Event Reviews

How to Know If an Event is Worth Your Time

Eventually Learning Team

"Time = life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life."

-Alan Lakein

Running an organization is an extremely complicated job, as it includes everything from business unit agendas to functional agendas, multiple organizational levels and several external issues. Therefore, your time is probably precious if you own or operate a business, and you may want to spend it wisely.

One of the things that C-level employees usually spend their time on are industry events. If you are also a regular event attendee and think that networking with industry peers and clients can be beneficial for your business and professional/personal growth, you need to be smart about it. You should know that while you are busy attending an event, other opportunities could be passing you by.

1 Stats About Time Constraints of CEOs

Before we tell you how to decide whether an event is worth your time, let us tell you a few facts about how hard CEOs work. According to a leading business magazine’s research that was conducted in 2016, these leaders usually work 9.7 hours on average every weekday.

They also sacrifice their weekends more often than you would think by conducting business 79% of the weekend days and putting in 3.9 hours daily on average. CEOs also stay busy on vacation days, working 70% of the vacation days and putting in around 2.4 hours daily.

The data also reveals that 47% of the work done by CEOs is done at the company's headquarters, while the rest is done while involved in traveling, commuting, visiting other company locations, meeting external constituencies and even at their homes. Most CEOs in the study work about 62.5 hours on average in a week.

2 How to Know If an Event is Worth Your Time

If you look at your event calendar right now, you might think that you need to attend too many events in the next month or so, but how can you choose which of these are worth it and which ones you can skip? Well, we have come up with some easy-to-implement tips that will help you decide whether an event is worth your time.

3 Decide the Worth of Your Time

As a CEO, you may have heard, “This isn't worth my time,” or you may have even used it yourself when it comes to attending live or virtual networking events. Nevertheless, can you quantify, in dollars, what your worth is? Is it $50 an hour or US$3,000 an hour? You need to calculate your earnings and income, and then, decide the worth of your time. For example, if your worth is $100 an hour, and you plan to attend an event for two hours, you need to decide whether you will be able to build one or more business relationships to earn $200 or not. Try it. It works!

4 Look for the Lesson in Every Event

If you like attending virtual networking events, you need to ensure that you look for a lesson in each of them. If the event has just one "aha moment," attending it would be worth it. This "aha moment" could be anything valuable, be it a lesson that boosts your self-awareness, interpersonal skills, listening skills, leadership skills or something similar. For instance, even learning about software that helps reduce redundancies can be worth it. If you can't learn something from an event, make that a lesson, and don't waste your time attending such an event ever again.

5 Know About the Potential Attendees

An industry event becomes worth attending and worth your time when you know the other attendees. You wouldn't want to waste your time attending an event where you feel like a misfit and don't even know a single person. Therefore, you need to know about the other potential attendees before you sign up for an event. Meeting people you know will not only help you start the conversations easily but will also help you to strengthen your network while increasing its reach. For example, if you have two friends or acquaintances present at an event, you can ask them to introduce you to two more attendees they know, and you might increase your network by four people by the end of the event.

6 Focus on Emotionally-Sound Decisions

Before attending any business networking event, you need to decide whether you are attending an event because you want to or just for the sake of it. The decision to attend an event should be emotionally sound. For example, you should attend an event because you are interested in the topic, not because you think attending it would be cool or because you might meet some friends there. Don't just follow a trend when deciding whether an event is worth your time. Instead, attend the events that are best for you and your business relationships.

7 Choose Events Attended by Your Potential/Existing Clients

While shortlisting events worth your time, make sure that you pick the ones that your potential or existing clients typically attend. For instance, if you design streetwear for millennials, attend a few events where millennials hang out so that you can understand them better. You will know what trends they are following, how they think and what they expect from the products/services. It might also help in event marketing or social media advertising later on when you plan an event or a product/service for them.

8 Pick Small, Focused and Relationship-Oriented Events

Many events these days are focused on broad and shallow groups where the core aim is not to network but to have fun and gossip. Please avoid those events, because people don't attend these events to do real business. Instead, it would help if you focused on small, relationship-oriented events to become acquainted with a few people and to build real relationships from that. An example of such an industry event could be a niche-focused video conference where about 20 people are in attendance -- all belonging to a specific industry, such as resellers of car parts.

9 Seek Events with Actionable Follow-Ups

When you attend a business networking event worth your time, you won't return from it empty-handed. Instead, you will return with many actionable follow-ups that will help enhance your network and boost your business. For instance, you can learn about a few ideas to implement right away at your business, or you can get the contact information of potential investors who might be willing to invest in your business. On the other hand, if you don't have actionable follow-ups after an event, you probably wasted some precious time attending it.

10 Don't Hesitate to Experiment at Times

You can't always know whether an event is worth your time by going through the itinerary or reading the event marketing materials. Sometimes, you need to experiment. For instance, if you hear a lot about a newly-created event that sounds interesting, you should take the risk and attend it. If it's interesting, you can hang until the end. If not, you can always make an excuse and head out.

Sometimes, you learn unexpected things from new events. For instance, if you attend an event about new technologies, you might come across a gadget you can use to manage time better and to have a better work-life balance.

11 Measure the Results

In order to truly decide whether an event is worth your time or if it was among events worth your time, you need to measure the event's results. You should be directly able to quantify the benefit you had from an event. For instance, if you attended a networking event and built relationships with five people who turned into customers, you should measure the exact amount of dollars you earned from those clients. You can even count the benefits in a non-financial manner after listening to a speaker's advice at an event or a webinar. The amount of time you saved in cutting the redundancies of business operations or repetitive processes should also be considered. After all, there is no point in having a full address book if it doesn't help you enhance, improvise or grow your business.

12 Final Words

Deciding whether an event is worth your time is an essential aspect of attending events. It's something you, a business owner/manager, cannot skip. As a recommendation, set aside an amount of time to attend networking or other beneficial events. Allocating the time in advance would ensure that you don't skip these events or overspend your time in networking while ignoring or neglecting other business priorities.

A useful online platform that can help you decide whether an event is worth your time is Eventually. It is conceptualized by Media 7 to help professionals and business owners experience a platform that provides genuine reviews about industry events and makes it easy for you to decide if an event is worth your time. Be sure to visit today and be a contributor, knowledge seeker and reviewer yourself!

FAQs

1 Which type of networking is best for you?

A business networking event that allows you to learn something, make valuable contacts and grow your business should be on the list of events worth your time.

2 How do I know an event is worth it or not?

An industry event that offers learning and insights and helps you build valuable contacts to enable business growth is worth it. Virtual networking events in your industry are usually worth attending.

3 Is a business networking event worth it?

Business networking at events or webinars is worth it if you make valuable contacts or learn something new that helps business growth. Please don't focus on event marketing. Instead, focus on what you can get after attending an event to make your visit worth the time invested.

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