A couple of months back I received a chat message from my good friend Jon Goodman. He explained that he was unable to make the trip out to our annual fall seminar here in Massachusetts, and he was hoping that I might be willing to do him a favor...
Jon requested permission to send in a small film team to record a handful of testimonials for his new product, The Online Trainer Academy, on the day of our event. The request made sense - we were expecting to have Eric Cressey, Jordan Syatt and John Romaniello in attendance, and this was a shot at getting all three in front of the camera in a single location on the same day. All three are influencers in the online fitness community, so I get it.
I could have been greedy about it and asked what was in it for me. I could have acted inconvenienced and claimed that the distraction would disrupt the seminar and take the focus away from our team of presenters. Instead, I said: "Hell yes. How can I help?"
I knew that Jon's crew would handle themselves professionally and stay out of our way as we went about hosting our event, so why not do what I can to make his life a little easier?
Things went off without a hitch. We successfully delivered our best reviewed and most attended fall seminar to date, and Jon got some great testimonial videos for his product.
Fast forward three weeks, when another chat message from Jon arrives:
Hey dude. When my guys were at your seminar I asked them to interview attendees to give testimonials for your event and film you a little event trailer. The Dropbox folder below has a few things in it:
- A full event trailer (3 minutes)
- A 30-second 'social media friendly' event trailer
- 5 Testimonial videos
- 6 Short 'Instagram friendly' videos
Hope that this stuff helps with your promotion next year.
Jon didn't need to do any of that, but he did because he knows the value of surprising others with over-delivery. The lesson here is simple: Be generous with your time, your resources, and your attention. If you take a long-game approach to your personal relationships, the good people in this field will find ways to reciprocate.
Check out the great CSP Fall Seminar event recap video Jon’s crew prepared here.
* PS - Jon got all of his great video work done by Justin Ross at www.monkeyreelmedia.com.