Imagine putting on a 1500 person conference like Podfest Expo, where you can learn how to make your business better, network with others, and get ideas of how to reach more people. That is what Chris Krimitsos has done for years. Creating large event conferences connecting people and to help them get better.
Chris Krimitsos is the founder of Podfest, a podcasting conference. Chris has also written books and run several businesses.
He has great stories about business, and he is a normal person, just like us. Like Chris, you can be successfully unemployed.
Chris Krimitsos became successfully unemployed through building communities
Chris is in the promotions business, but he is really in the community building business. He uses events to build community.
People buy tickets to his events, he has sponsors that buy trade show booths, and he has back end up sells.
Tell us about the business model of connecting people through events.
If you want to be successful when building these events, you need to really care about people.
There are some people in the business who are slimy, but those who have long-term growth care about their community and provide for their needs through education, collaboration, and connectivity.
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People go to events for a couple of reasons. If it is a subject matter, they go for education, but they keep coming back for the community.
If you can collaborate and connect that community, they will keep coming back and they will bring their friends. You want word of mouth, because that is the cheapest and best way to go.
It’s all about bringing the right people together, negotiating with the hotels, having great deals with audio/visual companies, etc.
At the end of the day it is all about education, collaboration, and connectivity.
Talk to us about Podfest. That is a big event. Tell us about that process and how that went, and also how you got your wife to go along with it.
Chris has done 2,000 events in the Tampa Bay Area, and that experience built the muscle of doing local events.
Podfest is held in Orlando. He is signing sometimes $250,000 or $500,000 guarantees that he will provide for hoteling and it is a lot of risk. He built that muscle to understand that he could bring the people in.
Podfest started with 100 people. It then went to 181, then 373, 496, last year 975, and next year it will be close to 2,000, if not more.
Chris wrote a book last year called “Start Ugly”. It isn’t start ugly and stay ugly. You need to start ugly and perfectly execute as you go along. Make your mistakes up front and learn from them.
Talk to us about multiple streams of income.
Chris is a big proponent of mastering one stream of income first. Once you have it, you don’t want that stream to be a single point of failure. You want to diversify that stream of income into other things that can help you.
Chris has made a documentary film, wrote a book, he does speaking, and he has events.
His brand is to facilitate greatness through channels of business through his various projects. It is to facilitate people to break through and find greatness.
His book is a stream of income. A lot of people told him he couldn’t make money on a book. If you are going to write a book, put some effort into it.
The book is his newest stream of income, and it is the easiest. He created it once and now every month he gets a decent continuity check for the royalties on it.
He didn’t make money on the documentary, but it did place him as a thought leader within his industry, which helped him with other things.
For Podfest, he has ticket sales, trade show sales, and he will always have a backend sale. For the next Podfest, he will be selling another event called Live Event Profits for people that want to learn how to do live events but don’t want to take on the risk he has taken on.
Chris also does consulting. He consults on one or two events, he charges premiums that start at $25,000 or more, and he doesn’t pick up a lot of them, because he doesn’t want a lot of them.
It is an extra stream of income that he is uniquely qualified to do and it is easy for him, because he has a team.
Watch the entire large event interview here:
What do you think about your time now from being an employee to now being successfully unemployed? How do you manage your time?
Chris had a period of time a couple of years ago, where he had six months and he didn’t have to do anything. That doesn’t work for him. He needs to be active business wise, or he gets himself in trouble, in that he has too much time to do nothing.
Chris’s newest Director of Operations has the job of making sure he is consistently booked up with at least eight to ten appointments a day.
He’s shortened the calls, so he can get more done.
During his off time, he takes on consulting projects, because it keeps his juices flowing.
He is a big proponent of spend or be spent. He could be lazy, but he needs to be productive.
His book was born out of not having anything to do. It was years in the making, but he actually had the time to write it.
He recommends taking the downtime and thinking about what else in your life you want to accomplish and how you can grow your river.
Is there anything that can be a side project that will help your river grow, or a hobby that you enjoy doing, now that you have the freedom to do so.
Chris likes parrots, so he goes to bird parks. In the near future, he is setting up a parrot rescue. That is a hobby, but he won’t allow that to happen for a few years, because Podfest is growing so fast and it needs his attention.
If someone wanted to do a local event, what one piece of advice would you give them?
If you want to do an event, go to meetup.com and post a meetup to get a couple of people together.
Chris has had meetups that were a blast with only two people and then they brought their friends and it grew from there.
He loved doing events and wanted to continue. When podcasting came around, he thought it would be a great opportunity to grow a community with all of the knowledge he has now.
He is grateful he had the opportunity to recognize it when it came across his desk.
With having more time, and wanting to stay busy, how are you giving back to make the world or the people around you better?
Chris has done a lot of charity work in the past. The Children’s Cancer Center used to be his signature charity, because he has a soft spot for kids.
Now to give back, he is part of a local group in Tampa called EO, Entrepreneur’s Organization. He makes sure the board allows the doors to be open to anyone who wants to learn.
Although there are a lot of resources and money, they are allowed to bring in people who don’t have the resources and money to be part of the group and partake in the education that sometimes costs them $10,000 to put on.
It is a big deal for him to allow people from the community to attend. He has had someone who was homeless come in who wanted to learn, and he let him in.
If you were to go back to your younger self and give yourself advice, what would it be?
Take the time to understand strategically how big some of your ideas can be.
When Chris started teaching social media in 2005 and 2006, he thought everyone in every town was doing it. Had he realized back then how big the nuggets were that he had, he would have had an actual conference like Podfest Expo back then.
Although he missed that opportunity, he caught podcasting and YouTube on the upswing.
Don’t restrict your ideas to a geographical area. They can be much bigger.
What tools do you use in your business or life that make you better or more successful?
Chris uses Google Drive and Dropbox and he hires out his weaknesses.
He spends most of the day on the phone.
The Non-Fiction Book That Chris Krimitsos Recommends
The Obstacle is the Way, by Ryan Holiday
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey
The last thing you should know about organizing conferences like Podfest Expo
If you want to bring people together, the key is don’t evaluate big numbers, just evaluate the individuals in front of you that want to be a part of your tribe and build off of that.
His core philosophy is don’t be afraid to start ugly and perfectly execute along the way. Be happy with what is in front of you and build off of that. Don’t worry about what’s not in front of you, it will show up if you are present to what’s in front of you.
How can listeners find Chris Krimitsos of Podfest Expo?
Go to www.ChrisKrimitsos.com
Chris Book: Start Ugly
What Chris was doing before he started Podfest Expo
One of Chris’s first jobs was at Geico Insurance, in Long Island, NY.
At the same time, Chris was a contractor and launched a company on the side, where he did the sales and found a partner to do the work. They did vinyl siding, windows, and roofing.
He was working at Geico and when he was leaving the job, everyone said he would starve in the winter with that business. One employee said he would come back begging for his job. Chris and his partner did one million dollars in sales in 13 months.
Chris loved it, but the fear the employees had was real for them. The guy who said that was so convinced, but Chris wanted to see if he could do it.
Chris and his experience in real estate
At one point, Chris worked for a real estate seminar company and it was a great experience. He learned about live events in a travel setting. In six months, he traveled to about 25 different cities.
At one of his events, a gentleman raised his had and asked, “Who is going to pay for my health insurance?”.
Chris remembers the fear of the man asking the question, and the speaker saying you buy a couple more houses and take care of yourself.
Sometimes we make things real that don’t need to be real.