EPMEN2013 - The Recap

May 20, 2013 was certainly another great day of education at EPMEN2013 held at the Holiday Inn and Conference Center in Breinigsville.  Adam Skuba once again did a superb job of organizing this event and his hard work and effort was definitely displayed throughout the day.  The arrangement of guest speakers was second to none, but the overall organization of the day was fantastic.  Although I did not totally understand the event hours change of this event from previous years, it really worked out for the best as the traffic on 22 was totally cleared by the time I left the event. 

EPMEN2013 can best be described in one sentence.  “At the end of the day I was exhausted from information overload”.  All of the presenters did an excellent job in showing prime examples of how to make your business better, improve your sales, improve your profits, increase your social networking ability, develop long lasting business/client relationships, and make and keep satisfied customers.  For the Early Bird cost of $75.00, I can see a return on investment of less than 4 weeks and an increase in sales and profits of at least 40 fold using the things learned in this one day seminar.   

I am going to give a brief overview (and my own opinions) of some of the items covered in this one day educational event.   I can’t give away all of the things learned with detail, as it would not be fair to the people that paid and attended this event.  I will say that if you missed this event, you missed out on at least 8 or 9 gold nuggets that you can apply to your everyday business practices to improve your business.

The day started off with Sonny Ganguly from Wedding Wire.  I always enjoy listening to Sonny because he does what I do, but on a larger scale national level.  Sonny went into detail on the wedding industry past, present, and future.   As always he presented facts, figures, and statistics that you really never think about.  Learning from Sonny will certainly prepare your (and my) business for the future in the Wedding Industry.  Before I left for EPMEN this year, I brought out my notes from the last time I seen Sonny, two years ago.  Every single point he covered in that session two years ago is now visible in the wedding industry.   You can bet I was attentive as can be during his presentation this year.  

Next up was Jeff and Steph Padovani from Book More Brides.  They had an excellent presentation on small changes you can apply throughout your sales booking process that can increase your annual sales and profits.   They presented some very simple techniques using what they call the “Sales Funnel”.  Although I could not pay complete attention to their presentation (one of my database servers crashed and I had to fix it) what I did see was extremely informative and something I can apply starting today.

One of my two favorite presenters of the day was next in the All Star Line up.   Peter Merry from Merry Weddings.  Myself being a former DJ, Peter was always considered one of the industry leaders, so I kind of looked up to him as a mentor throughout my Disc Jockey career.  His presentation did not disappoint.   Although directed at the more “high end” weddings, he provided everyone a way to present their VALUE to potential customers with ways to increase your prices and have your customers pay those prices, instead of going down the street to a guy that is less expensive.  His presentation was not only directed to Disc Jockeys, but to every single category in the wedding Industry.  This presentation was worth the entire cost of admission into EPMEN2013.   

After a nice box lunch provided by EPMEN, we got to hear from Steve Moody, a Disc Jockey from the Baltimore area on how to get to the top of the preferred vendors list of venues.  This was the first time I have ever seen Steve speak and all I can say is WOW.   This was an amazing presentation using real life examples in explaining the characteristics of and dealing with the various personalities of event managers.  This animated presentation gets a two thumbs up in my book.  Although I do not deal with event managers any longer, his presentation can be brought forward to dealing with every day people in your business life.  This presentation was a must see for any wedding professional. 

The presentation of Lorenzo Araneo was the shortest of the day.  Anyone who has ever listened to Lorenzo in other events, knows that using his street smart character, he can fill you in on all of the “how to” for social networking.  He did manage to give some great high level information but his previous presentations got down to the brass tacks with great examples on what to do, what not to do, and most importantly, how to do it.  When Lorenzo had to give up the microphone, it left me a need to know (and hear) more, which he normally provides.  We all love Lorenzo, so hopefully next EPMEN we can get a little more of him. 

The last of the presenters I had seen was Vincent Velasquez & Stratos Doumanis of Hurricane Productions.   They gave some excellent examples on how to use Instagram and social networking in your every day business.  I don’t know a lot about Instagram and because of this portion of the seminar, I am certainly going to look more into it.  As they got into their Q and A it was already ½ hour overtime on the day long seminar and I had other commitments and had to leave, so I did not get to stay around for that portion of it. Needless to say, I was exhausted from the learning at that point.   

Overall it was a fantastic day of education.  Adam Skuba put on a first class show at a great price.  The value of this seminar was unbelievable and I personally cannot wait to put some of the things I learned to practical use in my everyday business life.  Thank you EPMEN for putting this great event on for all of us.  We certainly appreciate all of the efforts.