What I learned at Atomicon19

Last week I went to a conference like no other I’ve ever experienced.

Atomicon19 took place at Newcastle’s Assembly Rooms and saw around 350 delegates hanging on every word of organisers Andrew and Pete and their excellent line up of speakers. It was a day for whooping and waving your arms in the air, a day of high energy and high fives, but also some seriously useful tips and thought-provoking sessions,

You can get a flavour of the day from checking out  #Atomicon19 on Twitter where it was trending across the UK, but here’s something of things I learned at this amazing event.

Andrew and Pete are top drawer.

If you’re not aware of these guys you need to catch up with their weekly videos packed with digital marketing and business ideas. They’re funny and now exactly how to keep everyone on their toes and paying attention - whether that’s by holding a balloon race to get everyone hyped up or redistributing the running order five times during the open session while they riffed about what its title should be.

It’s time to face your fears

The recurring them of Atomicon19 was encouraging people to face their fears. That might be a reluctance to do live video or put on an event or webinar. One of those fears which rang true with many people in the room was about raising prices and charging people what you are really worth. Otherwise, we are all left in that familiar Catch 22 situation where we don’t have time to market and grow our business and we can afford to outsource in order to make time.

It’s time to go live

One way to break out of that Catch 22 situation is to embrace the power of live video which for many of us is as scary as it gets. There were plenty of compelling reasons to go live such as the reach you can get with live videos and the examples people had of doing live auctions that had given their businesses a real boost. Thankfully Ian Anderson Gray was on hand with an excellent session on all the nuts and bolts of going live including the kit and tips for planning your video. All his notes and slides are here

Ian suggested one way to make sure you make the jump and go live is to link up with some other people and embark on a joint challenge to go live every day for an agreed number of days. Anyone up for that?

A shout out for Sam

One of the success stories shared at Atomicon19 about using live video was Cumbria’s very own Sam Ashdown of  Ashdown Jones who has been getting great results with her broadcast. She’s written a blog about it here

Let’s talk about money

Keynote speakers Victoria Fleming and Chris Ducker both did the very unBritish thing of talking about money. Some people would rather poke their own eyes out than talk about what they earn, but they were both upbeat about focusing on the money side of your business. Victoria set out the need for a sales structure and urged people to practise in front of a mirror if they needed more confidence in telling people about their prices. Chris said we all needed to be seen to sell every day and should never be afraid to charge what we are really worth. He also urged us to see ourselves not as B2B or B2C, but P2P businesses - that’s people to people. Relate to your clients as people and do what it takes to become somebody’s favourite.

The final take home was this: write down a list of what you’re not good at and then don’t do it. Outsource it and then concentrate on the stuff you are good at or enjoy.

There was lots of other cool stuff about Facebook ads, Messenger bots and creating great webinars. If you’re interested, check out #Atomicon19 on Twitter and especially the tweets from Danielle Bayes who a free ticket for next year’s event with her sketch summaries of each session.  

Next year’s event? Yep, it’s all happening again in April next year, but on a massive scale. Andrew and Pete have only gone and booked out the entire Sage in Gateshead.

Yes,  the Sage - mental or what? This week they are holding a flash sale with an 85% discount so grab a ticket here.