The Dinner Party Approach to Webinars

Webinars are for professionals about what veggies are for kids.

One vegetable is good for you, and so is a webinar. Done well, a single webinar will help you:

• Demonstrate your expertise.
• Validate it with clients, prospects, your team, and, most importantly, yourself.
• Evolve your perspective from abstract concepts to tangible intellectual property that generates results.

Now, consistently eating vegetables is vital for you. The compounding effect of their daily dose of vitamins keeps you out of trouble. Similarly, showing up in public on your own digital stage on a frequent and consistent basis is indispensable to building narrative power for your expert firm:

• Consistent communication helps you build trust and credibility with your audience.
• It shows your commitment to changing the status quo.
• You will build a strong connection with your audience, which can lead to greater engagement and loyalty.
• It allows you to adapt your narrative as circumstances change, stay relevant, and align authentically with your customer’s needs.
• Most importantly, it keeps you top of mind - clients don’t hire the best expert on earth; they hire the one they know.

However, many children panic at the slightest bit of green on their plate (I know mine do). If you, too, panic at the idea of doing webinars, you are not alone. I can relate. Preparing for a webinar can be overwhelming. I’m still wrestling with the impostor and the over-thinker syndromes. Do you?

To ease the pressure, I developed a metaphor that helps me get in the right mindset as I prepare for my webinars:

Hosting a dinner party for close friends.

Preparing for a webinar should feel like preparing a delicious dinner for special friends. As you would host a welcoming dinner party, you want to make it an authentic and joyful experience.

This approach will help you get the right mindset to prepare, present, and follow up with your audience.

Here is my recipe:

1 - Choose your theme: Just like picking the type of food, choose a theme that your audience will be excited to explore and that YOU will be excited to present. Meaningful content should be meaningful to your audience AND you.

2 - Gather few but quality ingredients: Gather fresh ideas. You want to provide your audience with relevant, engaging content that keeps them interested and invested in your presentation. It’s not about the quantity. No need to prepare for a 10-hour speech. One or two key concepts will suffice.

3 - Plan an appealing menu: Put together a structured and appealing agenda, including the sequence of knowledge and activities you'll share and facilitate with participants. You want to create an engaging and memorable experience for your audience, leaving them with new insights and actionable takeaways. Leave enough time for exploration, questions, and discussion.

4 - Create a delightful experience: Like creating a pleasant experience for your dinner guests, aim to delight your webinar participants from sign-up to post-webinar follow-up. This includes creating a visually appealing and easy-to-use simple landing page, providing valuable and relevant content during the webinar, and following up with personalized communication after the event. A quick personal note to people goes a long way. You may have received one of mine.

5 - Invite your favorite guests: Invite people you care about to join your webinar. You don’t need 1,000 people. Include your favorite clients, prospects, team members, and other professionals in your field. Pick your fans. By inviting your favorite guests, you will feel much better and create a more intimate and engaging experience for your audience, leading to increased engagement and satisfaction. Need to reach more people? Tell your guests to invite their favorite people.

6 - Enjoy the event: Bring your best self to the webinar, just as you would to your dinner party. Focus on being rested, ready, joyful, energized, and excited to help your participants. Remember that your audience is there to learn from you and engage with your expertise, so being at your best is essential. Focus on your energy and not so much on content.

7 -Follow up: Get in touch with people, ask them for feedback, and follow up about future plans. When will you see each other again? Keep people excited and fuel the relationships. Follow up with your audience after the webinar. It’s crucial to building lasting relationships.

I’m sure this approach will help you ease the pressure and create a more engaging and memorable experience for your audience with peace of mind.

I’ve been helping experts prepare for webinars for over a decade, and I’ve been actively doing webinars since 2021.

This year, I do a monthly webinar every third or fourth Thursday of each month, and I’d like you to be my special guest at the next one. It will be on Thursday, March 30th, and I will announce the topic in the coming days.

Stay tuned!