I flew my sales director to Dallas with a few hours' notice. No meetings booked. Just a hunch. I was at VidSummit, looking at all the big sponsors we've never been able to land for Social Media Marketing World. And I thought, if I want the big brands, and they're here, I may as well get Emily out here. So I called her. Less than 48 hours later we're sitting on a couch, freaking exhausted. I asked her how many sponsors she spoke to. "I probably spoke to all of them. Or at least 25 different companies." How does she do it? "I do a lot of research. I understand the industry. And I'm also very well connected." People pull up her LinkedIn and find they know 42 of the same people. Even I got a little door to open. I was kind to a couple of people at the Canon booth. When I came back, they recognized my face. Then I asked the real question. What's the likelihood we get at least one sponsor out of this? "Oh, definitely more than one sponsor." While I'm trying to get 3,000 people to my conference, I'm also chasing the sponsors we've never had. Do you think the trip was wise? Reply "Yes" or tell me what you'd have done instead 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #EventMarketing# #Sponsorship#

I flew to someone else's conference to learn. By the end of the first night I was on the phone telling my sales director to get on a plane. Here's what happened. I'm at VidSummit, my friend Derral Eves' event, sitting in my hotel room asking myself, why am I here? The honest answer: I have room to grow. Better hooks. Better stories. Creating content on the fly. Then I noticed what they have that I don't. TikTok. YouTube. Meta. All sponsoring. Old Navy had a line of people waiting for a free jacket they could get customized on the spot. I would love to have those companies at Social Media Marketing World. For whatever reason, we just haven't been able to get them. So at 8:30 at night I called Emily, my director of sales, in California. "If you're up for a little adventure..." "Of course. I'm always up for an adventure." "Pack your bags, my friend. I think you're coming to Dallas." Her answer: "I was just telling my husband I'm going to meet my neighbor tomorrow night. I don't think I'm meeting my neighbor tomorrow night." If I want the big brands, and they're all here, I may as well get my sales director here too. Would you make that kind of impulse move? Reply "Yes" or tell me why I'm crazy 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #EventMarketing# #Sponsorship#

"Are you positive these referral tools can't track a sale?" I asked Jon that twice. Here's why. We want a referral leaderboard to help get Social Media Marketing World to 3,000 people. Jon ran deep research with Claude and Gemini, plus a playbook Rob Ainbinder sent me on Messenger. It came back as two options. Option A: reward sign-ups. Somebody shares an invite, a friend enters a free contest, one point. That's what the leaderboard tools do. Option B: reward ticket sales. Somebody shares an invite, a friend actually buys a ticket. That's what we've always done. Jon: "You get a point per referral. It doesn't matter whether the person signs up or not." Jessica: "Some of those platforms feel sketchy and spammy. It feels a little off from our branding." Jon's hybrid fix: at checkout we ask one question. "Who's your Player 1?" Then we know who referred them. Jessica thinks that's the best option on the table. But I'm not ready to give up on the tools. If one of them can drop a piece of code on our site and count an actual purchase, everything gets simpler. Jon's honest answer: "I'm not positive." So that's his assignment. Rule it out, fast. Because the one thing we all agree on: it's got to be easy, or nobody will use it. If you ran this leaderboard, would you reward sign-ups or ticket sales? Reply with one word: sign-ups or sales. 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #ReferralMarketing# #EventMarketing#

"I don't think it's enough for us to get to 3,000 alone." That's what Jessica told me about our new invite. We built it so the people already coming to Social Media Marketing World can invite their Player 2. It's fun. People will use it. But Jon said the next part is the incentive. Something you can't buy. You only get it if you refer somebody. And that's where it got hard. Jessica: "The hardest part is tracking who referred who. What if somebody already bought a ticket that their friend referred?" I told the team whatever we do has to be simple. Jon had an answer: "We have our referral affiliate program. We can track it through the affiliate referral." But Chad Petersen's idea was to reward people with things, not money. Jon agreed: "We have a system in place that has the infrastructure to track everything, but we're using it for something else." My instinct says the tools are out there. So Jon's running deep research with Claude and Gemini to find a way to track it. If you've ever run a referral program, you know the reward is the easy part. How would you track who invited who? Start your comment with "I'd..." 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #EventMarketing# #ReferralMarketing#

It looks unbelievably simple. It was unbelievably complicated. A while back, Jon asked, "Why couldn't we just build a tool that people can use to refer people?" So I built one. You put your name in. You put your friend's name in. It finds their photo and drops you both into a retro video-game invitation. Player 1. Player 2. Every click plays a little 8-bit sound. When I showed my coach Angus, he said those sounds are "kind of like dopamine hits." Then Sandra Newson left a comment: let every attendee add one personal sentence to their invitation. So now you can add a personal note. Thank you, Sandra. I made the art and the little avatars in ChatGPT. I knocked out the photo holes in Photoshop. I started coding in Codex and moved over to Claude Code. About five hours. But the line that stuck with me was Angus's: "It becomes a contagion. If somebody gets this, they want to be a part of it." That's the whole idea behind getting to 3,000. The people already coming invite the people they'd want next to them. Want to try it live? Tell me in the comments and I'll send you the link. 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #AIinMarketing# #EventMarketing#

I asked my marketing director for an invitation idea. He came back with a working prototype. While I'm trying to get Social Media Marketing World to 3,000, one idea keeps coming up: a personal invite you can send to a friend. So the last time Jon and I met, I said, let's come up with a cool invitation system. Here's what he did. He asked, in his words, "my friend Claude, who I ask for everything." You put in your name. You put in the name of the person you want to invite. You pick a background. Out comes a certificate you can download and email. "Took like five minutes, and we had a prototype." Then he told me where he needs me: the graphics. "Let's be honest, I'm the colorblind marketer." So I took a concept to Joel, my tech innovation director. Player 1 is the person sending the invitation. Player 2 is the person being invited. He liked the whole vibe of the graphics. Then I asked the real question. How hard would it be to build a little form that just renders the darn thing? I kind of think it shouldn't be that complicated. His answer: a couple hours, between ChatGPT and Claude. If someone handed you one of these, who would your Player 2 be? Tell me below 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #AIinMarketing# #EventMarketing#