English for entrepreneurs: Conference prep.

If you wanna have more business, more international business, more clients,

more opportunities, all of that stuff.

Conferences are a great way to achieve all of that.

But maybe the idea of attending a conference and networking

with people in English right now is like kind of a scary thought

for you. Well, in today's episode,

we're going to make it less scary and help you to prepare for your next

conference in English. Let's go, hi, I'm your English coach, Christina,

and welcome to business English with Christina.

And I'm also an entrepreneur who loves attending conferences and meeting new

people and finding new business opportunities.

So really excited about today's episode because it's the kind of thing that I

love doing, and I love helping you to do better. Okay.

So you're attending a conference and one of the things that you're gonna have to

do over and over and over is introduce yourself

and talk about what you do now as an entrepreneur,

this can be really fun because, you know,

there are so many different types of businesses out there that you can really

discover some new things,

and you can have fun with your introduction as well. I mean like this

is almost like an art,

but the good news is that you don't have to be like Leonardo DaVinci to be good

at it. Like anybody can do this. I promise.

And today we're gonna focus on just one short,

simple and original way of talking about

what you do.

And that is starting with the problem that you solve with

your business. Let's imagine that, you know, we're at a,

a big conference. Like, I don't know, um,

the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas and someone

approaches me and they say,

so what brings you to the consumer electronics show? Well,

I might start with the problem I solve and give an answer like this.

Well, you know,

when you're starting a new and unique business and you realize that it's time to

get international clients,

but you also feel like doing that in English sounds really

hard and scary. And the other person maybe is listening

to you and maybe shaking their head. And they might say like, oh yeah,

I know what you mean. And then I would continue with, well,

I help those entrepreneurs find smart ways to improve their English and to grow

their business. All right. So are you ready to try this for yourself now?

Of course you can adapt this to your own situation.

I'm going to take one example for this video, but of course,

I want you to think of how you could do this for your specific job

or your business, or, you know, your personal situation. Anyway,

let's take an example, um, from something that one of my clients do,

uh,

you work for a company that makes an app that helps people to

organize their time and their, um, productivity and all of that. Well,

you could start with something like, well, you know,

when a team has really complex projects that they have to get done

by very tight deadlines,

I create an app that helps teams to make sure that they never miss a deadline

and they finish everything comfortably. And without stress.

Now that's just one example of how you can introduce yourself,

but it's not the only example.

And if you're an entrepreneur or you're attending conferences,

one thing that you really need to spend some time working on

is your elevator pitch, your pitch, you know,

just really in a short time,

getting someone to understand what you do and to be curious to know more.

So if you want some great resources on how to work on that, create your pitch,

create your elevator pitch,

head over to my blog and sign up for my newsletter because we've got lots

of resources to help you with that. And of course they're all free.

So I mean, take advantage of them. Uh, the link to, um,

sign up for that is below the video.

And it's gonna be the topic of next weeks lesson.

So you wanna be sure to get it now, you know,

you're running your own business. So you probably know that better confidence

equals better business and also better confidence equals better

English.

And there is tons of research that supports this idea that

if you are more confident in yourself, you, like I said,

do better at your work and you will do better at speaking English.

Now as a neuro language coach,

there are maybe two specific tips that I could give you

regarding confidence, confidence. It's a skill,

which means that you can practice it and you can improve it.

It's not something that you have or you don't have,

like you can get it.

And the second tip is don't wait until you feel confident to

start practicing the confidence comes through the practice. Uh, and yes,

it means that maybe at the beginning, um,

you will feel a little awkward and a little maybe even stupid,

or like a child or whatever that is part of the process.

You have to go through it,

but I promise there are better things waiting for you over on

the other side of that process. Now, you know, as a coach with clients,

a lot of the times we work on picking one

thing to focus on and to get better at. And for example,

I had one client, she said that for conferences,

one of the most difficult things for her was like that first five

minutes of a conversation, like starting the conversation,

getting into the conversation, breaking the ice, all of that.

So that is an important part of your conference toolbox,

let's say. Um,

so let's look at how you can start those

conversations with confidence and just feel better about doing

it.

The first thing is to have a few questions that you

know, that you can use to start a conversation, you know, that you, you know,

master these questions easily, you know,

what sort of answers you can expect from these questions,

so that you'll feel better about understanding the other person.

And it just makes it easier when you know what you're going to

say at the beginning of the conversation. And here are some examples.

So what brings you to the conference?

Did you see that Amy Porterfield is going to give a presentation on how to grow

your network? Now,

if you're like that client that I mentioned before and you feel like,

okay, like, yes, Christina,

it seems very simple and easy when you explain it.

But then when I'm in a conference,

like I freeze and I panic and it's not so simple. Well,

you know what, it's, it sounds simple.

And it is simple because it's just a, a few questions,

but it's not easy and it's not easy maybe because

you haven't practiced it enough to make it feel simple.

And the best way that you can solve that problem is <laugh>,

you know,

to practice with a real person or even better with lots of real

people so that you get that repetition that you need

to feel good about something. Now,

when you're at a conference and you are meeting a new business contact,

it is much easier to approach someone and to start a conversation,

if you already know a little bit about them now, I mean,

you can't do this for everybody, of course,

because you don't know who you're gonna meet,

but if you know that there is a specific person that you want to

take the opportunity to go and meet and talk to during the conference,

take a little time before and do your homework and research them a little bit.

Like Google's fantastic for that. Like,

you can totally stalk people on the internet, but I mean, do it in,

in a nice professional way,

but it's really helpful to learn a little bit about them before

you meet them. Now, once you've done all of that, you know,

you're at the conference, you see the person that you want to go and meet,

and now it's the moment to approach them. So what do you say to

get that conversation started? Well, you can say some things like this.

I saw that you just launched a new product. How did that go? And, you know,

some people also share things about their business trips or even their,

their personal trips on LinkedIn. So you can talk about that.

I saw that you traveled around Latin America recently,

that must have been fascinating,

or maybe the person just moved into a new position in their company.

And if they're on LinkedIn, you will know about it. I promise.

And you can say something like this.

I heard that you're the new head of communications. Congratulations.

And how do you like that role?

Or maybe recently the PO the person just posted about something

that they're passionate about.

And that can be a way to break the ice with something, for example,

like, Hey,

I read your post on LinkedIn about climate change in your city. You know,

that post really resonated with me. Okay. So, you know,

you've gone to the conference, you've met some fantastic people.

You had the courage and the confidence to go and talk to them in English,

but you don't want the conversation to end there. You've gotta follow up.

Usually that's by email and in English.

And that can be a little intimidating and scary and take a lot of time if

you're trying to like write every email from scratch,

like from zero, you know, you have to do it for your business. You know,

it takes time, you procrastinate and you know, that's not good.

And that's why we've also created a, um,

like a pack of email templates for entrepreneurs,

for things like following up after conferences. Um,

talking about your products, following up on prospects,

all of that email templates that you can just copy and adapt

to your specific situation so that you're writing effective

emails that get results, incorrect English,

and it's taking you less time.

It's free go and get it over at my blog. And again,

I'll put the link for that resource down below the video

so that you can, you know, grow your business,

write better emails in English and just feel good about yourself and what you're

doing, because you can do this all right. Now, if you don't use it,

you lose it. So here's how you can use, um,

some of the things that you learned in this video today,

down in the comments below this video,

I would love to know about.

A, a,

a memorable conference that you attended or a conference that you like

attending maybe every year. Okay. Maybe not during COVID and all of that,

but let's say in normal times, um,

tell me about a conference that you like to attend for your work.

It's the perfect opportunity to practice English and to, I don't know,

remember some of those good memories that you have about that conference.

So put those in the comments,

and if you enjoyed learning with this video,

let me know so that I can make more videos for you.

And there are three ways that you can do this. Of course,

subscribe to my channel and hit the little notification bell so that you get

alerts. When I publish new lessons,

go over to my website and get that free

email template pack.

And go ahead and watch this next lesson,

which is all about how to start a conversation

confidently in English.

And I just want to thank you so much for improving your English

and your business skills with business English, with Christina.

And I'll see you next time in that video lesson, all about pitching.

See? Yeah.