Episode 101: Speaking at Local Meetups
Summary
Speaking at local meetups is a practical outreach tool for freelancers and consultants: low-stakes audience, direct access to potential clients, and a path to building a speaking portfolio. Nick and Kai cover starting a meetup from scratch when none exists in your niche, recording every talk cheaply with consumer gear, and small logistical moves that build standing with organizers. Both treat the recording as non-negotiable, since conference organizers and clients routinely ask for speaking samples.
Highlights
- If no meetup exists in your niche, start one. Nick says any city with an international airport has enough people. Create the meetup.com account, find a conference room, and invite other people to speak before you do.
- Don’t be the first speaker at a meetup you started. Nick’s rule: wait until the third or fourth slot so it doesn’t read as a personal soapbox.
- Record every talk. An iPhone on a GLIF tripod mount (~$15) plus a lavalier mic (~$100) is enough. Without the lav mic on the speaker, the iPhone picks up room noise and chair creaking, not the talk.
- Nick listens to every Make Money Online episode after it posts, notepad open, everything else minimized, and critiques his own performance. He recommends the same practice for anyone starting out with meetup talks.
- Kai frames a meetup as a direct line to your target market. If you want to consult UX designers, a UX meetup puts them in the room voluntarily, and you learn their problems firsthand.
- Bring Hello My Name Is tags and two Sharpies to meetups you attend as an audience member. Kai says handing them to the host if they don’t have any builds goodwill fast and makes asking for a speaking slot easier later.
- Most meetups have a no-pitch rule, but Nick notes the speaker bio section acts as the pitch anyway. Bring business cards, say hi after, and hope to get mobbed.
Read the transcript
Thrilled to report that the next next week’s Make Money Offline when Vive Valve Man K, I don’t know how you pronounce this name, K. Davis, Davis, something Italian. Oh, yeah, it is Italian. It’s Italian for Davis. He’s going to be coming in and speaking about how to make money online.
That is excellent. That is fascinating. I can’t wait to hear more.
Yeah, it’s going to be a lot of really sobering bummer advice about how you should get a therapist and take baths.
That really boils down most of our episodes.
That’s it. You don’t have to listen to the podcast anymore. Do you have a therapist?
Yes, no. If no, go get a therapist. If yes, thank them. Are you personally taking a bath?
Podcast in the bath. Yes, no. If not, run a bath. Congratulations, everyone. You’ve succeeded at business. Woohoo!
But it honestly is true. So many of life’s problems seem less stressful when you’re soaking in a bath for 20 or 30 minutes, or you’ve talked with a therapist about them.
About your problems, not the bath. I guess you go. That would be weird, man. This is going to get weird. So we’re actually talking about speaking at local meetups this week. And this is something that I’ve done, something that Kai has done. Kai runs meetups, which is terrifying. I sort of ran a meetup once which didn’t have a name and was very private, but it was good. I but I’ve spoken at several dozen meetups. What ended up happening was I started speaking at a few meetups, mostly to get like speaking experience under my belt. And then I got invited to Keynote South by Southwest by accident. And then I started speaking a lot. And then I wrote a book about interaction design shortly after that. And then I got invited to speak all the time. And basically, what ended up happening was like, I gained a reputation for being somebody who’s reasonably entertaining to speak at a local meetup, and I don’t say no to them unless it’s like, I’m not in the country at the time or a prior commitment, right? So it and also meetups. The nice thing about local meetups, you usually get to pick the date. It’s not like come speak at our meetup this day. That’s sometimes the case. Like Creative Mornings in Chicago has that, where like I think it’s always the last Friday of the month unless there’s a holiday or something like that. But everybody else is pretty flexible about it. And it’s like when you can get office space or when you can get like the two people that run the meetup together to actually do something. And so the great thing about a meetup is you’re usually never speaking to more than like 20 or 30 people until you get Internet famous and then suddenly you pack the room. But that beginning, oh my God, it’s such a like safe and comfortable place with a really charitable audience where like if you Screw ups don’t become apparent at a meetup, right? It’s like going to an open mic night. Like, what are your expectations going into an open mic night, Kai?
I’ve never been to an open mic night, so I can’t even answer the question.
Right. Well, why wouldn’t you go? Why don’t you go to open mic nights, right? Fair.
Yeah, I guess it’s because it’s unknown.
I don’t know what’s going to happen. They have a bit of a reputation, right? Tiny bit. Meetups don’t have that same reputation. Meetups are like this crazy posi niche thing, right? It’s like Do you want to learn about the new JavaScript framework that is unpronounceable and run by a random person? We have a meetup for you, and it’s like 20 people. I remember in 2008, there was a meetup for Chicago content strategists. The elements of content strategy hadn’t been written yet. The Halverson book hadn’t been written yet. Like, content strategy was just being floated as this vague. idea that might be a good thing. And so you had all of the nerdiest, most bookish information architects showing up at the content strategy meetup in 2008. And like, and I know I live in a really big city, so it’s very easy to get these crazy niches, but that’s that’s an example of it, right? And if you live in a city If you live in a city with an airport that has the word international in it, you probably can, if you don’t have a meetup together, make one. And so the first recommendation that I have as somebody who has never made a meetup in his entire life other than the weird actually, no, I made two. As someone who’s made two meetups in his entire life If you don’t have the meetup together and you want to speak at a meetup, if there’s no, like, let’s be way broad. Walla Walla, Washington User Experience Designer Meetup. Make it. Congratulations. You now have a Walla Walla Washington User Experience Design Meetup for all of the user experience designers in Walla Walla, Washington. And you’re going to find people. They’re going to come out of the woodwork, right? Like, that’s the big thing. You have to actually build the thing. And, like, I It’s very, very easy to do. Being on meetup. com, creating an account there, making a Facebook event if you have to, God help us. you can still make a really good community out of it. I think that’s the biggest lesson that I can provide around starting this.
Yeah, I completely agree with that. The barrier to entry for creating your own meetup, and we should circle back to speaking at existing meetups in a second, but the barrier to entry to creating your own meetup. Very, very low. You create the account, you identify a couple people who you think would be good fits in your personal network or broader network. Invite them, have a topic of discussion, start facilitating it as a community. Start inviting people other than yourself to speak at it and say, hey, we have a small meetup. You know, 5, 10, 20 people are attending this. Would you like to talk for 20 minutes and then we’ll all have a group discussion or eat some pizza and drink some beer while we answer questions about this? You now have a meetup on this topic, and that could be a superpower. That puts you in contact with Professionals in your community. That gives you an opportunity to speak. That becomes a wonderful thing on a resume or a wonderful thing just as part of your broader career experience. Hey, I started a meetup that grew to a hundred people and it was on topic X in my industry. That’s pretty cool. That’s a nice differentiator. There’s not a lot of people who are able to say that about their industry or their business.
I have phenomenal noobs. While you provided those very insightful comments, I actually searched to see if there is a user experience design meetup in Walla Walla, Washington. Did they steal our idea? No. Golden opportunity. You get to make one. Or drive half an hour west to Richland and Pasco and go to their meetups. But you know what? Fuck them. You are patient zero of the Walla Walla User Experience Design Meetup. Congratulations. I’m thrilled for you and your family.
And starting it, even if it remains small, it connects you with your community. I mean, I think of what I see as one of the common struggles of freelancers and consultants. You’re an independent worker. It could often mean you don’t have that community of coworkers or people who understand exactly what you do. Well, in your town, even if it’s a small town, you could start a freelancer or consultant meetup. You could start a meetup where people that are like you, who have internet jobs, or do consulting or do programming, and say, Hey, we all do things that not a lot of people understand. Let’s get together, understand what we each do, and drink some beer while we’re at it. Now you have friends, now you have community, and you’re able to grow that or keep it the same size. But just creating that meetup, creating a space for people to come to to turn into their own vision of it. can be so powerful and so impactful. On sort of this meta level, I often see a meetup as simply creating the space for people to self assemble and create something interesting and new on that topic or in the direction you’re orienting the meetup.
Yeah. And then, like, don’t be the first person to speak at the meetup because that’s weird. Don’t be weird. Invite somebody else to say, I’m creating a meetup. Here’s how you create a meetup. You find an office space or a coffee shop or restaurant, wherever, to do the meetup. Hopefully, it’s not a bar. The reason being that some people don’t drink alcohol or they feel uncomfortable in that situation. It’s best to find like a neutral ground, like a conference room in an office. If you work a W-2 job and you’re listening to this podcast somehow, congratulations, you now have access to an Office’s conference room. And, you know, it’s after the workday, and they’d be thrilled to be ground zero for this meetup. So there you go. You find a venue, you go on meetup. com, you start a meetup. Congratulations, now you have a meetup. You find a few other people within your topic of expertise to try and start a meet to try and do this with. If you are literally the only user experience designer in Walla Walla, Washington, you’re going to have a hard time having a meetup. It’s going to be a meetup of one. But in practice, there’s probably at least one other. Find that other, invite them to the meetup and invite them to speak and be like, You have a topic that is worth hearing. What gets you riled up? You know, it’s the same stuff I talk about on my mail when you’re building a mailing list. It’s You know, what are the things that are going to piss other people off that you care about dearly? Write about that. Okay, well, speak about that at the meetup. Have other people speak about that in the meetup. Tell them the exact same thing I just told you. And schedule one instance of the meetup, invite some people, and encourage them to come back. Thank them profusely. Ask if they have any friends. Try and grow it. And congratulations, you are now a savvy entrepreneur and you have a meetup. You can speak at this meetup like third or fourth. But you don’t want to make it seem like it’s just a soapbox for your ideas, and that’s what you come off as if you if you’re the first person to speak at the meetup.
Completely agreed. And I think there’s a couple interesting directions you could grow a meetup. You could grow it in terms of an opportunity to practice your speaking and become a better public speaker. People often ask, hey, I want to be on a podcast, but how do I get enough experience to be on a podcast? Speaking at your local meetups can get you over the mental hurdles of, hey, I’m presenting in front of an audience or presenting to an audience. It could be incredibly valuable that way. It could also be incredibly valuable from a market research perspective. Let’s say you want to consult with UX designers in Walla Walla, Washington. If you start a meetup and UX designers start attending, congratulations. You now have a community of the exact people you want to research, you want to learn more about. And they are coming to your meetup. You are now presenting them with something of value. This becomes a perfect opportunity to learn more about their pains, their problems, their struggles, their questions. and turn that into messaging or content or service offerings or products for your business. There are tons of ways you’re able to use a meetup as an asset for your business.
Yeah, I mean, for your business, I mean, we’ll go into a little bit of the plus sides of it to begin with, but also it boosts everybody, right? The fact that you’ve been speaking at meetups means if you have a W-2 gig, you’re more in demand in your job. Which matters to the kind of people that you’re getting to speak at the meetup, right? So think about that when you’re actually trying to put this together. And think about the benefit that it has when people are, they’re known as a speaker at a meetup. Additionally, when you’re at the meetup, super cheap to do. Record the meetup. This requires two things. an iPhone and a lavalier microphone. And one of those things you probably already own. And the other one, gonna guest hops out at 100 and congratulations, you can eBay the Lavalier microphone when you’re done. The reason you want the microphone actually physically on the person is because everyone sounds like ass when they’re speaking to a room on an iPhone. All you hear is the person’s chair creaking right behind it. So, you know, you want to make sure that you’re doing it in a way that actually looks decent. The better model, the newer model of an iPhone you have, the better. Use a glyph on a little tripod, like a Manfrado tripod. Glyph is basically a tripod mount for an iPhone. G-L-I-F is the name of the gear.
It’s wonderful. I own one and love the shit out of it.
Yeah, and all of these things that I’m mentioning, but for maybe the LAV mic, are trivially cheap to buy. Glyph is like, what, $15, $20? Yeah. Something like that. Right.
For under $150 plus an iPhone that you or a friend already have, you have the equipment you need to Record a meetup presentation effectively in a let’s call it semi-professional, semi-capable way. It will look good enough for somebody to post on their website and be like, I did a thing, I presented a thing, here’s a talk of me doing that thing. And people will say, oh, this looks great. I enjoyed hearing you do the thing.
Yeah, so as a consultant, and for everybody in the audience who is thinking of speaking, which should be everybody in the audience. I mandate one thing, which is you have to record the talk and give me a copy of the recording. Now, you can tell me, don’t post the recording until six months after the talk or something like that. You can’t tell me, don’t post the recording ever because I want to show off, right? And it can be a crappy recording. It can be an iPhone mounted to a glyph. It has to exist. And I have to sound like something. This is not only good for boosting your profile, but it’s also good for being able to critique yourself. You know what I do after I listen to after every single podcast episode gets posted every Monday for Make Money Online? You want to know what I do? I listen to it. And I sit there with nothing else to do. I minimize everything on my computer. I listen with a notepad and I rip myself to shreds. And it is great. Yeah, and that’s something that I recommend. If you’re starting out speaking at meetups, that is something I could not possibly recommend more for you to be doing.
Yep, completely, completely agree. I think back to after I graduated college, when I had the day jobs, I did a lot of speaking at the local university talking about business, talking about the transition from being a student to working full-time. None of it is germane to the work I do now, but. I never had any of it recorded. And I really, really regret that because thinking back, it would have been so valuable to be able to point to it and say, Hey, here are video samples of me presenting, of me speaking, of me doing a thing. When I started applying to conferences like Microconference Speaking there, The common request is: Great, do you have a sample of you speaking? And I was fortunate that I had recorded a number of webinars and interviews online, and I was able to submit those, but For most people, you don’t have that. So, speaking at the local meetup, getting your recording done. If they don’t record, what I’ve had friends do is bring a camera in, do the recording, buy your friend some beer and pizza afterwards. Congratulations, you now have a recording of the meetup, even if they weren’t providing it themselves. The value of this recording is just immense from developing your career, developing your reputation. Having samples of you speaking, understanding where you could improve as a speaker, to having something you can now include with a product or a service offering. Somebody hires you as a consultant to help them with the UX design for their business in Walla Walla, Washington. Well, you now have something you’re able to bundle in. Hey, here’s a presentation that I gave on this subject. On your website, have it as a lead magnet or as an educational piece of material you’re able to share with them. Hear my thoughts in 15 minutes on UX design and the importance thereof. It adds assets to your business. All it requires is that simple step of identifying local meetups, volunteering to speak there, having a recording made.
That’s pretty much it.
Oh, I was going to say, and take a bath because take a bath.
Yeah, take a bath. Other things that are helpful for a meetup. If people don’t have Hello My Name Is tags, just bring them. Bring them and bring two Sharpies. And now you have Hello My Name Is tags. There you go.
And you are suddenly seen as for any like small things like that, you are suddenly seen as a fixer and a valuable asset. And it’s a wonderful way to build a relationship with the meetup hosts. Even if you’re showing up for the first time and just stuck a thing of hello, my name is tags into your bag, if you notice they don’t have them, you could find the host, a person, and be like, hey, I brought some of these. I’ve been to meetups before. I wasn’t sure if there’d be any. Here’s name tags for people to use in some Sharpies as well. You now look like a superhero, you now look like a great person, and that makes it so much easier when it comes to saying, I’d love to present at a future meetup. You already have social capital, you already have goodwill built up.
Yeah, and I usually write on the hello my name is tag your worst nightmare and then people are like, why do you write that? And I’m like, because I have opinions. It’s pretty true. There are a lot of ways to fuck with it, right? Like you you have to have that kind of like outgoing gregariousness. And you know what I do after? I curl up in a corner and take a bath. I’m the most introverted person, but I do this because it’s part of my job, you know? And it should be part of your job too. And once you’ve tapped out your range of meetups that you can possibly speak at, like Chicago has only so many meetups, right? Then you start one of your own, or you wait a little while and go back to the first one and ask to speak again because they’re going to run out of speakers eventually. Because how many Chicagoans are going to want to speak at meetups for a content strategy, for example? Probably a lot. Probably a lot, but not enough that would actually want to go ahead and do it. So, yeah.
Yeah. A six-month or 12-month cadence works perfectly. And I mean, you could imagine if you have a list of a dozen meetups in your area. You could speak at each one once a month and cycle through them in a year. And to the audience and participants, it’s like, oh, great, we get to see the speaker again. It’s been a year. To you, it’s, hey, I’m consistently speaking, presenting, and getting better at the craft of public speaking by Speaking at a different meetup every month is a perfect way to level up as a speaker to develop the skill.
Yeah, yeah, that’s it. This is a great part of any consultant’s outreach strategy. A lot of meetups say no pitch, but in practice, during the bio, that effectively acts as the pitch. And at the end, do what you can to say hi to people, bring a ton of business cards, and I hope you get mobbed. Then take a bath
Notes
- Subject of meetup
- People at the meetup
- Go to one before speaking
- If you don't have a good meetup, start one, but don't be the first to speak
- Good places to host a meetup
- Good places to announce a meetup
- Scaling/growing your meetup (as you grow, make sure there isn't an in-group and an out-group)
- Avoiding Groupthink in Meetups (Creative Mornings: Someone manages it for a fixed term and then passes it off)