recap
James: A quick summary where we’re up to, because we’ve covered a few things, and we should take our own advice and keep it really simple. First thing is, before you go to an event, just get really clear. Get there with an empty cup, so that you’re ready. Have an idea about what you want. Even if you don’t know what you want, have an idea that you’re looking for something that you would like to want when you’re there and then relate everything around that.

In order to have a clear path, it helps you to really imagine. When people are speaking, put them in their own special environment that makes it easy to remember that presentation. Write down less stuff, if you can discipline yourself for that, and when you have written it down, score it according to what’s going to provide the most outcome for doing that thing. So have a scoring system.

And then act on things quickly, as soon as possible from when you’ve written that note down and sat there, ideally before you even get home would be a good thing to do. And when you’ve got your fill and you’ve had enough, stop going to sessions, turn off and just start implementing the stuff that you’ve got. Have I got it so far?

Timothy: Yeah, I think so. Maybe the other thing is maximise the value of being with people, because so many of us work online, we know so many people online and we don’t get together in person. So really just maximise that time as far as hanging out with the cool people goes, because you’re there together, you may as well enjoy that time and get the most from that as well.

James: Right. And be memorable in that, because you care about other people, you have interesting questions, you are different to everyone else, you have integrity, maybe people remember the way that you presented, and maybe that’ll be changed by the things that you say, if you can have an impact there that really hits home for them, then that’s going to be a great outcome for them and also for you.

Timothy: Yeah, absolutely.

3 things to bear in mind
James: So, Timothy, have you got any sort of summary thoughts where we could wrap this up and call this an episode, where we maybe have three action steps you could do as a result of listening to this podcast in preparation for the next live event that you attend?

Timothy: Yeah. I would suggest for the next event you attend, just have these three things in mind, and there are three phases to an event: there’s the before, the during and the after. So do your homework before the event. If the value that you want to get is the sessions, then know exactly what you’re wanting to get out of those sessions. It could be something quantifiable, it could be something that’s just a general… it could be, you know, just, “I want to improve my business based on whatever information is out there, whatever new information I can get from these sessions while I’m focused and all the energy’s around me.” So it could just be coming with an empty cup, that way, but there are ways to maximise that.

Or if the main focus is on interacting with other people, then do your homework on that as well and be ready to meet those people. So that’s the first thing. Do your homework before the event and really prepare with a clear mind and not having to be in your business.

Second thing, be completely focused during the event on getting that maximum value of that one thing that you’ve determined is the most important thing for that event.

And then thirdly after the event, take your clear actions as soon as possible, and actually, even by the time you’re distracted by life, which will inevitably happen after the event is over, make sure that those actions are very clearly laid out so that you can actionise them one at a time without it just being a jumbled mess. And even if some of those actions are connecting with other people that you’ve met at the event, make sure that that happens as well, because I think that that’s completely relevant, too.

James: Yeah, and there’s some simple ways to do that, like finding them on Facebook.

Timothy: Creating Facebook lists, so you can follow them.

James: Having them join your community.

Timothy: Yeah.

James: And anything you can get someone else to do in your actions, to delegate it, send it off to your team. I’ve sat there in the room and straight after a session emailed my team and said, right, we need to set up a report for people, to only get the best customers coming into our business. We’ll analyze their site.

And I was sitting in a Dean Jackson, Joe Polish event, and it was about giving a customer the dream experience. That would be us looking at their sites saying, well OK, this is wrong, this is right, we can help you.” And we implemented it a few years ago. It’s been one of the best things we ever did for our SEO business, and it came from an idea that turned into an action that the team then implemented very quickly. So speed of implementation is great.

Timothy, really good to have met you, also thanks to Chris Ducker for inviting me to his event, Tropical Think Tank, where we did meet. It was really well-run, and because of the few speakers per day and the time to workshop and the time to spend with people, it was structured more for learning than an average event, which was great. Some good takeaways there for anyone running an event.

And hopefully we can catch up again. I’d be really interested in fact developing another conversation on how experts can prepare their presentations to help people learn more. So to sort of set it up that someone could hardly fail taking in the information.

Timothy: Yeah, absolutely, that’s something that I’d very much like to do. I’ve been a teacher my whole life and yeah, that’s something that you can definitely do by just flipping these things around, so for sure.

James: Well, I think that’ll be good. So Timothy Moser from masterofmemory.com, thanks for sharing some ideas. I know you know a lot more stuff than you’ve let on today, and we’re going to drag it out of you in a future episode, so thanks so much for coming along. All right.

Timothy: Sounds good. Well, thanks for having me.

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