How to Find People to Present To
You can build the best presentation in the world. Perfect slides. Killer story. Solid close. But if nobody shows up to hear it, none of that matters.
That is what Chapter 10 is about. Dustin Mathews steps in to talk about the practical side: getting actual human beings into a room so you can speak to them. A presentation without an audience is just talking to yourself.
Why Live Events Still Matter
You might think live events are old school. Everything is online now, right? Zoom calls, webinars, YouTube videos. But Mathews makes a strong case that live events give you something digital cannot: instant credibility.
When you host an event, even a small one, you become the expert in the room by default. You are the person on stage. The one people came to see. That positioning is hard to fake and hard to replicate online.
Kennedy had a client who was a genealogy researcher. She did small presentations at libraries and bookstores, drawing 15 to 20 people each time. Not exactly a stadium tour. But to those 15 people, she was THE expert. From those tiny events she got clients paying $5,000 to $25,000 each for family history research.
You do not need a huge audience. You need the right audience in a setting where you have authority.
Three Types of Events You Can Run
Mathews breaks events into three categories. Each has a different purpose and scale.
The preview seminar. This is your intro event. Short, usually 90 minutes to 2 hours. Think of it as the first date. You give people a taste of what you know. A financial advisor might do a two-hour session on retirement planning at a community center. The goal is not to sell everything here. The goal is to move people to the next step, whether that is a longer workshop or a one-on-one meeting.
The customer appreciation event. You invite existing customers and ask them to bring friends. A dentist might host a lunch with a guest speaker. A martial arts school might rent a movie theater for a family night. Current customers feel valued, and their friends meet you in a relaxed setting. No hard sell. Just be there, be visible.
The full seminar or boot camp. This is the big one. One to four days. This is where you sell higher-end programs or services. You have time to build trust, tell stories, bring up happy clients to share their experience, and deliver a proper sales presentation with a real build-up.
Picking the Right Place and Time
This sounds obvious but people get it wrong constantly. Mathews shares a story where he and his business partner forgot to check local events and ended up running a seminar while an Ironman Triathlon blocked three of the four streets around their hotel. That is not a fun surprise.
For local events, think about traffic patterns. Some cities have an invisible line that people refuse to cross. If your city is like that, you might need to run the same event on each side of town.
For national events where people fly in, think about airline routes, weather, and whether the city itself is a draw. Orlando works because it is family-friendly and well-connected. Las Vegas sounds fun but people get distracted by everything else the city offers.
When to schedule matters too. Consumers prefer weekends. Corporate people hate giving up weekends. Small business owners need the day they can step away easiest. Kennedy found chiropractors often take Thursdays off, so Thursday seminars worked for them. And do not schedule anything during major sports events. Check the local calendar before you lock in a date.
When to Deliver Your Main Pitch
For multi-day events, when you place your main sales presentation matters a lot. Too early and people are not ready to trust you. Too late and they are mentally checked out. Think about whether the audience already knows you, how big the buying decision is, and whether people will need to “phone home” before committing. Get this wrong and even a great presentation falls flat.
Free vs. Paid Events
Free events remove the barrier to registration. More people sign up. But here is the catch: many of those people will not show up. They did not invest anything, so canceling feels easy. You end up with a lot of empty chairs.
A small seat deposit, where people put a credit card down and lose a small amount if they no-show, can dramatically improve attendance. Fewer people register, but way more actually come.
For bigger events, Mathews recommends paid registration with tiered pricing. General admission, VIP, and VIP-Plus. People who pay more are more engaged and more likely to buy what you are selling.
How to Actually Fill Those Seats
This is the part most people underestimate. Filling an event is not one big marketing blast. It is a grind. You pick off attendees one at a time through multiple channels.
Start with your existing list. Past customers, current clients, newsletter subscribers, social media followers. Invite them and encourage them to bring someone.
Partner with complementary businesses. If you are a financial planner, partner with a tax advisor. You both present, you both get exposure to each other’s contacts. Nobody competes, everybody wins.
Use event platforms like Eventbrite and Meetup. These have built-in audiences of people actively looking for events.
Run targeted ads on social media. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google. Paid ads let you reach specific audiences by interest, location, and demographics.
For audiences over 55, do not ignore local newspapers. Rates are often cheap because many advertisers assume print is dead. That is an opportunity, not a problem.
The key point from Mathews: successful event organizers use many channels at once. There is no single magic bullet. Social media catches one person, a postcard catches another, a friend’s recommendation catches a third. It all adds up.
The Takeaway
A great presentation is only half the equation. The other half is getting the right people in the room to hear it. That means choosing the right event format, picking the right place and time, deciding on pricing, and hustling across multiple channels to fill those seats.
If you can fill a room with 20 or 50 people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say, you have something more powerful than any social media following. You have a captive audience, face to face, ready to listen. That is where real business happens.
This is post 12 of 21 in my retelling of No B.S. Guide to Powerful Presentations by Dan Kennedy.
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