How to Make a Workshop Training Pay For Itself If You're a Small Biz Owner

by Sean D'Souza

The most interesting word in the sentence is "pay".
Or rather payback.
Why would you put in time, money and effort without a clear payback?

And yet most people have not a clue what this payback could be
For me it was about confidence. When I first started out in
business I saw myself as an impostor. I knew stuff about marketing
but I didn't feel confident about my knowledge.

For me each workshop I went to, built more confidence in myself. So
guess what? I went to many workshops and did spend a lot of my
money, time and energy.

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Did I get a direct return on the first $12-$15k I spent?
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Not if you count dollars and cents. When I look back in time, those
three workshops (and one was priced at $10,000) didn't bring in any
dollars and cents. But what they brought me was confidence.

So the question does arise: Can't you get that level of confidence
from a book? Or an online course?

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I was reading two books a week at the time
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And yes it was giving me a lot of knowledge, but for confidence I
needed something else. I needed to be with real people in a real
life situation. To understand not just my strengths and weaknesses,
but to see the strengths and weaknesses of others as well. In live
workshops I learned things that I could not have learned at home.

So the biggest paycheck I got was confidence. The second paycheck I
got was time away.

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I didn't realise the value of being away
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Getting disconnected from your work enables you to connect. I'm
always amazed at how people stay in touch with the office the whole
time that they're away on a conference. To me that's a complete
waste of a workshop experience. The time you spend travelling: on
the train, plane etc is the time to disconnect.

That helps you think. The time you sit in the workshop and then the
time after the day's proceedings--again "thinking time". If you
speak to others and talk about your situation, and discuss things:
Again think, think, think.

When you're connected all the time to your email and phone, you
can't disconnect. And hence you don't make us of the downtime
because you're always chained to your office; to your life; to your
troubles.

This is one point where you are away on a "work vacation" and it's
giving you time to think. And you're squandering it by being
connected to some crappy email and phone.

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But you're a sole proprietor? How can you let the business run
without you?
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Good point. And in today's world, expectations are quite high.
People expect you to respond to email and answer your phone. No
they don't. They just want "someone" to answer the phone. "Someone"

to answer the email. In our case, that "someone" happens to be a
family member.

In your case that person could be a trusted friend or a paid
assistant. Or someone who you swap places with e.g. "You look after
this stuff when I'm away and I'll do the same for you later". And
that enables you to disconnect and get time to think about your
business. It's three-four days away, not six months, so keep that
in perspective.

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The third factor is simply one of connections
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This is a big paycheck. Probably the biggest of them all. I can't
speak for any workshop out there, but I can tell you that at a
PsychoTactics workshop, we make it imperative to form connections.
When you connect with others, you lay the foundation for
implementation.

Because frankly speaking, most workshops are information dumps. You
have ten speakers, and twenty different topics and all you can ever
hope to do is clutch at a few good ideas. But even with one speaker
and just a few ideas, it's still hard to implement anything
especially when you get back to your office.

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There are several reasons for this
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1) You have to catch up with all the work.
2) You have to have some time to just get over the "jetlag" (even
if you live in the same state).
3) Implementing anything new is so darned hard, you just go back to
whatever you were doing.

So connections help. When you spend three days (or more) at a
workshop, you get to connect at a real level with the rest of the
participants. And when you get back, you can continue that
connection via an open forum, a private mastermind or a taking
action forum.

Of course all of this can be done without having a workshop, but a
workshop makes the experience richer, and the connections deeper.

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So there you have it:
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1) Confidence
2) Disconnection
3) Connection

It doesn't sound a lot like payback. And yet it is. It's the
payback that is invisible and not considered, that counts the most.
Eventually you'll learn to cherish workshops instead of treating
them as an expensive activity. Of course there's still the matter
of money. But no workshop in the world can guarantee you money,
because the money comes from implementation. And implementation
counts on connection, and disconnection and confidence.

There's payback all right. It's just invisible. And now you can see
it.

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