Stories of T&C San Diego

Just got back from T&C in sunny San Diego.

And I say that cause it’s rarely sunny here in Bangkok… but still it’s good to be home.

Weird though… the lovely security folks at LAX seem to be hell bent on turning me upside down every time I go over.

I had my speech all prepared for immigration, why I was there, how long I was staying, all that - and boom, straight through, no questions asked… until I picked up my bag, where a dude was checking passports and when I said I came from Bangkok, that was it - over to the desk, pour your entire bag out, 20,000 questions then off you go.

But I love going to the US. Hell, I speak and write American now so I fit right in.

Hung out in Santa Monica for a few days, then caught an Amtrak down to San Diego.

To the House Of AdSkills.

Now this was cool. AdSkills.com is the premier player in the paid advertising education niche, and my main client.

So the whole team flew out and stayed in a big-ass AirBnB about 10 mins from downtown SD. some even coming from as far away as Scotland.

And I thought my 14hrs in the air was brutal…

So, I went to my first T&C event.

Along with 6 or 7 thousand other people!

Massive event, I don’t know how they built it up to this level, but it’s a great marketing lesson itself.

My biggest takeaway: Networking.

This is what events are all about for me.

I mean, the content I did see from the presenters was great. I always love Todd Brown’s stuff in particular, but that’s probably the only session I actually sat through in it’s entirety.

Other than that, I did what I always write about when I write copy for events: I made it about the networking.

Check out this image below:

That’s me with Ed Dale, Bond Halbert, Rich Schefren, Fernando Cruz, and Jon Benson.

And us standing around, talking marketing, was my highlight of the whole event.

I loved how I met Fernando Cruz at the bar, the man who created the webinar that did $25 million in sales and then followed that up with an even more stupendously massive result.

I loved how I got to hang out with Bond Halbert every day of the event, a really nice down to earth guy who just happens to be copywriting royalty.

I loved how people like Todd Brown and Ryan Levesque recognized me (Yeah so we’re all entitled to a little fangirling now and then right…?)

I loved meeting up with all the AdSkills customers, hanging out and talking with them.

We booked out a coffee shop near the venue and invited AdSkills customers to come and meet the team.

This is another golden nugget for ya - go meet your damn customers. Look at their faces - not their profile pics, their actual faces.

You should already be talking to them on the phone, but meet face to face as much as possible.

These breakfasts were a really smart idea. Our sales guy Matt was of course on hand - and I believe he made a bunch of sales throughout the week.

Easy money.

I’m gonna write to you again soon with some more interesting insights from this event.

Stay tuned, add ‘brian@funnelinfluence.com’ as a contact, and reply to let me know what you think about all this.

Talk soon,

Brian