2014 A4D Meetup: Part 3

This is Part 3 of a 3-Part Series. Read the rest below.
2014 A4D Meetup Part 1
2014 A4D Meetup Part 2
2014 A4D Meetup Part 3

Holy sh#t… The conference was ready to begin.

Everyone took their seats and Jason took the stage to welcome everyone. Here is a run down of the speakers and a little bit about what they talked about.

*I would love to expand on all of the talks more but I could never do it in a way that would serve the speakers justice. I’ll just give you an idea of what I got from them.

I’ll probably send my presentation out to my email list, if you’re not on it yet, click here to automatically subscribe.

The Speakers

• Jason Akatiff (opening). Jason (owner of A4D and founder of the meetup) got up and opened the show. He thanked everyone for coming and commented that the crowd looked a little light. Mainly because most people were still waking up and shaking off hangovers from the night before.
• Zeal Caiden (Multivariate testing). Zeal did a full walk-thru on how to build a profitable email campaign using PPV and Multi-Variate Testing (MVT) with Landing Page Genius.

  

  He went over exact steps on how to pick a niche, create your LP, capture leads and then optimize the funnel with MVT. @zealcaiden

My Turn

I’ll intrude here and tell you a little about my experience.

I was pretty nervous as I walked up to the stage. Part of me thought something was going to go wrong. I figured the laptop wouldn’t turn on, or the presentation wouldn’t open or the microphone wouldn’t work.. you know, all those kinds of things.

Jason gave me a little intro as I got things hooked up. Big thanks the A4D guys that were onstage to help, you made it really easy for me.

Luckily my computer turned on, the presentation opened and showed up on the big screen. Someone handed me a little clicker to go from screen to screen and I was set.

The second I started talking my head cleared. It was all good. Everything was fine.

I had a lot of fun and people seemed to respond pretty well.

• I’d tell a joke, they’d laugh
• I’d show some stats, they’d nod their heads.

As a speaker, that’s all you can ask for.

The entire thing flew by. I’d cut my presentation down to 38 minutes, so I’d have a few minutes for Q&A. Before I knew it, it was over. I asked if there was time for me to do Q&A but since the show was a little behind we had to skip it.

It’s funny, after all the stressing and near-cancellations… when it came down to actually doing it, I didn’t want to get off the stage. I was having a great time.

Ok, back to the run down.

• Malan Darras. (High volume media buys) My presentation covered how to negotiate, launch and maintain gigantic volume campaigns. I showed how to use managed media buy networks, a lot of guts and some creativity to wield massive streams of traffic. I also explained why I scale campaigns at break even and use the traffic volume to my advantage. If there is interest, I may post a more in-depth outline of my talk at some point on the blog or email list. If you want to be notified when it’s live, click here to automatically get a spot on the list.
• Lars Callary. (Tailoring communication) Lars killed it. He talked about how affiliate marketers have a bad reputation int the business world and how it hurts our business. He then broke down how to  dress, how to talk on the phone and how to build your website so you don’t look like a guy working at home in his underwear. Doing this correctly gives a single affiliate the same respect as a startup in Silicon Valley. @larscallary

Lunch Break

For lunch I hit a seafood place across the street called Tin Fish with a few guys including Jason, Zeal and Nana from Prosper202.

After lunch we headed back over to the conference — and this is when I got mobbed by blog readers and new affiliates that wanted to talk about my website and my presentation.

Mob Scene

It started when one girl stopped me in the hall to talk, then her two friends walked up, then 2–3 more people saw us and walked over. Before I knew it there was a circle of about 15–20 people all around me asking questions at the same time and trying to get my attention.

At first it was cool – and I did my best to talk to everyone and answer questions. But after a while it started to become a bit overwhelming. But I did my best to answer everyone’s question, shake everyone’s hand and have a good time.

It was really cool to get to meet so many new people, especially the regular readers of this website. Thank you for being there and I hope I said something worthwhile.

I remember telling several people “we’re all in this together and heading in the same direction I’m just a little further down the path.”

Back to the Meetup

• Sergey Sundukovskiy. (Product development) How to build your own product. How to take your project from an idea all the way through hiring and managing the build out.
• Coast Law Group (Legal). The guys from Coast Law gave a full on legal smack down about compliance in marketing. Rob speaks every year and is always a show stopper. They also did a long Q&A session and gave free legal advice. coastlawgroup.com

Break

I wanted to avoid getting mobbed this time so I left the room a few seconds before everyone else. I really just wanted to go to my room and lay down for a few minutes.

So I dashed out, headed to my room and took a break.

Jason had been telling me about Zack’s presentation and I knew it was going to be something I didn’t want to miss, so I was sure to get back before he started. And I’m glad I did.

• Zack Linford. (Next level) Hard for me to summarize. The title of his presentation was ’How To Make Your First $1,000,000 $10,000,000 in Affiliate Marketing.

  

  In it he introduced a whole new level of what can be done with this skill set and how we can grow companies to 9 figure valuations. @zacklinford

• Jason Akatiff. (Managing next level) Jason closed the show with a presentation on next level stuff. He went over how to grow your business and manage the people you hire so that you’re free to do what you do best. His advice on goal setting inspired me to rethink all of my goals and go for much, much bigger targets. @smaxor

The flow of the Meetup was really cool. Each presentation built off of the one before. The crowd was taken from their first profitable campaign all the way through turning it into a $10 Million+ a year company.

• Zeal: How to launch and optimize a profitable campaign
• Malan: How to do gigantic media buys
• Lars: How to present yourself to the business world
• Sergey: How to build your own products
• Coast Law Group: How to keep your products/campaigns legal
• Zack: How to take your skill set and go to the next level
• Jason: How to manage your business and time as your business grows

That was it. A really great Meetup, probably the best meetup/conference/event I’ve ever been to. I spent about 1/2 an hour talking with the other speakers and sharing ideas and then headed out in search for food.

I opted for dinner alone at Mary Janes. I was too beat to talk to anyone and just kinda wanted to chill out.

While eating, I was approached by several different people that wanted to say thanks and tell me about their businesses. I didn’t mind really, it’s nice being surrounded by people that get it, people that understand what we do. And they actually had some pretty cool backgrounds and ideas.

The After Party

There was a huge after party / networking event on the roof of the Hard Rock hotel that evening that kicked off at 9pm. I was pretty beat, but decided to stop by.

I took a Zzzquil before going. My plan was that I’d stay for an hour and be back to the hotel room just as the Zzzquil was kicking in (so i could get some sleep).

When I got up to the roof I immediately ran into some affiliates I didn’t know that wanted to talk. Then I talked with a few more readers from the blog. We all swapped stories for an hour or so until I was ready to go.

On the way out I got stopped a few more times by drunk affiliate marketers who wanted me to tell them exact details about my current campaigns. And while they asked, they stepped on my feet and spit all over my face. Really great.

Finally on my way out I saw my friends Chris, @uccash and Joe by the elevator so I stopped to talk for a bit. Pretty soon the Zzzquil was hitting me so hard I had to go or I would have fallen asleep on my feet.

I took the elevator down, headed to my room and officially called it a done deal.

– –

Conclusion

Going to this meetup was a great reminder of how necessary it is to take breaks. For the past few months I’ve been living in my routine without a break at all. I didn’t realize at the time how burnt out I was.

But taking some time to road trip to San Diego, see my friends, meet tons of new people, break all my schedules, get no sleep and not enough food was the best thing I could have done for myself.

On the drive home I felt recharged and excited to get back to work.

[tweetable]If you’ve never gone to a Meetup or conference I suggest you make plans right away.[/tweetable] And if you’re only going to go to one, go to the A4D Meetup in San Diego.

1. The speakers are higher quality than any other conference there is
2. The information is exactly what you need to hear (no fluff)
3. You can network with some of the biggest names in the business
4. It’s Free

Big thanks to the A4D team for putting on a great event.

See ya next year.

This is Part 3 of a 3-Part Series. Read the rest below.
2014 A4D Meetup Part 1
2014 A4D Meetup Part 2
2014 A4D Meetup Part 3

Click Here to Watch the A4D Meetup Day 2 video on Youtube >>