3 Keys to Get the Most of Out of Your Next Event
By Derek Jones, Director of Community for Buffini & Company
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people attend conferences, conventions, webinars, and live events hoping to learn something that will improve their business and life. At Buffini & Company, we’ve been hosting world-class events for over 30 years with that exact goal in mind.
The problem is that most people focus entirely on what happens during the event with very little thought given to what happens afterward. That can ultimately be a waste of time, energy, and money.
I’ve been part of our events for over 18 years, and I’ve seen firsthand that the people who experience the greatest transformation do three important things: Reflect, Commit, and Connect.
Reflect
Tell me if this sounds like you. The agenda says the event ends at 4 p.m. It’s 3:45 and you start thinking, “If I leave now, I can probably get ahead of the traffic back to the airport” or “If I leave now, I can be at the front of the line to pick the kids up from school”.
I’m not shaming you. Beating traffic and picking up the kids are important. But what you do immediately after an event is equally as important as what you do during the event. We’re often so quick to get back to our day-to-day lives that whatever we spent all that time learning goes right out the window.
Instead, take some time to reflect. If you’re traveling to an event from out of town, consider staying the night instead of rushing to the airport. Or if you have to leave that night, take the latest flight you can. Do anything that gives you time, even if it’s just a few hours, to pause and reflect on what you learned. Before the event starts, block time in your calendar for a few days after the event to revisit your notes. Taking time to reflect will help you retain what you learned and deepen the impact.
Commit
Brian Buffini always says, “Education without implementation is purely entertainment.” When you attend a live event or conference, you’ll likely hear a fresh perspective or a great idea. But what are you going to do with it? So many times, we get fired up, take tons of notes filled with ideas for things we could do, but months (or years) after the event ends, all those ideas are stuck on the pages of our notebook where we wrote them down. If you want to move from education to implementation, you have to commit to taking action. At our events, we’ll often include this prompt in our attendees’ workbooks:
What action do I commit to taking based on what I learned at this event?
Taking just a few minutes to think about what you’re going to do with the information you received is powerful. You don’t need a bunch of new ideas. You need one or two that you can execute. That’s how real change happens. So at your next event, ask yourself “What action do I commit to taking based on what I learned?”
Connect
If you really want to amplify the effectiveness of an event you’ve attended, connect with someone else. Take a fellow attendee out to lunch and compare notes. One conversation can turn a good idea into a great one. Someone else may catch a detail you missed or spark a thought that hadn’t struck you initially. You can share what action you’re committing to (remember that?) and now you’ve got an accountability partner. Maybe they’ve been down that road before and can offer practical advice on how to turn that idea into tangible next steps. When we connect with others, our challenges are cut in half, ideas are multiplied, and growth is exponential.
The next time you attend a live or virtual event, don’t let the impact stop when the closing session ends. Reflect on what you learned. Commit to taking one or two actions that you can implement. Connect with others for accountability and deeper understanding.
If you do these three things consistently, you’ll discover that the true value of an event isn’t measured by what happens in the room, but by the change it inspires afterward.
