Shownotes
- Optimize Your Audio Equipment: Bernie emphasizes the importance of understanding and testing your audio setup. Much like an athlete reviews recordings to improve performance, tweaking angles and distances can make a significant difference in sound quality.
- Perception in Virtual Environments: How you present yourself online critically impacts how you're received. Professionalism in both appearance and sound negates assumptions about your work quality, stressing that even in audio-focused platforms, visual preparation matters.
- Background and Lighting Tips: To maintain a professional look, use non-distracting backgrounds that match the context of your presentation. Optimize lighting according to your skin undertones, and consider consulting makeup experts for the best setup.
- Virtual Event Strategy: Consistency and strategic platform use like LinkedIn for invites and follow-ups are essential. Your events should offer value and insights into your personality and expertise to foster ongoing engagement rather than immediate sales.
- Effective Follow-Up: Convert event attendees into clients by making multiple touchpoints—often 12 to 15 are required. Utilize tools like CRMs and ChatGPT to streamline and personalize follow-up messages, ensuring your communication is both consistent and compelling.
Transcripts
What is happening, everybody? I'm Larry Roberts.
Sara Lohse [:And I'm Sara Lohse. And this is Branded, Your comprehensive guide to creative branding.
Larry Roberts [:And on this amazing episode of the podcast, we have a friend of ours. I mean, I've known this guy for, I'll say three years, probably. We met about three years ago for the first time at what it's called the Badass Business Summit over in Fort Worth. And since then, we've got to know each other a little bit better. Sara met him, I think it was this year or last year. Well, end of last year or this year when we went back to the Badass Business Summit. And I mean, he's just amazing. And we're really honored to have Bernie Desantis, not the first, not the second, but the third with us today.
Larry Roberts [:And Bernie is the owner of Insignia Training Partners, a training broker that connects companies to the people, resources, and content to train their staff to excel and exceed expectations. If you see Bernie on the streets, you're gonna know him. I mean, you're probably looking him right now, and you're like, is that Mario or Luigi? Who? What's going on here? If you see him on the streets, you'll know him by his epic all caps mustache. Seriously, he's probably twisting and training his stash like a cartoon villain right now. And we're very happy to have him and his stash with us today. So, Bernie, welcome to Brandon.
Bernie DeSantis [:Awesome. Thank you, Larry. I appreciate you having me on the show today. And I am training my mustache all day, every day. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Larry Roberts [:No, I love it because, you know, I have to put on the hat to have my brand. But you literally, you live your brand.
Bernie DeSantis [:Indeed. Yeah. It's interesting backstory. Like, I never intended for it to become my brand in any way, shape or form. I originally grew it out back in my 20s, had it for about six to eight months. Got tired of food and beer and all types of stuff getting stuck in it. As you can imagine, that would happen. So I took it off for about a decade, and then I was over hanging out with my cousin one night we were having a couple bourbons, and after the first one, he was like, you know, you should grow back out your mustache.
Bernie DeSantis [:And I was like, no, hell no. You have no idea how much trouble it was. After about the fifth bourbon, he talked me into it, and so I started growing it back out. Wore it for a couple of years, kept it fairly trimmed. Then my grandfather passed away. My grandfather was my hero. He had an epic mustache as well. So my family Asked me to give his eulogy.
Bernie DeSantis [:So I went up to the front of the room, stood at the pulpit, started giving my eulogy. I saw three people walk into the back of the room that I didn't know. Obviously, somebody gets into their mid-80s, like, they have a pretty small circle. I expected I would know everybody that was there. Right. So I finished up my eulogy, I walked to the back of the room, I introduced myself. Hi, I'm Bernie. You know, it's my grandfather.
Bernie DeSantis [:How did you guys know him? And they proceeded to share with me that they had worked for my grandfather 40 years prior at the Better made potato chip factory here in Detroit. And when they found out that they had Pat, that he had passed, they wanted to come and pay their respects to the best boss that they ever had. And they wanted to see his big, beautiful mustache one more time. And so I was like, I can never take this thing off.
Larry Roberts [:Oh, that's awesome, dude. That's a great story.
Bernie DeSantis [:Thank you.
Larry Roberts [:That's my. I don't have nearly the cool brand stories that you have there.
Sara Lohse [:I just wear pink.
Bernie DeSantis [:Yeah.
Larry Roberts [:No, that's amazing. Honestly, that is amazing. You know, my, my grandfather passed away when I was about a year and a half, but my grandmother played a major role in my life and she was also very, very amazing. So I miss her dearly to this day. So that's, that's an epic story that really resonates with me. Before I start crying, talk to us more about what do you, what do you do for folks as far as training? How do you, what sort of training materials do you come up with and, and, and how do you work as a trainer from that perspective?
Bernie DeSantis [:Yeah. So, you know, I've been doing training for a little over 20 years. I started my, you know, career at Quicken Loans as a mortgage banker, making 100 phone calls a day doing the smile and dial routine. And figured out after about 60 days after new hire training that it wasn't for me. I didn't want to ask every living soul that I spoke to for a credit card. So I started looking for other work. Happened on the company intranet page and saw they were posting a job for a leadership development trainer. So I was like, what the hell? I never led a team.
Bernie DeSantis [:I've never trained anyone, but why not? What do I got to lose? So threw my hat in the ring and ultimately got the job, to my shock and surprise. And my role there was as an experiential trainer. So I was taking large groups of up and coming leaders and we Would go do ropes courses and SWAT team trainings or I developed these full day activity based immersive events for people where we focused on, on the same skill sets they'd use every day to run a team in the office. Problem solving, communication, teamwork, things like that. Is that job currently available that experiential learning is a thing? Absolutely. I mean, you have to find the right organization. It was a lot of fun. But as you can imagine, when people are dangling three stories up in the air like they have some interesting breakthroughs.
Bernie DeSantis [:And so, you know, these were events we do on the weekends and they go home Monday morning, they come back to the office and want to share their experience with me, what it meant to them, what they were going to change. And you know, usually it was professional how they interact with teams, manage stress, you know, things like that. Some people was really personal. They would go home and have conversations with their spouse or their kids or their parents they've been putting off for months or even years in a few cases. And that was what lit my fire for learning and development. Just seeing the light bulbs turn on. Being able to develop content and create these experiences that actually resonated with people and created behavior change in their lives. Right.
Bernie DeSantis [:There's too much training out there where it's, it's just a talking head. There's, there's information being shared, but they're not really picking up what you're laying down. And that immersive experience, I came to realize is one of the best ways to train people. So I fell in love with training. Spent about 15 years in corporate America, eventually got into the world of contracting where I met my predecessor. I'm actually the second owner of Insignia. She decided one day that she was ready to retire. And after I worked with her for about five years on several pretty high profile projects, she, she made me an offer I couldn't refuse.
Bernie DeSantis [:And so you. I am now, today. But to kind of tie it all up and answer your original question, Larry, I took what I learned at Quicken back doing that experiential learning, and I've applied it over and over and over to the different trainings that I've. I've performed. Whether we're talking about onboarding with a client, right. We're talking about leadership development. Maybe it's a coaching program. They're launching a new software internally or a new product externally to their clients.
Bernie DeSantis [:It's about engaging with the learner. Right. And helping them to apply the things that they're, they're learning. And so that's what we do is we help to take whatever that knowledge is, apply it, and then the person creates behavior change in their job, in their life, whatever the case may be. And we do that by providing the human capital resources to these organizations. Right. So that could be a fractional chief learning officer that comes in and does strategy work. That could be an instructional designer who builds out the PowerPoints, right.
Bernie DeSantis [:The facilitator guide, the participants, guide the job aids, all of the stuff creating that experience, right? How they're actually going to go through the learning path. Instructors, lms, administrators, producers, project managers, like the, the whole works. If there's a human being involved in the training of someone else, that's what my company provides, is access to those experience and skilled people in learning and development. And then as an offshoot of that, sometimes we are developing or locating content for people or maybe it's helping to select or implement a learning management system. All of that to say that throughout Covid, we got really heavy into the virtual training space and that is really what we focus on primarily now we'll still always help our clients with all of the training needs, but we've honed in on that virtual training space. So webinars, master classes, roundtables, workshops, all of the stuff you see people doing on Zoom, unfortunately in a lot of cases, not very well. We help them to create a more engaging virtual event.
Larry Roberts [:That's super cool. And it's interesting to hear that because we have a very, I'll say it's a very similar background because corporate training is really where I started and that's got me to where I'm at today. So way, way back in the 90s, I, I worked at Texas Instruments and I worked in a clean room, which it's if you've ever seen like the intel commercials, they have like these colorful ninjas that are bouncing around in these clean rooms and you wear a full body like ninja suit, all you see is your eyes and you go in there. And I worked in what was called a class 10. So that meant there was only 10 particles of anything for every cubic, cubic feet of air. So regardless of where you're at, there's only 10, like little, you know, if you look around in the sunlight's hitting, you can see particles floating in your air. There was only 10 of those, every cubic foot of air.
Sara Lohse [:Who went through and counted them?
Larry Roberts [:Well, they have to be classified by ISO standards. And there's a, there's a ton of back, back work that goes into getting these classified as, as class as class 10, or we even had a class one in a different building, which is a thousand times cleaner than a hospital operating room. It was insane. It's got what they call laminar airflow. The air flows from the ceiling to the floor. The floor's perforated to push everything down. I mean, it was crazy. But anyways, so I worked in.
Larry Roberts [:I worked in a clean room. And very similarly, a training position opened up, and I was like, I could probably do better at this training gig than I can sit here for 12 hours a day in this ninja suit taking wafers from one acid bath and putting them in another acid bath. So I managed to get that job, and that just launched everything. So, pretty interesting to see that our backstories are, you know, somewhat similar there.
Bernie DeSantis [:Yeah, absolutely.
Larry Roberts [:But, Sara, you look like you had something you wanted to ask.
Sara Lohse [:No, I mean, I was doing similar things in the 90s. I was bored.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, you were still just swimming around. But any. But anyways, so. So, Bernie, as far as training goes, I mean, how does that help you today? I. I know that's your business, but how do you help others leverage training to grow their business and grow their brands?
Bernie DeSantis [:Well, you know, very specifically, as it relates to the. The virtual production of events, my company helps to not only run the event, right, so they. They show up to the zoom. We help them to create a really engaging event so that when people are there, they're not just staring at the talking head on screen. And I'll kind of give you an example. I don't say this to impress people, although sometimes it does. Here in my home office, I'm working from seven monitors, right? So.
Larry Roberts [:Oh, I remember that.
Bernie DeSantis [:Yeah, yeah, I zoom on one. Yeah, but that means I have email, I have Slack, I have teams, I have Facebook, I have LinkedIn. I have all of these other things that could potentially distract me from what's happening here. And so that's one of the things that we teach our clients is what is the strategy to keep people engaged and involved in your particular event? Right. Whether we're talking about a roundtable or a masterclass or a webinar, you have to do something with your audience roughly every five to 10 minutes or you're going to lose them. They're going to go off camera, they're going to not participate, they're not going to pick up what you're laying down. So aside from the experience in the event, we also also help them to market it, right? So we help them to get butts in the seats of the People that they actually want to talk to and would benefit from hearing them speak. And then the last stage is we actually help to get those registrations and attendees scheduled for consultations with our clients.
Bernie DeSantis [:Right. The whole purpose of doing an event is not really just to give away that, that knowledge, that value, although that is a good thing to do, obviously, but it is used as a business development activity. Right. When was the last time you went to a webinar or a virtual event for something that you didn't give a about? Never. The answer is never. You don't, you don't go to them. So the people who register for these events and attend them, they do so because they're interested in the subject matter or the person who's delivering it. So if they're already thinking about that product or that service or that subject matter, doing an event and having them register or attend is the equivalent of them raising their hand and saying, I'm interested in what you're talking about.
Larry Roberts [:Sure.
Sara Lohse [:So what's the secret there? Because I've, I've ran webinars, whether it's for, for us, for myself or clients. What is the secret to getting those people to book that consultation?
Bernie DeSantis [:You know, I don't know that there's necessarily a secret. Honestly, Sara, it's. I think the average number right now is 12 to 18 touch points to close a sale with somebody. Right. Just on average.
Larry Roberts [:So it's a lot higher than what I've traditionally heard. Typically, I think I've heard seven.
Bernie DeSantis [:Yeah, I mean, that's probably what it was five to seven years ago. Honestly, people are, are so inundated with DMS and emails and phone calls like you, you just, you have to stay in front of them and you have to be able to cut through the noise a little bit. So not only is it, is it volume of attempts to communicate with them, but it's also obviously your messaging as well. Right. You got to have compelling messaging, a reason for them to meet with you. So as an example, like I do a virtual event that specifically is about doing virtual events. So. So I know that everybody who attends my virtual event is interested in doing virtual events or improving their virtual event.
Bernie DeSantis [:So when I reach out to them, that's what I talk about. So you attended my class, Audience alchemy. Obviously you're interested in doing virtual events or you're already and want to improve. I may have some information that can help you to put on a more engaging event, get more people there, and potentially buy your services, interested in having a conversation. Right. So you'd obviously tweak that for whatever it is that, that you're trying to sell to get them into a consultation. But you got to lead with, with that value, what's in it for them and give them a reason to actually want to meet with you. It's not just, hey, you went to my thing, you want to buy my.
Bernie DeSantis [:That doesn't really.
Larry Roberts [:Oh, that's where we went wrong. You were here, you want to buy our five thousand dollar product.
Sara Lohse [:No. Why not?
Bernie DeSantis [:I mean, and that's, that's not to say that they won't click the button and buy now occasionally, but your expectations should not be when doing these events that you're going to get 100 sales immediately from it. There's going to be a nurturing process. Right. The, the whole purpose of doing the event is to get them familiar with you, to build out your brand a little bit, create some thought leadership. Right. Just like when you get on stage, Larry. Right. And you're talking about AI the reason that you do it is that people know that you are an expert in AI and then they are going to reach out to you afterwards.
Bernie DeSantis [:Or when you reach out to them, they understand you're an expert in AI. If I want to have a conversation about it, I'm going to meet with Larry.
Larry Roberts [:Sure.
Bernie DeSantis [:That's the whole idea.
Sara Lohse [:Because with these like online trainings, the way that it kind of relates to personal branding is you have to almost brand yourself when you show up. And you have to just show up in a way that you want to represent your brand.
Bernie DeSantis [:Absolutely.
Sara Lohse [:And I know that's something that you have a lot of expertise and you talked about this actually at the Badass Business Summit when we were there and how, how to show up on camera. And so let's talk about that. Like what are those tips that you have? Because everyone that's an entrepreneur, business owner, even employees, you're going to be on a zoom at some point.
Bernie DeSantis [:Yep.
Sara Lohse [:That is that it is that age. You're gonna do it. Welcome to the club. But how do you do that and show up in a way that you can proudly be representing your brand?
Bernie DeSantis [:Absolutely, absolutely. Well, you know, the first thing is, is mindset. Honestly, Sara, you know, like when we're talking about in person meetings, right. You go and you're going to have a coffee with someone, you're going to stop and you're going to look in the mirror before you leave. You're going to make sure that you know your shirt is tucked in, your hair is brushed, your teeth are brushed. You look good. Right. Going into that conversation, the whole idea of showing up as you are, while I appreciate it, people still judge you just based on the way that you look and the way that you take care of yourself.
Bernie DeSantis [:And it's no different in a virtual environment from an in person environment. Right. So when you're on camera, you want to make sure that whatever's in the frame, whatever they're seeing is in its best light. So one of the things that I talked about at Babs is your lighting, right. There are so many people that end up in a dark room and it looks like they are in witness protection when they show up to some of these virtual coffees or doing virtual events. Right. Like, and I'll kind of give you an example. Right.
Bernie DeSantis [:So I work in my basement. I am going to. I still have obviously the seven monitors that I work from, but I have three lights that I use. Now. This isn't a bad picture necessarily, Right. I'm still pretty clear, but I am not well lit anymore. Now I have a blue tinge to me. Look a little bit like I'm, you know, the, the Crypt Master.
Bernie DeSantis [:It's. It's not really a great look if you're going to show.
Larry Roberts [:I don't like this conversation because I'm obviously not in my studio and I'm very not well lit. I'm not presenting quite as professionally as I typically do. So I'm feeling a little personally attacked.
Bernie DeSantis [:Well, I will say this, Larry. You are in a room that is naturally well lit. Oh, that is a positive. That is a positive. And, and that's one of the, the number one tips that I give people, Sara, is if you can be in a room that has natural light, that is the best place to be. Put your computer and your camera directly in front of a window that's shining in. And then as long as you're working in the daytime, you will always have that natural light and you'll look good. And if not, you want to invest in a couple of ring lights.
Bernie DeSantis [:Right. We're not talking about fluorescent overheads. We're talking about lights that are shining directly on your face. You want to be seen. Another mistake I see people made. And again, kind of going back to the witness protection look is they'll have really bright lights behind them. Right?
Larry Roberts [:Yeah.
Bernie DeSantis [:And then there are silhouette and then there's silhouette. You can't actually see the person.
Sara Lohse [:What about a lit up Christmas tree sitting on my desk?
Bernie DeSantis [:I think that's beautiful.
Sara Lohse [:Thank you.
Bernie DeSantis [:Yes.
Larry Roberts [:Very painful. Yeah. No, you know, Typically, back in my home studio, I've got 17 different lights to light me properly. And you know, you wear a hat all the time too. And so you could probably relate to the fact that when you wear a hat on camera, it's very difficult to light your face properly because you get that shadow of the bill of the hat coming down over your eyes. So it's, it's a definite challenge.
Bernie DeSantis [:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, in that case you have to have lights both coming down, but also coming up to counteract that light. Right?
Larry Roberts [:Yep.
Bernie DeSantis [:It's. Honestly, there's a lot more strategy that goes into how you show up on camera than I think the average person really thinks. In my experience, people who are doing events for the first time, they think that they can take in person content, flip on the camera and deliver it the exact same way and everything's going to be all good. That's not unfortunately quite work that way.
Sara Lohse [:Yeah, I think that's also a huge problem with like podcast guests. I've seen podcast guests. Like I. A show that I produced for years. One of the guests, it was audio only, but he took the recording from the, on his phone from the waiting room of a Jiffy Lube.
Bernie DeSantis [:Oh, wow.
Sara Lohse [:Which is premier audio quality. Yeah. We've produced shows where the guest has like, their hair is a mess, they're like all disheveled and their desk is just covered with messes of papers and the content like that, what they're talking about is valuable, but you're so distracted by like what is in just their view, which I guess, like, I mean a lot of people are still kind of mentally trained for podcasts to be audio, but it is video now. And even if like more people are listening than watching, whatever it is, people are going to see it. And even like the host, if you show up to our, like, like I'm a podcast host. Clearly, if you show up to my podcast and you're a mess and you're like in your bathroom or something like that feels like a little, A little hurtful.
Bernie DeSantis [:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, have they thought about how they are going to appear and reflect on you and your show? Right. It's, it's, it, it's a consideration that I think a lot of people forget to make. Yeah, right. And you touched on a good point as well. The, the audio is super important as well. Right. Not only where you're at, but the equipment that you're using.
Bernie DeSantis [:A lot of people, they don't really think about that. They assume that the camera and the microphone that is installed in their laptop is tip top. I paid $2,000 for this laptop. So it's the highest quality. Yeah. No, it is not. It was provided by the absolute lowest bidder when they were trying to figure out how to build that thing. It is not high quality and nor should you use the earbuds that came with your latest cell phone purchase.
Bernie DeSantis [:Also provided by the lowest bidder. Now, does that mean people need to go out and buy pure microphones or blue Yetis or whatever? No, not necessarily. But you should take the time to understand how your equipment works and what's going to make you sound best. Right? So you should be testing it different distances, different angles. Record yourself just like an athlete watches their recording. You're a business athlete.
Larry Roberts [:You're watch the tape.
Bernie DeSantis [:You got to watch the tape and figure out how you're going to present yourself best. Because the reality is how you are perceived in this virtual environment is how you're going to be received by the person watching it. If you look like crap, if you sound like crap, they're going to assume that the thing that you're doing now is how you do all things. Less likely to work with you.
Sara Lohse [:Now I'm like super self conscious of my background. Like, is there. The book is like a little out of place.
Bernie DeSantis [:It's not a perfect stack, a little crooked little curse. Yeah, but that's yet another thing, right? Your background should be something that is not distracting for your audience. I would actually not use my background that I'm showing right now if I were going to a corporate environment as an example. Right. If I'm presenting to Ford Motor Company, I would probably use a virtual background that's a little bit more plain. But if I'm doing something where I'm trying to show who I am and what's important to me, the things that I like, my personality. Like here in a podcast as an example, I'm going to show the background that I have behind me. But most of the time I say nondescript, right? You don't want a whole lot of clutter.
Bernie DeSantis [:You don't want things that will be distracting. Like my little iron man light up here that's flashing on and off.
Larry Roberts [:Dude, I was about to ask you, is that an arc reactor I see glowing back there?
Bernie DeSantis [:I have two. Two.
Larry Roberts [:It didn't. It didn't. It's not distracting or anything, but I've been staring at it.
Bernie DeSantis [:Yeah, that's exactly the point. Right? Because it is going to draw attention.
Sara Lohse [:Away from what I'm presenting Going back to lighting too. This is going to sound like a really weird tip, but go to like Ulta or Sephora and ask the people there if you have cool or warm undertones. Because when you get a ring light, you can set it to white light, blue light, orange light.
Bernie DeSantis [:Yeah.
Sara Lohse [:And those will show, like, make you show up better based on the undertones of your skin.
Bernie DeSantis [:Yep, absolutely.
Sara Lohse [:And like, I look washed out if I don't use the orange setting. And I know that about myself, so I keep it set to that. But some people, they like the blue setting would look better for them or the white setting. So the best way to figure that out is go to a makeup store because they're trained to know that.
Bernie DeSantis [:Absolutely, absolutely. It's, it's about who you get to help you. Right?
Sara Lohse [:Yeah, yeah. Little pro tip.
Bernie DeSantis [:Nice.
Larry Roberts [:So. So Bernie, how can people that are trying to grow their business and grow their brand leverage online training to grow their presence?
Bernie DeSantis [:Well, you know, again, if you're going to be doing a virtual event, the idea is, is that you want to teach your audience something, give them enough value in that conversation that they want to continue to have a conversation with you. You want them to get a feel for your personality, for your expertise, what it feels like to potentially work with you. And again, it's, it's a hand raiser activity ultimately. So the fact that they've even shown up and shown interest in the event that you're talking about, it means that they are likely to be thinking about products and services that you offer. So it gives you an opportunity.
Larry Roberts [:Let me jump in there real quick. Let me jump in there real quick. And I don't mean to cut you off, but a lot of folks struggle. Like Sara was bringing up the point earlier. When you do that first virtual event or you, you host that first Zoom session or whatever it may be, they just have a hard time getting butts and seats, especially for those first couple of events. Is it just a consistency thing that we have to overcome or, or what are some, some tips and tricks that you have to put asses in seats for these virtual events?
Bernie DeSantis [:Well, there's, you know, there's the organic methodology. Right. So if you're on LinkedIn as an example. Pro tip, if you don't know this, if you set up an event on LinkedIn, you can still do it through Zoom, but LinkedIn allows you to send up to a thousand invites to your network every single week leading up to your event. So you can directly invite people to your event that are already familiar with you. Then on top of that, you want to follow up with dms, right? So go through your connections and identify who within my list is likely to find value in this presentation and, or be able to refer me to someone who would take value from this conversation. So that's just organic, right? And obviously, if you have an email list, that's something that you should be leveraging as well. However, there are a lot of folks.
Bernie DeSantis [:Some of my clients will do press releases, they'll use targeted Google Ads, they will buy email domains and start doing, and buy lists and start emailing those people from those lists that they feel that they would provide value to. So the organic way is typically what I recommend when people start, because those people are generally already a little bit familiar with you. They're already in your universe. But if you're trying to really expand out to people that you haven't talked to yet, you've got to look at ulterior methods. And it may take a little bit of an investment. Right. Again, doing press releases, there's a cost to that. If you want to do Google Ads, there's, there's a cost to that, but they are effective, right? They will target the audience that you're trying to get there.
Larry Roberts [:So you're not recommending that folks jump out there and start investing in ads and, and, and paid lists to start out?
Bernie DeSantis [:No, not, not off. Not off, RIP I mean, you, you can, and that's certainly a way to get a jump start. But the reality is, the first couple of times you do a event, like anything you first start, you're probably going to suck a little bit at it. It's not going to be your best delivery. So I wouldn't really start investing into additional marketing until you've got three or four of them under your belt. And that actually raises a good point as well. You shouldn't have an expectation that you're immediately going to see a ton of business just because you did one event. You need to do it several times.
Bernie DeSantis [:Kind of like a podcast, right? People see you guys all the time and so they get more familiar with you. It's the same thing with a virtual event. You want to do it the third Wednesday of every month. So people start to know that and expect that you're going to be doing a virtual event. They get familiar with you, they understand your subject matter expertise, but it's very rarely a one and done situation.
Larry Roberts [:Now, maybe start up with something like an ama, maybe an ask, Ask me anything or Ask us anything. We used to do that and Sara canceled Them, so.
Sara Lohse [:Oh, Sara, I, I got busy.
Larry Roberts [:No, no, we actually, we found it very difficult to maintain that weekly schedule because we were doing it at 5 o'clock in the evening on a Monday and you have no idea what happens at 5 o'clock on a Monday till you schedule something to do. Every Monday at 5:00 there is always something happening Monday at 5:00. It's the craziest thing. So it's, it could be difficult, but I think planning that is, is absolutely critical as well. You got to find a time that A, you can reach your audience and, and B, something that you can stick to and, and I've seen it happen time and time again. Going back to what you were saying there in that people do one webinar and they go, well shit, I didn't sell anything.
Bernie DeSantis [:Yeah, it didn't work.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, yeah.
Sara Lohse [:For the, for the sake of consistency, what about doing like a pre recorded, like so you can record it when you have time, but you released it on a set schedule. I mean, I guess it's kind of a podcast.
Bernie DeSantis [:It's kind of a podcast then. Yeah. I mean the whole point of doing a webinar, a workshop virtually is to have that live interaction and you do want them to be interacting with you again. Even if you're doing a webinar where it's primarily a one way conversation, you still want to be using polling questions and chat prompts and playing videos, having entry music. Right. Doing those things that engage with people when they're in their virtual environment.
Sara Lohse [:Then what about. So we, you go through the whole event and then at the end the call to action. I feel like that's something that people struggle with everywhere, whether it's on a podcast, a webinar, whatever it is. What is, what is the secret sauce there?
Bernie DeSantis [:Again, I don't know if there's necessarily a secret sauce. A lot of it is going to depend on the product or the service that you're selling. Right. Sometimes it is a little bit more of a transactional type thing, right. It's a one and done. You can put a link into the chat. Some people are going to click that link and potentially buy. And then of course there's going to be that follow up as well where you'll give them more opportunities to potentially buy from you.
Bernie DeSantis [:But if it's a little bit more of a complex sale, the likelihood that they're just going to immediately click the button and buy or schedule with you, it's a little bit more slim. Right. You, you want to have those, those follow up. And I would say if anything, it's probably in the follow up more so than specifically what your call to action is. That's going to lead to your sales. Right. Because you can kind of flub. Hey, you know, if you want to work with me or if you found value in this last 40 minutes, let's go ahead and schedule a consultation.
Bernie DeSantis [:Cool. Some people might do that, but ultimately most people will need to digest a little bit. And it's going to be in those follow ups, right. The 7, 8, 9, 12th time that you've contacted them and stayed on their radar, then they're like, yeah, I'm ready now. And that's, that's the mentality that you have to have when you're doing a webinar or workshop is that it's, it's a little bit more of a longer play. You're creating a relationship with that person.
Larry Roberts [:What are some of the setup steps that you want to do prior to having a webinar?
Bernie DeSantis [:Oh goodness. You know, I feel like a lot of it is, is actually in line with, with simply setting up your business and your offer. Right. You want to think through who is your ideal client, right. Who is it that I want to invite to my event? Who are the likely people that are going to have the money that I want to take out of their pocket to buy my services? So you need to think those things through your presentation. And that doesn't necessarily mean you have to have a PowerPoint, but you should have a presentation pretty clearly defined what it is that your objectives are, what you want people to take away and what that call to action is, what you want people to do afterwards. Probably more important than that though is thinking about how you get those people there. So again, if it's not in the budget to do press releases, to do targeted Google Ads, to have a VA, reach out to people on your DMs, go that, that organic route, just send the invites, right.
Bernie DeSantis [:And start getting people there. But in my experience, people struggle with three things, Larry. Putting the right people in the room, engaging with the audience while they're there, managing the follow up afterwards and getting them on their calendar. And so those I would say are probably the top things that you need to try to strategize and think through when you're planning a webinar. How do I get the people that I want there? How do I engage them while they're there? How do I engage them afterwards?
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, I love that because I think we all drop the ball when it Comes to the follow up. You know, going back to what you said earlier. Yeah, I'm even more guilty than you are, Sara, I promise. But you know, going back to what you said earlier, 12 to 15 touches before you make a sale, that's freaking insane. It's funny because I was having a conversation just the other day and I'm talking about how we change things for 2025 and I'm like, if I'm, I'm being honest, I, I might touch a potential sale twice and they go, well, okay, whatever, move on to the next one. Twice. Twice, dude. So if we're talking six times that many in order to even really start breaking into that sales realm, that's just, that's just so wild.
Larry Roberts [:And I think a lot of folks miss that boat there.
Bernie DeSantis [:Absolutely. You know, and a lot of people though also, they, they think that they have to do it all themselves manually and personalize every single message. You know, most standard CRMs allow you to automate that a lot of that follow up message. And so it's really just a matter of writing out the messaging the first time. But you have to actually do that. You have to sit down and think through what is the message that I want to deliver in each One of these 8, 10, 12 emails that I'm ultimately going to send out, you know.
Larry Roberts [:And you can use ChatGPT to write those.
Bernie DeSantis [:Most certainly can. You most certainly can.
Sara Lohse [:This whole conversation now just make me feel bad about myself. I am like the queen of lead magnets. I have a million out there and they all have their own dedicated email lists and all of that. And some of them have gotten like hundreds of downloads and I have like a whole email list thanks to them. I don't do anything with no follow up. No follow up. I'm working with a business coach, he's like, so what, how do you follow up with people that you talk to? I'm just like, haha, what does that mean? Maybe I'll run into them at the store. I don't know.
Larry Roberts [:Follow up, isn't that fu, Isn't that what that is? Yeah.
Sara Lohse [:So I'm the worst.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah. Well Bernie, man, I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today and give us some insights on into webinars and I think there were some tremendous insights that came, came out and it impacted me personally. And again, talking about moving into 2025 and making some tweaks and changes to the way we do things and I can assure you that following up is going to be one of those critical changes. That we make.
Bernie DeSantis [:So that's where the magic happens.
Larry Roberts [:Absolutely. Tell everybody where they can find you and find out more about you and potentially even work with you.
Bernie DeSantis [:Well, I would say the number one spot is find me on LinkedIn. I am always there, always dming, always putting content out there. The alternative is you can go to my website, insignia training.com and you can request a meeting, a consultation request, a producer if you want help putting on your next virtual event.
Larry Roberts [:Even insights into how to grow a magnificent mustache.
Bernie DeSantis [:Well, I mean, that costs extra, Larry.
Larry Roberts [:But that's the bonus plan. That's the bonus plan. That's awesome. Well, folks, you know what would be a great bonus for us? And it would be if you subscribe to the podcast. So do us a favor. If you found some value in this episode, go ahead, smash that subscribe button. So we can continue to bring you these amazing episodes and even more amazing mustaches each and every week. And with that, I'm Larry Roberts.
Sara Lohse [:I'm Sara Lohse. We'll talk to you next week.
