We recently covered the eCommerce conferences you should have on your radar. This week, we’re talking about getting the most out of whichever conferences you do attend.

Andrew and Drew Sanocki discuss their strategies for making conference time count, along with their eight biggest tips for conference-goers and speakers. They also weigh in on why networking should be your primary objective and how to best focus on building meaningful relationships and taking actionable steps toward growth when you get home.

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(With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and Drew Sanocki of NerdMarketing.com)

Andrew: Welcome to the eCommerceFuel Podcast, the show dedicated to helping high six and seven-figure entrepreneurs build amazing online companies and incredible lives. I’m your host and fellow eCommerce entrepreneur, Andrew Youderian.

Hey guys, it’s Andrew here and welcome to the eCommerceFuel Podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in today.

Today on the show we’re going to be talking about how to get the most out of a conference. We recently did an episode about the top eCommerce conferences you should be thinking about attending and I’ll link up to that in the show notes. But specifically today I want to talk about how do you make the most of a conference? Joining me to do that is the man who got lost for 24, 48 hours at the event center last year for eCommerceFuel Live.

Drew: 48.

Andrew: 48? You were like residing just on the plants and the greens and the atrium and security guard finally found you huddled up, is that right?

Drew: That’s right.

Andrew: Well, I appreciate you being brave enough to come on and talk about that experience, Drew.

Drew: Anytime. So we told people which conferences to attend and now that they’ve already gone and attended them we’re going to tell them how to get the most out of attending a conference.

Andrew: In retrospect, so they can feel bad about it, right?

Drew: Yeah.

Andrew: Perfect. Here’s why it was a huge waste of time. Quickly, one thing I realized before we dive into the actual episode, I haven’t mentioned eCommerceFuel Live at all on the podcast and we are doing eCommerceFuel Live. This will be our third event and it’s in Savannah, Georgia this year, the 19th through the 21st. Maybe we touched on it really briefly on our last episode but we are…today it’s mid-June, June 15th-ish I think, and we’ve got…we’ve sold about…man, I think 95-ish tickets. (Update: eCommerceFuel Live is officially sold out!)

We’ve got 125 and it’s limited this year just to private community members. So if you’re interested in coming, you can check out and learn more about it at live.ecommercefuel.com. We do have very few spaces left. Again, you do have to be a community member to join. But I wanted to throw that out there because I don’t…man, I don’t think I’ve…we’ve promoted it too much at all.

#1: Less Is More

So, that being said, Drew, let’s get into letting people know what they should have done at the conferences they attended last year.

So, Drew, the first thing that stood out to me was I think being incredibly selective about the conferences that you do attend to get the most out of them because it’s just a massive time commitment to go to a conference and a financial commitment as well. But I think even bigger than that is the time commitment. If you go to a three-day conference with flights on both sides and it’s three, four days and a lot of times it takes up the majority, if not an entire week. That’s work you’re not getting done somewhere else. So being really careful about making sure you’re going to the right ones I think is huge.

Drew: That is huge and I think you’ve got to budget out how many of these you want to go to per year and cap it for that reason. It takes you down for a week and it takes me down for more than…usually I’m giving a talk or something so it’s like all the speaking prep time. But even as an attendee is just the…it’s time you can’t spend on your business.

Andrew: Yeah, and this is a…maybe this is an overly simplified question but because there’s obviously a lot of value in going to conferences as we’ll talk about it here subsequently, but if you had to pick the perfect number of conferences where you’re going to conferences, you’re networking, you’re learning stuff but you’re not on the road every other week, well, how many do you try to go to? What do you think that perfect number is? Again, maybe this is a really simplified question but I’ll throw it out there.

Drew: Maybe two. Two a year.

Andrew: Two a year?

Drew: Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah, I’d say close…I’d probably say two to three, maybe once every…if you’re going to probably more than…and again, totally transposing all of our preferences on everyone listening, but if you’re going to them every couple of months, that’s probably…it might be a better use of your time to spend more time implementing versus going to conferences.

Drew: This gets to one of your later points but I’ve run into a couple of people at the conferences who…on the conference circuit I’ve seen almost year after year and they’re still talking about starting their eCommerce business and they’re still…still paralyzing, going to conferences. It just can become this…not like an addiction but just sort of an excuse for taking action. Like you feel like you’re taking some action, you’re going to go to another conference, sign up for another course and at the end of the day, with the money and the time you spend doing that, you could have started an eCommerce business, at least a very small one.

#2: Prioritize Networking

Andrew: That leads into…next point is, I always…I think probably every conference I’ve ever been to, I prioritize the networking over the talks. Not to say that there aren’t great talks that you hear and not to say that there aren’t people that are going to give you information that you can’t find anywhere else. But I would say, by and large, so much information is online now if you want to dig for it and find it. For me, the biggest value-add by far is getting face time with people and building up a network and building a rapport and building those connections.

Drew: I agree. I think…I look back on my 20 or so years as a professional and I think most of the biggest wins have come through personal relationships like I’ve been introduced to the right company or the right client or something. It’s always been through somebody I met as opposed to something I just read about online and try to implement myself.

So I would say…like Nassim Taleb says in “Fooled by Randomness“, I mean, just go to cocktail parties and go to these things, network. That’s the important thing.

#3: Prioritize Strong Connections

Andrew: In networking, something that I think is interesting is…I think some people think about networking as going into a room and trying to give your business card to as many people as possible. If I give out all 40 of my business cards, fantastic. No, no-no, no-no-no, do not…that’s the absolute wrong way to do it. When I think about focusing on networking and really connecting with people, if I go to a conference, I would a thousand times be more excited about making one to two really strong relationships where you really connect with someone, you get to know them, you get to know their story, you build strong rapport, you sit in a corner and you talk for three hours and you really connect. Build a couple of really strong relationships versus trying to shoot for 20 new acquaintances because those are just so much more powerful.

Drew: I agree, I think it’s…again, when I look back several years to when I met you at Ezra’s Conference and we had breakfast or something, it’s like that breakfast cemented our relationship and it was probably more important than the 40 people I had just given my business card to in the other room. Right?

Andrew: I remember it fondly. You had the poached eggs and you were wearing that really soft sweater, the really…like the light pink one.

Drew: Then recently I went to Steve’s Sellers Summit and I met a bunch of people there at the official cocktail party. But I went to dinner with Lars Hundley and Michael Jackness who had been on my podcast and had lunch with Eric Syu who runs an SEO or SEM agency. It’s like those are the guys I remember well an