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This book is dedicated to the thousands of seminar attendees that have shared the seminar rooms with me and who continue to inspire me with their learning interest

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How to Make Money in the Seminar Business / Dr. Bill Wittich. -- 1st ed.
ISBN 978-1-928794-05-9

CONTENTS

Introduction

Why Do People Attend Seminars?

What is the Seminar Business All About?

Thinking About Your Seminar

Your Seminar Day

Your Seminar Presentation Design

What Are Your Options for Sponsorship?

How Do You Fill Your Seminar Room?

Where & When Should You Hold the Seminar?

Delivering Your Seminar

Added Profits: Back of the Room Sales

The Virtual Seminar

It’s your Time to Start

Resources

Introduction

Everyone is an expert on something and can teach what they know in a seminar

Everyone needs to learn something to improve their careers or even their everyday lives. They can visit a library or take a class at the local adult school. But for many people a short seminar that focuses on a very specific topic is the most cost and time efficient way to gain that new knowledge.

The focus of this book is to convince you that you are the best tool that this person has since you already have the information and people who are willing to pay for it. You can offer it in a clear and concise form without spending months sitting in a classroom. Taking a college or adult education class is not practical for many people since they do not need to spend 18 weeks to gain what they need to learn. Adult education and college classes are organized over a semester or quarter schedule because that is how it has always been done.

If you need to know how to build a website using WordPress, just how long would that take? Maybe a few hours to get you started? That is a perfect topic for a short seminar. As you gain knowledge you can sign up for a more advanced three-hour or a full-day hands-on seminar. The point is that a short seminar will give you the knowledge you need to start on that project.

Seminars come in many forms but the outcome is always the same, to help someone learn about a topic of interest to them in the shortest amount of time. The seminar might be held at a community college or in a hotel meeting room. This seminar might even be offered on a webinar that allows them to be in their office or even at home. It does not matter which format you use to conduct your seminar. Your motivation might be to share your knowledge or that you are an entrepreneur wishing to start a new business. All seminars require strong organizational that is aimed at delivering knowledge in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

What is a Seminar?

Let’s start by discussing just what the term seminar means. It does not matter if the seminar you develop is held in your own home or if you conduct a series of seminars across the globe. In all cases, planning is critical. Planning is required for the seminar to provide a meaningful learning experience. To your audience, your planning is invisible and truly all they care about is what they will learn. Time is a critical element in the adult learning arena. Your adult learner does not want to spend any more time than necessary to learn the solution to their issues.

Your seminar offered in the public arena will give you instant credibility. During a live seminar you have a captive audience who are attending to gain knowledge. This is knowledge that you will be delivering face-to-face to them. While all social media, from Facebook to Twitter can share knowledge, there is something special about spending time one-on-one with an instructor. During your seminar you are the rock star with all the information that people need to learn. It is a win-win environment for both your attendees and you. It allows you to offer them information during the seminar that will allow them to take you home. It may sound funny to say “take you home,” but many of your attendees want to have additional tools from your tool kit. It allows you to offer a variety of other learning venues for them. These venues might include seminars, books, videos, podcasts, blogs, and webinars. These tools will give them more information and give you additional income.

Most people have attended college or adult education classes where the instructor presented material for eighteen weeks. Maybe after eight weeks you had all the information you came to gather, but the class still met for another ten weeks. The class went on for the full eighteen weeks because that was the schedule. You also realized that the instructor started covering material that was not critical but you realized that the class was required to go on for the full eighteen weeks. You could stop showing up for the class, but you felt that as a good student, you should finish the entire class. If you did not finish the class you would not receive the certificate.

This book will give you the keys to producing a seminar that provides information, excites your audience and makes you income for your efforts. It will take time and dollars to do it right, but it will be a fun and meaningful experience. This seminar could be an in-person event, an online teleseminar or a virtual webinar. All three forms are effective and require a similar planning process. It is important to discuss all the steps to planning a seminar. These steps will cover everything from discovering the right topic to filling all the seats in your seminar room. Discovering the right topic depends on what you know and are willing to learn and what information your audience requires meeting their learning goals.

The key is to produce a quality seminar while spending the least amount of money.

A seminar, if it is to be a quality learning experience, must present critical information in the shortest amount of time. This is why seminars are called short courses. The key is to offer your participants exactly what they need and no more. They are willing to give you their time and money to gain the desired information that they require.

Producing a seminar is both a business and a performance. Which of these two is most important, the business or the performance? The answer is that both are equally important because you must have a competent business plan and a meaningful event before you will attract a number of attendees.

Let’s examine your experiences at the last seminar you attended. It was probably held in a hotel meeting room. You showed up fifteen minutes before the scheduled start time and someone checked you in. Thank goodness there was coffee, both regular and decaf. You didn’t have time to stop at your local Starbucks because the traffic was unreal. You found a seat in a cold room, probably too cold and you wished you had brought a sweater. There were already a number of people sitting there and they were fairly friendly. You started a conversation with the person next to you and discussed what you knew about the presenter. The presenter then started, a few minutes late with her welcome, and she gave an overview of the seminar. For the next three hours, you heard about a topic that was of interest to you or your boss. The presenter offered to meet with everyone following the seminar. She handed out a page with helpful references to resources on the topic of the seminar. She mentioned a follow-up seminar being held next month and offered a discount if you signed up today. There was a large selection of books and videotapes available to purchase. These were on a table in the back-of-the room, and they were very visible as you exited the seminar room. One book written by the presenter covered today’s topic in detail and you used your credit card to purchase it. The presenter was willing to sign the book and you took advantage of that offer. Sound familiar? Everyday there are thousands of seminars like this held all over the world on a wide variety of topics. Our task is to assist you in designing a seminar that you will present.

Every day, every evening, and all weekend long thousands of people attend either personal interest or business seminars. They attend because the topic is of personal interest to them or their boss suggested that it might be helpful with their position at work. The seminar might be called a short course, a seminar or even a workshop. It could be an on-line event that they can view at home, in the office or even at the local coffee shop.

How Do People Select a Seminar?

Generally speaking, people search for a seminar to attend based on their personal or companies’ interest. They might hear about a seminar or find it on-line and they start planning to gather more information on it. They are concerned about where it is offered, how much time it requires and what it costs. The location is critical as that is both a time factor and a cost factor. If the seminar is located a distance from them it might require time off of work and transportation. If it is more than a few hours, it will require approval from their boss to miss time from work. The price of the seminar will require approval from someone since we all have limited funds for an educational experience. The higher the seminar fee, the longer it takes people to decide to attend. It may depend on who is paying for the seminar. If the participant is paying for the seminar, it will require them to decide if it is worth their attending. If their employer is paying, it might depend if the employer has a training budget for this purpose. If the attendance depends on the boss’s approval, then the person will need to sell their boss on the value of the seminar.

While people purchase books or audiotapes on the spur of the moment, seminars usually require a longer time for the approval to attend. This might be because it will require the attendee to miss work or family time, or it may be simply a budget item. In ether case, it may require talking it over with the office or their significant other to insure that the funding and/or time is going to be available.

Is it a Seminar or a Workshop?

Are we talking about a seminar or a workshop? There is no universal definition for these two terms, but let’s start by defining the seminar. Paul Karasik in his book How to Make it Big in the Seminar Business tells us “a seminar is an exchange of information that is confined to a specific topic.” Howard Shenson in his book How to Develop & Promote Successful Seminars & Workshops says “seminars are particularly attractive because they communicate knowledge quickly and in an organized and strategically capsulated form.” Herman Holtz in his bookExpanding Your Consulting Practice With Seminars tells us “the distinguishing features of a seminar are a specialized subject and a relatively short duration.”

It appears then that a seminar is a short event where people sit and listen to a presenter or a series of presenters discuss a topic of interest to the audience. The audience might take notes or even record the seminar. This seminar format is effective for those learners who learn by listening and watching someone do a task or explain a process.

A workshop is more interactive with the audience having a hands-on experience where they get to practice what the presenter illustrates. It is this hands-on aspect that is the difference between a seminar and a workshop. But to be honest, many people label their event as a workshop even though it does not involve the audience producing anything during the event.

A seminar and a workshop are live events where the attendees travel to a site and sit with others to watch a presenter. In today’s digital world we need to add a third version, the virtual seminar. In the virtual event you learn without physically being there. You might be sitting at your desk or in your home while attending a virtual seminar. The virtual seminar might be presented globally and have an unlimited number of attendees. Unlike face- to-face seminars, virtual seminars do not require people to travel to a local site.

A critical difference in selecting between a seminar, a workshop or even a virtual event is the learning style of the individual. Some people learn faster by doing something rather than just hearing about it. You might enjoy taking cooking classes and the classes may vary between watching the chef demonstrate the preparation of a dish or where you are a participant in a hands-on class.

You might love either, because in one session, you capture the passion of the chef telling stories while they cook and in the workshop you get to actually prepare the dish. A virtual cooking class might resemble your watching a Food Network show, but with the advantage of being able to question the chef.

The term short course could apply to either a seminar or a workshop. But to attract the right audience, you need to put a clear description into your marketing materials. You would need to be clear whether you are offering a seminar or workshop. It is wrong to have your prospective attendee think it is a hands-on workshop when it is really a seminar. That would frustrate them and your reputation would suffer. It is equally important to inform your attendees if you are offering a virtual seminar, rather than an in-person seminar. There is nothing wrong with a virtual on-line seminar, but you must be clear that is a virtual seminar and not an in-person one.

Why Do People Attend Seminars?

It is important to discuss why people attend seminars. We know that some people take the less expensive way of learning about a topic by buying a book. But with the cost of technical books these days the actual cost to attend a seminar and the cost to purchase a book might be fairly close. In fact, you might find many seminars are less expensive than a book. For many people the real value of attending a seminar is the opportunity to hear from the expert and to be able to ask questions of that person.

Equal to having the expert handy is the fact that you get to network with a large variety of other participants in the seminar room. These people might be much more knowledgeable on this topic than you are and they might serve as an additional resource. With these new friends you have an opportunity to brainstorm about your ideas and share your experiences. You will likely get a differing viewpoint from the presenter. For many attendees the seminar might be a tax write-off if it is in their business field. For others it might meet a continuing education requirement and qualify them for required CEU units.

Seminars allow you to be introduced to one or more industry leaders in a short amount of time. They also allow you to network with people who share a similar interest. A seminar allows you to get answers to your pressing concerns and to share your thoughts with others in the room. You will also gather current materials from the presenter as well as have the opportunity to purchase materials on the seminar topic.

Don’t be surprised if many of your attendees are attending to meet friends or just to have an enjoyable evening out. I have attended a few of the Meet-Up or Learning Annex seminars and found that many people are there to have a fun experience by sharing a social time with friends. Nothing wrong with people having a social agenda and learning something at the same time.

Seminars are for Adult Learners

In this book the term seminar applies to both seminars and workshops, live and virtual. These events are different but in many ways they are similar. Both are intended for adult learners, rather than for students working on earning a degree. Adult learners are typically defined as learners over the age of 24 and are often referred to as nontraditional students. Adult learning is generally thought of as lifelong learning. Most lifelong learning occurs outside the formal classroom.

Adult learners are self-directed which means they have taken the responsibility to have control over their learning. They are practical and want content that can be immediately put to use in their lives. They do not want theory unless it relates directly to something they can apply. Their maturity as adults might indicate that they are less open-minded and more resistant to accepting new viewpoints. Therefore as the presenter you will need to stress the “why” behind all new concepts and techniques you plan to introduce.

It is important to realize that adult learners have high expectations. They want to be taught things that they can apply as soon as the seminar is complete. Adult learners have no patience for a seminar presenter that speaks down to them. Time is a major concern to adults and they do not want anything in a seminar that resembles busy work. One critical point with adult learners is that they will not stand to have their time wasted.

Many seminars are held after work hours and it is important to realize that your attendees have worked all day and are feeling tired. You need to exhibit your excitement and motivation to keep your audience with you. They are also juggling seminar attendance with work, family, and the cost of your seminar.

To adults a college class might appear to be covering unnecessary material. But remember that the average college class is required to meet for three hours a day for eighteen weeks. The professor may have completed all the required material in 15 weeks but still has to cover something for those remaining three weeks. They may consider telling the students that everything was completed for the course and they could leave and go enjoy themselves for the next three weeks. Their dean would not have had a good feeling about that. A seminar only needs to be as long as the subject matter requires.

Adult learning theory states that everything you are teaching must be distilled down to the essentials and that your participants must be able to apply your information upon leaving the seminar room. It tells us that adults are internally motivated and self-directed in their learning.

Being self-directed, they bring life experiences and their personal knowledge into the seminar room. Adults want to be given an opportunity to use their existing knowledge and experience that they have gained from their life experience.

Adults are ready to learn when they experience a need to learn and generally not before that. They want to know the relevance of what they are learning to what they want to achieve. In other words, do not waste their time on meaningless exercises. Your participants need to feel that they have gained useful information in the shortest amount of time.

It is critical for you to realize that a three-hour or even a six-hour seminar goes very fast.

Many beginning presenters plan way too much material for the seminar and they find themselves with an hour or more of material left at the end of the session. You may find that your attendees ask so many questions that there is not enough time to cover the seminar content. You need to plan your seminar time to cover both seminar content and the question and answer session. You need to be aware that students want to ask questions, and this requires time. But you must prevent people from taking up too much time and throwing the entire seminar off schedule. You might tell your people that you will cover that topic later or that you are willing to meet them during break time or after the seminar to give detailed answers.

What is the Seminar Business All About?