Welcome to The Entrepreneuring Show, where we strive to provide insights and stories for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs, where innovation meets inspiration led by veteran entrepreneur and tech founder. Here’s your host, Jill Button.
Jill: Hello, I am your host Jill Button, and this is The Entrepreneuring Show. Today’s episode is brought to you by the Better Events Management Group. Proudly producing BizCon Business Expo and Conference, the community’s largest one day event committed to business growth and development. They also provide outsourced event services.
My guest today is John Reiser, the president and CEO of Better Events. He has been a key figure in the industry for over two decades, known for organizing some of the nation’s largest trade shows and conferences. His flagship event, BizCon Business Expo, is a highlight of the Golden Horseshoe business scene.
Research experience and connecting people has supported the growth of thousands of small and medium sized businesses. His passion for innovation and networking has solidified his reputation as a leader, making him a symbol of excellence in business events. Welcome to the show, John.
John: Hey, Jill. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Jill: Listen, it’s awesome to have you here. We have been a member of the trade show scene now for a couple of years, and we’ve had the pleasure of attending a number of your events in Mississauga and Toronto Markham. And it’s actually been quite an adventure. It’s awesome to be back among the business community and I’m ecstatic to have you here today.
What I want to do though, is I’d love to remind everybody that if you have a comment or a question for John, you can pop it into the comment section. If you’re on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Facebook, and we will try to get to those questions throughout the show. John, let’s start. Let’s get a little personal first.
Let’s talk about your entrepreneurial journey. I don’t know a lot about you other than attending your events. I’d love to understand your entrepreneurial journey. What led you to become an entrepreneur and how did better events get started?
John: It’s not too exciting of a story, but I’ll tell it anyway. I come from a background of entrepreneurs, members of my family for every generation have been entrepreneurs in their own right. And just, growing up with that and seeing that it’s kind of part of the DNA, and I discovered that pretty early. When entering the workforce and I was this isn’t for me, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs can resonate with that.
It’s like entrepreneurs tend to march to the beat of their own drum, and that’s something that I really felt really early on. It’s I wasn’t comfortable with someone being in charge of my destiny. I wasn’t comfortable with someone. Telling me when and where I had to be.
I wasn’t comfortable with someone telling me how something should work. All of those things are, I always felt I knew best for myself. And although I did have my time in the workforce, it was never really a comfortable thing. And I was always looking for ways to get out of it.
Like I can remember back in my teens, I was working for an events company. And they old school, telemarketing style they had the old back in those days. And this was actually. even behind the times for back in those days, but we were working on monochrome screens.
Remember those computers? It’s just one color. I think it was like green or amber color. And yeah, like just antiquated technology. And, I’ve always been a tech guy, even little kid. You know what I mean? I was always into all of that kind of stuff. And I, at the time I really didn’t know how to build computers, but I convinced the I don’t know if it’s the owner or like the district guy, I was going to be able to upgrade their systems and build them some new computers on the cheap.
And I just taught myself how to do it. I built one computer for the office, just the main computer. And then I found myself building dozens of machines for different offices and multiple machines per office. It was my first. Dipping my toe in the waters as an entrepreneur.
And it just happened by accident. ’cause I, I just saw a need somewhere and I convinced somebody that I could do it, and then I made it up along the way. I think a lot of entrepreneurs know how that goes. Yep. And then speaking of making it up along the way, you there, there were a few, like other smaller journeys that I won’t bore you guys with, but the biz con stuff we it was it was a, it was a need because, I really hadn’t found the thing just yet that I thought I was really passionate about, right? I just, I hadn’t found it. And to be honest, it came late. Like the BizCon thing didn’t start until my early thirties when the business expo didn’t start till my early thirties. And it’s our 10-year anniversary this year in producing these events.
Jill: Wow. Congrats.
John: Yeah, it’s a bit of a milestone still feels like yesterday, but a bit of a milestone. I think that just goes to show that it is working and it’s helping people. And that’s always good. But it’s just searching for this thing, searching for this thing and happened by accident.
A buddy of mine. Was working for a different events company and they were doing some trade shows and just small time, little, tiny sorts of shows in these different markets and he needed a ride one day. So, I went to pick him up and I was walking this show, and I said, hey, man. This is something, this could be something, but this is really poorly executed. If this was done this would be really good for people. So I can’t say it was solely my idea to produce this type of event. I was inspired. But we produced our 1st show in Hamilton back in 2014 under a different name.
I was working with another company at that time, but we put this event together in Hamilton in 2014 was our 1st kick at the can, but we worked really hard at it. It was like, really important. That is a successful. We did pretty well. Just because we had that drive, just young enough to have that drive, right?
And and just not wanting to fail. We put together this event at the Hamilton Convention Center. We had something like, 60, 60 to 70 booths, which we felt was like this huge accomplishment, right? It took us a long time to produce, mind you. Now we’re turning out events every couple of months, but, at that time it took us, six or eight months, something like that, to produce the show.
And by today’s standards it, it wasn’t that big of a hit, but as far as we were concerned, we made it right. We had this event, and we thought enough people came. We were like, oh yeah, we, we were rock stars at that time, and it was just getting through that one first show, but in the spirit of making it up as you go, people were, they were happy enough with the show that they were coming out to us and being like, Hey, good event. Like, when’s the next one? We just made it up on the spot. We’re like, Oh, yeah. It’s an Oakville. It’s in three months from now.
And we just produced an Oakville show in three months and did the same thing. Over and over again is organically put themselves together and here we are 10 years later producing, a similar themed event all centricated around all our pain points as entrepreneurs, finding all the resources that you need for your business and one day under one roof.
Jill: Yeah, no, it’s amazing. So, I just want to go back to what you said about why you started your comment about controlling your own destiny is actually a famous one from Jack Welch. I don’t know if you know that or not. He’s a bit of an idol of mine. Back in my early days, I worked at GE. And his quote was “control your destiny or somebody else will”. And it’s actually guided me a lot in my career, because when I have worked in the corporate space, that quote has come to mind. And it’s you’re letting somebody else control your destiny here. And in doing so your happiness and your passion.
And when you have found something that truly is your calling it, you get lost in it and the joy is evident and it’s not work. It’s tough being an entrepreneur for sure, but when you’re really doing that thing that you have that itch to do, like you said, you didn’t want to work for anyone else. That’s the true mark of an entrepreneur. It’s when you know, you’re meant to do what you’re doing. So, 10 years, that’s amazing. Congrats ,that’s a long way from your first, you said 60 booths. That’s actually pretty good for a first event. Like, how did you go about getting 60 people?
John: That’s incredible figuring it out as you go. Gorilla style. We, employed. Honestly, we had no idea what we were doing really. It’s it was, and I think because of that, because we didn’t really know how to do it, we just worked so hard, right? We woke up first thing in the morning.
We’re like, just pounding the phones with cold calls. We’re getting out to everything we figured we could get out to. We were going out to businesses in person. We were just like we were we were pounding the pavement and it was like, failure was not an option, right? And it was it was strange because it wasn’t real until we started booking a few we and we’re like, acting like we’ve done this for a long time, right? We’re not telling anybody. It’s our first show.
Jill: Hopefully nobody finds out we don’t know what we’re doing.
John: There’s the responsibility to like an ethical entrepreneur, you have to make sure that you deliver what you promise, right? For sure. I can’t say that is the same for everybody out there, it’s important because it’s the only thing that’s going to keep you in business, right?
And the strange thing about it was this idea until we like closed a few clients for the show, booked a few booths and I was like, Oh, we have to do this now. Like we have to put this together. Yeah, exactly. Like we booked a few booths and it’s now we have to make this happen.
And the first few were easy to reach out to because there was no obligation once the obligation was there, it was like really. Imminent that we’ve really put in the work, make sure that’s going to be a success, do everything that we could possibly do to make sure that it was going to be the event that we promised to people.
And, at the time we just didn’t have the recipe, right? Like we just, we didn’t, we’ve been perfecting this recipe for 10 years. We still don’t have it like perfect, right? We’re still tweaking this and changing this. And doing different things and keeping up with what’s new and innovative to try and take it to the next level.
So always improving. But at the time, like we didn’t have. Any of the ingredients for the recipe, right? We’re making it up as we go. But that being said I think just putting in that work and guerrilla marketing and just the will, the unwillingness to fail was what was, what really made it. And that’s how that, that’s how we were able to put it together.
Jill: A lot of entrepreneurs have that, what they call grit resilience, to just not accept failure and just keep going. And I think you have to have that to be an entrepreneur. Like it’s a tough gig. It really is. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing event management or, building a tech platform like ProcureHub, it is like gorilla marketing really resonates with me because for a long time, when we launched ProcureHub, we were doing all of the marketing and outreach and, email marketing, social media, marketing, event management, but we’ve just recently realized that we need to get like down into the gorilla. The gorilla approach, like one on one having conversations, making phone calls, setting up meetings, things that don’t necessarily scale when you’re large, but things you need to do, like you did when you started your first show and then your second show.
So, 10 years later, you’ve been through some, I’m sure challenging times. So, I’m going to ask you what has been the most challenging? And I bet the pandemic must’ve been. Hugely challenging for you, or maybe I’m wrong. Tell me about, what has been for you that thing that you’re most like holy crap.
John: It’s a bit of a hard one to talk about. The pandemic was challenging, but it was challenging in the same way that it was challenging for every other event in the world and restaurants and other people. I obviously events were hit the hardest because what were you not allowed to do?
Go to events. So, we were completely shut down for that. But I think the most challenging was for me it was a failed, like a failed. It’s a company that I was working with that and they were producing their own show, like we were producing a show together, so it was two companies and we’re producing a show together. But the sad thing is the person in charge of that company was my best friend at the time. And we were best friends for a long time, and it was going well for a while and then until it wasn’t.
And then it’s, like I say, it’s really challenging, it’s like a marriage in a way. And some of the hardest things that a person can do in their life is get separated in a marriage, right? Yeah. And yeah, I think the biggest the biggest challenge for me was just the breakdown and failure of a partnership.
And I don’t, I still love the guy, and I think I wish him all the best. And, I hope that there’s a, that there’s maybe a future where, we see eye to eye again. But I think it’s like one of those things, right? Sometimes you have to make the hard decisions to grow. And sometimes they’re, it’s not always going to be easy. For me that was the most challenging because of how much it really set things back and when we went in our own directions, it was basically like starting again. The only thing is, you have the, some pieces to that recipe now and it’s, you got some jet fuel, right?
Jill: Yeah. Lessons learned.
John: Yeah. Lessons learned. But you know what I would say is there was extremely challenging as a business, because there were many pain points about that I won’t get into, but I can imagine some people listening out there have may have been in a similar scenario and they can resonate with that.
Jill: Yeah, I actually was myself.
John: Yeah, and whether it’s a spouse that you’re working with, or a friend, or maybe you have a partnership where there’s like a 50-50 percent ownership thankfully, I wasn’t in any of those circumstances. But a lot of the things that a lot of the pain points that people have in those scenarios would mirror what I would have, what I had although it was, extremely difficult and, it was painful and there was, a lot of stress and things centricated around that. It was a huge learning experience. Probably the best. Lesson in business that I was taught because I trailed forward with the lessons learned in a very positive way. And it has really provided me with a lot of growth, has humbled me in many ways but has also made me a better business owner. And it has also made me a better like a better service provider.
Jill: Yeah. It’s reminds me of a story that Denzel Washington talks about when he did his not too recent play I think it was called Fences on Broadway. He talked about how, as a young man, he actually auditioned for a play at that exact same theater and he failed, he saw it as a failure and he didn’t get the part.
But his quote is, “fail forward”. So, he took what they said and he worked on those things that he knew he needed to improve upon. And then, I think it was 20 years later, he’s now headlining a show, a successful award-winning show Fences on Broadway. I think that’s really the story of so many entrepreneurs, is you learn these really tough lessons along the way. And it’s that grit, that determination that you use, and you learn and you improve. And it’s just a continual process. My motto that I sign off at the end of the show is just keep swimming. And that’s what entrepreneurs really have to do right. Just keep swimming. So, let’s switch gears. Thank you for sharing that. That’s I did say I have a similar story, but this show’s all about you. So we’ll talk about that maybe over a glass of wine someday. Let’s switch gears. I want to hear about what the most rewarding experience for you has been being an entrepreneur. What is the thing that really makes your heart sing? What makes you jump out of bed? What is that? That secret exciting thing that just keeps you going.
John: Oh, wow. Jill, that’s a tough one. Cause it’s so many things. It’s just so many. It would be so hard for me to weigh them against each other and say that there’s just this one thing. But I’ll say this, in life, we only live once and how do you want to live? And I’ve chosen to live this way because I just wanted to break the chains that I saw as a child, right? Like I and I’ve seen so many people like and it’s traumatizing, people that work for a company for a long time, like my dad worked for a company for something like 25 years. And making train breaks, it was great, it was like a factory job, right? Good pay, whatever seemed to be stable, was there for a very long time, and he didn’t make it to retirement age. He made it to about like 59, 60 years old, something like that, and they just shut down, closed, that’s it. When you’re 59, 60 years old, what are you going to do? You’ve been doing something for the last 25 to 30 years. Company shuts down, you have no control over it, and it turns your life completely upside down, but not just your life, the life of your entire family.
Jill: Yes, absolutely.
John: And that’s just one of many stories of just the trap that you get put in and, I understand it’s for some people and don’t get me wrong. I’m not putting that down. We need it. And there’s really valuable jobs out there. And people create amazing careers and do much better than many entrepreneurs.
You can work for a big company, do a little, you can work for a small company and do a lot, or you can work as an entrepreneur where all the hats work all the time and maybe not make very little money for a long time until you get it. The choice that I made, to live the entrepreneur life, I could never go back, right? Once you break those chains, and if the entrepreneur life is for you, it’s very difficult to go back. And what sort of gets me up in the morning is thinking about that old John. Before I had a business underneath me where I was looking for that thing, feeling a little trapped, doing jobs here and they’re working for X or Y or Z company. And just not being super happy. What gets me up in the morning is just empowering people to do what I did. They have a dream in mind, or they just started a business, or they’ve been in business for a couple of years, they’re just looking to get it off the ground. They’re looking to be successful in business and find new ways to help make it grow. And if I can help people do that to realize their dreams, that’s what gets me up in the morning because it’s changing lives.
Jill: Yeah it’s amazing because that’s exactly why I’m an entrepreneur. It’s to help other entrepreneurs. And I would say like you, the most amazing thing about being an entrepreneur is the ability to actually affect other people’s lives, to help them, to give them, like you support for them to live out their dreams and in doing so we’re living out our dreams. That’s amazing.
I’m going to, I’m going to take a quick break. And when we get back, I want to dive into some of your insights around how Event Management how live events are bringing back excitement and how it’s a game changer for small and medium sized businesses including ProcureHub. We’ve been privileged to be a part of some of your amazing events. And so, I’d like to dive into it, right after this message.
Jill: Okay, we are back with John Reiser. We’re going to dive into your specialty event management and how that is a game changer for entrepreneurs. So John, tell us a little bit about what you’re doing and how this is helping positively impact entrepreneurs across the GTA.
John: You mean like with BizCon?
Jill: Yeah. Tell us about how BizCon is changing. I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, especially for those in the ProcureHub, they’re always asking about, where do you find these events? What are these events do? Talk about how it’s maybe an untapped area for entrepreneurs to really connect with their customers. I think it’s amazing. The energy is incredible.
John: Yeah. When we first put together these business to business trade shows, the idea between, when we started and the idea now is, it mirrors pretty much the same and that is to create a place where business owners and entrepreneurs can come together and they can find, resources that they might need for their business all in one day, under one roof.
They can connect with like-minded entrepreneurs. And, they can get some education or some inspiration along the way, whether that’s, through just the different people that they meet there or taking in 1 of the, the valuable seminars that that we host at these events, but the reason it’s a game changer is this, especially now because we have so many options as far as connecting with people now we’re in the digital age, right? And it’s so easy to fall back on that kind of digital cushion that we have, right? Oh, I can just connect with people over Facebook or I could just, do some stuff on LinkedIn and yeah, you should, you have to, you got to do those things, right? Everyone’s doing those things, right? And it’s extremely diluted because everyone is doing those things. Like it’s like being in a shoe store in the mall when every other store in the mall is a shoe store. You know what I mean? It’s it’s very easy to do all of those things that you should do, because you have to the thing about live events is it’s a totally different feel. It’s like, when you go to a live event, everyone’s going into that event with an expectation. And that expectation manifests, manifests itself at the event as sort of a precursor to making things happen. So, for us at BizCon, if you think about it this way, if you just think about it on a conscious level, the exhibitors are coming in with the intention to meet with potential new clients. The clients are coming in, like the attendees are coming in with the intention for the most part of meeting potential clients. Potential resources for their business, right? Whether that’s product and service providers are just learning, finding what’s new and innovative in the marketplace. The presenters are coming in with the expectation to deliver knowledge and their expertise.
And because of that intention, when all of these things come together in 1 place, it creates this energy. And this energy is what is the magic of these live events. It’s what makes these live events magic because that intention manifests itself in deals happening, people learning, they’re like, people coming in with an open mind.
The thing about a lot of this social media stuff is it’s very closed minded, right? It’s like back in the day when you were, when you were a kid and you’re watching cartoons, and the commercial comes on we’re not paying attention to that commercial. We don’t care.
We’re going to get a drink from the from the fridge or something like that, we don’t care about that commercial. We just care about the show that we’re watching, but at a live event you care about what’s happening at the event. You’re there with the intention to be at the event for the reasons that the event’s taking place.
Yes so, the energy of that sort of really manifests and those things happening with the expectation that you had going into the show. So as an exhibitor, you’re doing well. You’re live, right? There’s no, you don’t have the opportunity to pre-draft this stuff. You’re going in there with your best foot forward. No one is better able to sell your products and services than you yourself.
Number two as an attendee, you’re coming in and you’re meeting with those people face to face. And it’s human nature that we choose to do business with who we like. It just, that’s just how it is. If I like you better than the next person and you guys are offering the same service, who am I going to do business with? You people tend to like people that they know. Personally, that they’ve met, they’ve had a conversation with our personalities dive together, right? I just like the way you are. That’s going to equate to, a synergistic relationship. You’re going to win their business just off your personality alone. And I think that’s the magic of these events is just that face to face and the intention surrounding it.
Jill: So I can speak from experience that, smaller, medium sized businesses have a marketing strategy. They start off looking at a wide range of channels that they’re going to market through in hopes of getting leads and then eventually customers.
And when we launched ProcureHub, we looked at each channel individually and looked at the performance or what I call the return on the investment. So I’m a consummate entrepreneur. I’m always looking at, what’s the return on the investment of my time. My money entrepreneurs are broke. Every dollar has to go far. And so when we looked at all of these different channels, we looked at, how much is it going to cost me to get one lead? So the cost of acquisition, and if you think about some of the other channels, whether it’s social media, which is really not a direct connection and just incredibly noisy and what you said about intent, right? People are not necessarily intending to go on to LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube or whatever to connect with a person. They’re mostly there for, checking their feeds, the status, what’s happening, updates, interesting articles, entertainment. But when you go to a live event, it’s with what you said, an intent, you’re intending to go there to get information, to connect with service providers or providers or partners or whatever the case may be. And so social media for us, while you said is a requirement, most people have to have a social media presence, but it doesn’t mean that they’re investing heavily in it and then likewise in Canada, email marketing, you can only email market to those people who you have a pre-existing relationship or who has publicly available contact information. You probably would say yourself; I get. Like hundreds of emails from people. And unless the subject doesn’t catch my attention, I ignore it. Versus if you’re at one of your events, somebody walks by and you’re like, hey, how’s it going? How’s the show going? What’s been the most interesting thing you’ve seen here today? What do you do? Tell me about this. So, the noise level, even though your events are noisy and highly energetic, it really enables people to really connect authentically. And then, getting back to that ROI, the cost of acquiring one customer through other channels versus. When I go to event, I generally walk away with at least 20 plus signups on ProcureHub that cost of acquisition in comparison to other channels, whether it’s paid Google advertising or any other channel.
If you just can’t beat it, like you are, you, I think you hit the nail on the head. You’re there. You’ve got an intent. You can’t beat that connection, that authenticity that you get when you’re meeting people face to face and let’s face it. That’s just damn fun. It is so much fun going to your events, meeting people. I love meeting entrepreneurs and hearing their story. People like you, who started out with a dream, didn’t want to be controlled by anybody else, had a dream to control their own destiny.
Jill: So, what other things that should people expect when they go to your events. I want to get into like you said, you have a number of events that are happening every year, but what are some of the things that people can expect if I’m somebody who wants to exhibit at one of your shows, why should they exhibit at your show? What should they expect from, the booth options to the services that you provide for the attendees? Give us a breakdown of what I’ll call it the ROI.
John: On the exhibitor side I don’t think everybody should exhibit at BizCon. You should exhibit at BizCon if your intention is to connect with business owners and entrepreneurs. So we do a really good job of bringing, business owners, executives, entrepreneurs, people who want to be in business. We’ve been perfecting that recipe over the years and connecting with the hubs of business owners and the different markets that we go into to make sure that we’re getting the right attendee through the trade show hall floor. You’re really not going to find Uncle Jim and his family of 4 coming out to, BizCon on a Thursday afternoon because there’s nothing there for them. But what you are going to find is SMEs small to medium enterprise owners that are walking that floor and they’re shopping. They’re looking for solutions for their business. They’re looking for partnerships and connections and like-minded entrepreneurs that they can connect and resonate with. So in short, if you’re looking to connect with small and medium sized business owners, then you should exhibit at BizCon because there’s going to be a lot of them there, multiple hundreds of them there. And it’s a good use of your time. It’s worth your time because it’s not going to take you weeks or days. It happens afternoon to evening. It’s a few hours of your time, but during that time, you’re going to connect with hundreds and hundreds of potential clients that you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to connect with otherwise. So that’s on the exhibitor side of things.
On the attendee side of things, I think we cast a wider net, right? Because on the attendee side of things, you should come to Biz Con if anyone in business should come to Biz Con, had a tagline at the old event. If you’re in business, it’s your business to be here. And that’s really true, if you have a business or you’re looking to be in business, then BizCon is going to be like jet fuel to you. You’re going to come out to the event. The first thing you’re going to notice when you walk in the show is just this massive trade show hall floor, like our events, like our minimum numbers usually are like around 70 exhibitors, between 70 and 100 usually is a nice, a where we round off too. And it’s a wide cross section of business development, product and service providers. And it’s a little bit of everything there and you’ll walk, you’ll look at the floor and you’ll be like, wow, like what’s all this. And you’ll walk the floor, and you’ll meet with service provider or product providers or, just marketing resources or like you, you name it. You’ll probably find it for your business at BizCon. So, whether that’s comparing on services that you’re already receiving for your business or just finding what’s new and different ways that you can explore new verticals in your business, you’ll come to BizCon and you’ll leave BizCon, like feeling ready to take on the world. You’ll be empowered. So, it’ll be worth your time to come out to the show as an attendee, just based on the connections you make. And one of the biggest, best feedback that we get from the attendees is “I wasn’t expecting to meet so and so in person” or I hear stories all the time about how, because we’re 10 years in now, right? So, like we have some regulars that come out to all our shows, right? Yes. And they tell, they tell the stories, and you see them because some of them are grouped together now. Some groups out there that were started at BizCon. But it’s the people say, I’m so glad I went to this event because, they’ve had relationships that they’ve carried forward for many years that have really helped support them and done a lot for them in business. I guess the moral of that story is you never know who you’re going to meet, but if you put yourself in a position to meet the right kind of people that’s a good thing. And BizCon can provide you with that good thing.
Jill: Absolutely. And the other opportunity is for sponsorship as well. So you have a lot of amazing sponsors that are recurring sponsors and you do have a very loyal community that you’ve built. Like a lot of our ProcureHub members are also members or exhibitors or attendees at your show. When we go there, we invariably meet with at least four or five, six procure hub members that are there either exhibiting or. Or attending and then the sponsors that you have as well are pretty amazing. Like you’ve got software, you’ve got professional services, you’ve got financial services, you’ve got banks that I’ve seen there as well. Talk a little bit about sponsorship and what are the benefits of sponsoring and who’s that uniquely for or is it just for everyday businesses? Tell us about sponsorships.
John: Sponsorships are open to anyone who wants to get maximum exposure through our events. And there’s, several levels of sponsorship that people could look into. But I would say that sponsorships are for the companies that really want to make the biggest impact and influence our audience the most. Some of the larger companies are regular sponsors of BizCon for the same reasons that, you’ll see regular sponsors at places like NASCAR or just about that. You go to a regular hockey, game and there’s, there’s always, there’s sponsors for certain things that are always there and it’s more just for that brand presence. It’s just another touch point. It’s just that they want that. They just want to continuously show their brand in the places where their clients might be. So, with BizCon, if you’re, if your clients are small and medium sized business owners, then if you’re the type of company that just wants multiple touch points and to align your brand with that type of thing then sponsoring BizCon is a, a good one for you.
But there are other companies that benefit from sponsoring BizCon in other ways, right? So, if you want to, if, if you’re in growth mode and you’re looking to make the most out of the event I think BizCon sponsorships are extremely reasonable as far as influencing a wide audience of people.
And if you’re looking to make the most out of an event, and you’ve been successful with BizCon in the past, and you’re just looking to take your exposure to the next level usually that’s where our primary sponsors come from. They’ve done a couple booths with BizCon, they’ve found success there, and they’ve said we’d like to sponsor now because it’s already been successful for us, and we just want to make the most out of that success that we’ve had.
Jill: Awesome. There’s a little bit of everything for everyone. And I love that you talked about the audience, right? This is really about small and medium sized businesses and those organizations who service small and medium sized businesses and entrepreneurs. And the energy is incredible. Hard to believe, John, but we actually are out of time. 45 minutes has gone by incredibly fast. But before we do, let’s talk about some of your upcoming events, when they’re happening and where people can go to get more information.
John: So there’s just one left this year. That’s our Hamilton event. So BizCon Hamilton happens November 28. People can go to BizCon.ca to get to register to that event. We will be announcing our 2025 lineup of trade shows in the first week of December. Just a pro tip, we give our best offers of the year at that time. So, between the launch of our events, which is the first week of December to January 1st, we have the most amount of added value and our greatest offers when booking multiple events. So that’s if that’s something that you’re interested in you can go to bizcon. ca or you can just give us a call at 905 581 2512.
Jill: Awesome. So, if you got your marketing budget already set and you are allocating some money, or you should be to do live events event management event marketing, get your tickets early because these are the best deals for BizCon.
John, it’s been a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much for sharing your story, your journey, and a little bit more about BizCon and better events. I really appreciate it. It’s been a pleasure.
John: It’s been a pleasure, Jill. Thanks for having me. Thank you. All right, listeners, thank you so much for joining us today.
Just a reminder, if you are interested in learning a little bit more about ProcureHub, you can join our group of growing entrepreneurs www.procurehub.ca. If you would like more information about The Entrepreneur Show, you can visit us at theentrepreneurshow.com. Or you can send us an email to info at procurepro.ca for now. Until next time, entrepreneurs just keep swimming.