Robbie Samuels
multi-passionate entrepreneur (virtual event production, business growth strategy, and in-person networking) at Robbie Samuels LLC
Professional Training and Coaching
Education: Stony Brook University
Philadelphia, PA, USA
Biography
Robbie Samuels is a multi-passionate entrepreneur. He is a keynote speaker, TEDx speaker, and business growth strategy coach who has been recognized as a networking expert by Inc., Harvard Business Review, and Lifehacker. He is also a virtual event design consultant and executive Zoom producer recognized as an industry expert in the field of digital event design by JDC Events.
He works with inspiring entrepreneurial women (and a few awesome entrepreneurial men) in their 50s and beyond, looking to increase their impact and income through new revenue streams, but feeling like they don't have a big enough list to be successful. He helps them discover likely prospects from within their existing network who already know, like, and trust them - and then co-create a successful offer with them.
He also partners with mission-driven organizations to help them host online events with less stress and greater participant engagement. He does this as a Zoom producer, speaker trainer, and virtual emcee.
He is the author of "Small List, Big Results: Launch a Successful Offer No Matter the Size of Your Email List" and "Croissants vs. Bagels: Strategic, Effective, and Inclusive Networking at Conferences."
He has been profiled in several industry magazines including the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Fast Company. He is a Harvard Business Review contributor.
He has been featured in several books including "Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It" by Dorie Clark and "The Connector’s Advantage: 7 Mindsets to Grow Your Influence and Impact" by Michelle Tillis Lederman. He has guest lectured at many leading educational institutions including Harvard University, Brown University, Cornell University, and Northeastern University.
Since 2016, he has hosted the On the Schmooze podcast, which features interviews with successful guests who share their untold stories of leadership and networking. Since March 2020, he has hosted a free weekly #NoMoreBadZoom Virtual Happy Hour.
He is an out transgender dad, married to an amazing cisgender woman, with two young kiddos.
Passion
I love hosting dinner parties, especially gathering folks during a large conference so we can get to know each other on a smaller, more intimate scale. I believe that convening people is my superpower.
Clearly, that sentence was written pre-pandemic - but I still love gathering folks so now I do it via Zoom through hosting weekly and monthly events.
Featured Video
I am willing to travel
More than 100 miles
When it comes to payments
Everything is negotiable
Topics
Origin Story
Prior to the pandemic, I worked for a decade to become well-known and respected as a networking expert. This included offering my signature, Art of the Schmooze talk hundreds of times, launching a podcast about leadership and networking in 2016, publishing a book about networking at conferences in 2017, creating a group coaching program for entrepreneurs in 2018, and doing a TEDx talk about my most memorable networking strategy "croissants vs. bagels" in 2019.
None of the things I was known for mattered as of March 2020. Eye contact, business cards, shaking hands, body language? None of it.
My mantra became, "Show up and add value." That's what I set out to do the week of March 9, 2020. That Thursday I published "9 Ways to Network in a Pandemic" and that Friday, March 13, 2020 I hosted my first virtual happy hour. I wasn't trying to start a new business, I was just trying to show up and add value.
Long story short, eight months later I had built a thriving six-figure company based on all-new revenue streams and had established myself as a virtual event design consultant and executive Zoom producer.
In 2021, I published my second book, "Small List, Big Results: Launch a Successful Offer No Matter the Size of Your Email List." It answers a question I heard a lot in 2020 - "Robbie, how did you do that?"
One of the reasons I was able to so quickly shift? I'm also a business growth strategy coach and during the mass upheaval of 2020, I was coaching a dozen entrepreneurs a week through a year-long program.
By April 15, 2020, I had committed to hosting a free weekly event and announced the pilot of a 4-week program to become more confident and competent in presenting and hosting using Zoom. That happened because in the previous few weeks I had been approached over and over again by people in my network who wanted to "pick my brain" or have a coffee chat to discuss Zoom.
By treating myself like one of my coaching clients, I was able to turn those inquiries into research calls and quickly identify a problem I could solve.
And that's how I became a multi-passionate entrepreneur with three main areas of focus in my business:
- virtual event production and speaker training
- business growth strategy coaching
- in-person networking and speaker training
I share even more of my journey at https://robbiesamuels.com/about
Example talks
Idea to Offer
You have a great idea for a new offer (course, program, mastermind, etc.) and have either been trying to sell it with little success or hesitate to try to sell it. You are concerned that you don't have a big enough list to sell to.
To remedy that, you've been learning about Facebook ads and have thought about hosting a virtual summit (someone told you you can buy a "summit in a box" to make it super easy). The trouble is, these are all promotional efforts that won't work well if what you are promoting isn't what people want to buy.
How do you validate your idea and build an audience before you try to sell?
Robbie's book "Small List, Big Results: Launch a Successful Offer No Matter the Size of Your Email List" provides step-by-step guidance on how to wake up your network to discover likely prospects, co-create the offer with them, and run a pilot to validate your offer.
- Is having a small email list the reason you struggle to find clients for a new offer?
- What is the difference between little "p" and big "P" problems and how is that impacting your ability to sell to likely prospects?
- How do you build an audience before you create an offer? Why is that important?
The session can be one hour to six hours (training or workshop) and participants receive a toolkit filled with resources to help them implement these strategies.
No Room for Bad Zoom
Participants have started to be a lot less forgiving when it comes to "Bad Zoom" and the resulting “Zoom fatigue.” It’s time to think differently. Instead of trying to replicate in-person events, let’s reimagine them to meet the needs of our virtual participants. We have invited Robbie Samuels to share his personal evolution from keynote speaker to virtual event design consultant and executive Zoom producer. What has this skilled facilitator learned since reinventing his business in April 2020 and growing it to a thriving six-figure company in 8 months?
The ingredients and skills necessary for designing an engaging online experience.
The importance of identifying the purpose of your event.
What it means to think cinematic rather than theatrical.
Why it is important to get 5% better every time you host or present an online event.
Inviting vs. Welcoming: Creating a More Inclusive Experience
*Designed for association executives and meeting professionals*
Think back to your first time attending a professional conference. Your experience as a first-timer influenced your perception of the meeting and the host organization. We're all nervous about meeting a large room full of strangers, but many of us worry that we won’t fit in. Sometimes the difference we’re concerned about is obvious and other times it's more subtle. To increase retention, we need to do more than invite diverse participants; we need to welcome them. How well participants are welcomed is a top driver of how likely they are to return in subsequent years. To succeed at this, a host mindset needs to go beyond leaders and becomes a mandate of all members.
Learning outcomes
1. Theorize what is holding their participants back from meeting their networking goals
2. Design breakout spaces to encourage their participants to engage with each other
3. Integrate the importance of having a host mindset into speaker, exhibitor, and volunteer training
4. Role-play body language that increases approachability and ease of navigation in the room
5. Recognize how demographic outliers feel unwelcome when asked curious questions
Art of the Schmooze: Strategic, Effective, and Inclusive Networking
Whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, your impact on the world is directly related to your willingness to build great relationships and act on new opportunities. Do you have a plan for making the most of the opportunities at this event? Not just the content. Connections. Meetings convene industry influencers, newcomers, and everyone in between. Whether it’s your first time attending, or this meeting feels like a reunion, this engaging session will give you the tools and mindset shift to follow through on your networking intentions. Meeting people is why you’re here, right?
Learning outcomes
1. Employ strategy and selectivity when choosing which events to attend
2. Identify how to take advantage of small networking opportunities at events
3. Shift their mindset around relationship-building to begin to notice opportunities in everyday life
4. Adapt body language to increase approachability and ease of navigation in the room
5. Apply graceful exit strategies that continue to build relationships