How I Made Entrepreneurs In London The #1 Career and ... - Bitly

How I Made Entrepreneurs In London The #1 Career and Business Meetup in EUROPE www.entrepreneursinlondon.co.uk From the desk of Patrick M. Powers It was a bit unreal... on the same day... the15th of February 2013 we hit 5,000 members and became the #1 business and career meetup in Europe.... actually the biggest anywhere outside of NYC and Silicon Valley. Starting less than 4 years ago with a “seed capital” of £70 and practically without a budget I'm actually quite amazed that we did it. Even before we became #1 a lot of people have asked me how we had grown so fast, so let me lay out the strategies for you.

The background story: On the 25th of December 2008 I arrived in the UK from the Dominican Republic, broke and with my ego pretty bruised. Five years earlier I had created my first business success that got me to the fabled land for entrepreneurs.. the land where you don't have to do honest work and never have to worry about money. But it turned out that even though I had a pretty big success I was still not too smart. Basically I made a few mistakes and lost it all. I'm not going to bore you with my whole life's story here. If you want to read more about my ups and downs... please see here So again... back to the UK... broke and with only a couple of handful of contacts in London I set out to make my comeback. I wanted to start a networking group because I needed to get more contacts. I was also frustrated about the amount of time it took to personally keep in touch with prospects and customers so I thought that bringing them together once a month would kill two big birds with one stone.

First Things First: After deciding that I was going to host my networking group on meetup.com the first things was of course choosing a name and the whole purpose of the group. I've been to so many networking events and meetups that were more boring than watching grass grow and I also found them way to formal - my experience has been that the most powerful connections are made in relaxed environments over a drink or food.

SO I decided that one of the things that would make my events unique was that they should be more relaxed and fun. After doing a short brainstorm with some of my contacts I chose the name Entrepreneurs Night Out. REMEMBER: If you are not unique in some way there is no reason for people to choose you. And since you are the new kid on the block people will almost certainly go with the ones that are more proven. YOU HAVE TO BE UNIQUE – IF YOU CANNOT BE UNIQUE IN SUBSTANCE, AT LEAST YOU MUST BE UNIQUE IN APPEARANCE. (Meaning your name and marketing)

Beginning days: The name seemed to work and attracted a good amount of members from the beginning through meetup.com's internal traffic. I also made an effort to make good sales copy on the front page so it sounded like we really were different, using phrases like “The most UNBORING networking in London” etc etc. Because I had more time than money I used some time on personally inviting people to the meetup. I would simply find other entrepreneurial and small business meetups and find people that joined recently and send them an email. In the email I would NOT just say “hey come and join me at this great meetup”... I see a lot of people do that. The same principle I just mentioned applies here as well... if you are not making a serious effort to write something that captures people attention and interest it's a waste of time. Instead I would in detail explain why we were different and the benefits of joining us. I'm really lucky to have had some great mentors in sales copywriting and this has without a shadow of a doubt been the biggest secret to my success. (to learn more about email copywriting go to www.Irresistibleemails.com ) One thing I've NEVER done is to go to other meetup groups and facebook pages and promote us on their wall and in the comments – I think that's tacky and quite frankly unethical. Just think of this.. Lets say you had a golf equipment store – would you go to another store and stand in the middle of the store with a big sign saying “come and shop in our store instead”. Everybody understand why that is not ok, but online it's done constantly... but just because lots of people do it doesn't make it right - OR effective. OK so moving along.... Next thing I did was to set up our own website where I did some google ppc ads and I even had some pretty good results with ranking in the search engines. So I got a bit of traffic - not a huge amount, but I had a pretty good optin rate of around 25% and that helped us grow a bit further. I would of course keep in contact with the subscribers via my email newsletter. In December 2009 I was lucky to take over another meetup group with just over 500 members. It was called London Creative Entrepreneurs but I re-named it Entrepreneurs in London, because I thought the original name targeted a too narrow market.

Targeting a narrow niche is most of the time effective, but it can also be so narrow that the market is simply too small. I could see that this new group was probably going to be the one to go forward with eventually, because it fully embodied my purpose which is ”Bringing entrepreneurs together and empowering them”. I kept on having both meetup groups running side by side because I was getting quite a lot of members in one group that didn't join the other. (and there is actually no way to combine groups on meetup.com)

Growth Starts to Increase. I cannot remember exactly when we started doing ppc ads on Facebook, but it must be around beginning of 2011. The funny thing is that I used to think that facebook was a huge waste of time, but even so... I wanted to test it out. AND btw I think what I just said is a major key to success. Basically dont let your own opinions and beliefs get in your way... Be a “scientist” and simply test it. I was glad that I was wrong because facebook is now our most important marketing platform. Our FB page has now over 9,300 followers and have had up to over 340 new followers in a day. So how do we do that? Well viral strategies are great, but you cannot rely on them for a steady flow of new fans, unless you come up with something so brilliantly viral that it spreads like wild fire. The only thing is, it is really hard to just create something like that by design. PLUS entrepreneurs are only a relatively small part of the population so that makes it harder to create something that goes truly viral. Most importantly, when you are just starting out and only have a few followers it's almost impossible to create anything that really goes viral. What we are relying on for steady cheap traffic is facebook ppc ads (pay per click) In the beginning I was more broke than you can imagine so our campaigns were very sporadic. I would typically only invest £5-10 now and again, sometimes with SEVERAL weeks between, but I could see that it really worked and that gave me the confidence to continue whenever I had a fiver to spare. The great thing about being broke at this point is that I had to closely monitor my campaigns to make sure I got the most out of them. Because I watched them like a hungry hawk I figured out stuff that I don't think anyone else have seen. So I started getting my click prices really low. As we reached 500 followers I could see that our conversion increased and it had a jump again around 2,500 followers. The great thing about facebook pages (and meetups) is the social proof it brings. When you start to get a good amount of follower/fans/members people will automatically assume that this is something worth following and being part of. Of course the same dynamic works against you in the beginning when you only have a handful of likes, but thankfully that's a problem that is overcome with a bit of extra effort, money( if you have it) and time.

I see a lot of people kinda giving up on social media because they only have a few hundred likes/members/follower etc. and they are not yet seeing huge floods of new customers and money pouring in. If they only knew that the big reward were just around the corner. Actually this applies to many other areas of entrepreneurship – in general people just give up on their plans way too soon. I cannot tell you when the tipping point will happen for you, but I can tell you that there is a point where you have so many followers that suddenly you become “cool” and whatever you say is trusted more. So facebook has been a massive key for us and I actually now believe with our facebook strategies (plus a few more tactics) that we have the possibility of becoming the number 1 in the world in 2013. But back to the story...

The Momentum Phase In the summer of 2012 our events were become increasingly popular and membership were growing steadily, but there were much more to come. I knew that my other meetup group Entrepreneurs Night Out (ENO) was not what I wanted to focus on and for a while I had been trying to get people to un-join ENO and join EIL instead. This proved to be a heck of a lot harder than I expected. There seemed to be a great deal of loyalty to the ENO group which of course was great, but in this unique situation it worked against me. So after much thought I decided I was going to close the group or at least stop all activity in it. This was a scary decision because at that time there were still over 1200 people in that group. But I believed it was the right thing to do so we could really focus our efforts. It turned out this was one of my best decisions ever. Shortly after in the beginning of July 2012 I decided that now was the time to “attack” and I started putting more money into facebook ppc ads. It literally took off like a rocket and in August we had our first really big event with over 120 attending. I think that this was THE event where people started realizing that we had something special on the entrepreneurial events scene. Also at this point we were enough members that I decided we could do 2 events a month on a regular basis and that created even more momentum. Of course it also generated more revenue that I could put into facebook ads more consistently. And from then on it was simply continuing to do what we had done so far.

Apart from what I've already covered there are 6 main keys that made us successful...... >>>>

Key 1) Having different types of events. This sounds basic, but if it's so obvious why haven't many of the other meetups figured it out?? I even see the biggest meetup in the world with over 30,000 members make this mistake. They have the same event over and over again and they are only 100 people registered at their events. Well who cares if you have the most members if no one shows up (or very few) We have had as much as 360 people register and over 200 show up for a single event .. and that's with 25,000 members less than the group just mentioned. Key 2) Put some serious effort into writing good sales-copy Most of the other meetups more or less just have a title for the event. They typically have a very superficial description of the benefits you would get from attending. Well that might have worked 10 years ago when the internet was a “toddler” but it's just not going to cut it today. Three big keys to make your sales copy work, both in email and on your registration page, is 1) Be Specific 2) BE DIFFERENT and 3) BE PERSONAL. There are of course much more to writing good copy than that, but that will at least get you started in the right direction. Key 3) Having regular event - never more than 6 weeks apart! One of the biggest mistakes I did regarding meetup was to take some time off during the summers of 2010 and 2011 to write my two latest books. When I'm writing I can get a bit obsessive and it's hard for me to concentrate on anything else. BUT I shouldn't have done this. During the 3-4 months breaks the group lost momentum. And when I started again it was almost like I had to restart building and getting them going from scratch. So having the meetups on a regular basis is very important, preferably not more than 4 weeks apart but NEVER more then 6 weeks apart. Also it's worth mentioning that every time you have an event you will get a boost of sign-ups simply because of traffic generated directly through meetup.com Key 4) Don't have events too often. At the same time... If you have too many events compared to the size of your group, people will get tired of your constant emails and even though they might not un-join your group, many times they will unsubscribe from the mailing list which is almost as bad. ALSO If you have events too often, you will of course have fewer people at each event, which will make them seem less attractive. FINALLY, If you don't have at least 20-25 people at an event, the energy and buzz will be low. That will of course mean lower ratings and few people wanting to come back. Especially in the beginning we didn't have the events too often, because I understood this important dynamic – it's better to have fewer events that are packed than lots of smaller events. It should be logical really, but again I see many meetups make this mistake. And btw it's really easy to burn out if you run events every week. Key 5) Great networking skills are of course crucial in running a networking group and the number 1 tip I can give you about networking is: Make people feel appreciated and special. Key 6) Don't just rely on meetup.com to bring you traffic and members. Use all the traffic sources you can find. For example in the beginning I was also listing our events on different sites like www.findnetworkingevents.com and other sites that list events.

I definitely got something out of it, but compared to what we get today with facebook PPC and our fb page www.fb.com/entrepreneursinlondon , it's not really worth the effort any more. But in the beginning every visitor counts and because I didn't have the budget I had to use free traffic sources. So that's really the big picture of how I got there. This is of course only the beginning, in the next phase of EIL I'll start to train and coach a lot more, which I'm looking forward to tremendously. I love helping entrepreneurs avoid the land-mines on the field of business and get to their goals fast and safely. We are also going to launch our own site soon which should really catapult us into the stratosphere. I owe a big gratitude to all my members, to my wonderful crew and to my friend Michael Haagensen for supporting me all the way and investing in me at the time I needed it the most. Have a brilliant day and whatever you do, give it ALL you've got.

PS: My cat Pumpkin sends her love as well.

If you want to learn more about the 4 core skills that created our success at Entrepreneurs In London Check out these highly recommended resources. Irresistible Emails: How to crank out profitable emails like a marketing pro. www.irresistibleemails.com The complete Facebook marketing toolbox. Www.fbmarketingtoolbox.com The Irresistible Pitch. How to get attention and interest from your perfect prospects in seconds. www.THEIRRESISTIBLEPITCH.COM Turn your Contacts Into Cash. The Only Business Networking System you will ever need. www.contactsintocash.com