I was late to a brand trip dinner. Never again.

Google flew me out to this conference. Google Cloud Next. And I made a huge mistake on day one. So I want to talk about what happened, how you can avoid that mistake, and why brand trips like these are so critical when it comes to relationship building and landing future deals with them.

So first of all, why did Google Workspace even fly me out to this? So I run my entire business creator wizard on Google Workspace with Gemini. I have all my employees on it, all my contractors. It's kind of the central hub for everything they do at the business.

And they had a ton of announcements that they released here, including the thing that I'm most excited about is the AI inbox in Gmail. And so there's a ton of events that they invited me to on top of the conference, which was super cool. So the first of which was dinner at this amazing restaurant in the Aria Hotel called Carbone. And so the days started not well.

So I actually brought my wife April along with me to the trip. And a couple hours before we were so salive, I got an alert on my phone that our flight was delayed. And I was like, oh my god, I do not have a lot of time to spare to get to the dinner because if we were coming in, basically the same data was going to be a dinner later that night with the brand, with the agency team, some of the other creators that they had hired to come to this event as well. And I was planning that we would have some time to come to the hotel to freshen up before we went to dinner, but we were basically delayed an hour and a half.

And so the entire flight, I was super stressed out because the first impression that you leave, especially for brands and agencies that you've never met before, is so critical. And I was just like picturing in my mind being late trying to, I'm so sorry, having to make excuses. And so what happened is we landed a little bit early, we raced to, and then everyone has to de-plane and you're just like, come on, right? And so we got off, we found the Uber.

And of course, the Uber pickup ride share was like 15, 20 minutes from where we got off the terminal. We had to wait for the Uber, we got to the hotel, we checked in, we literally had maybe 15 or 20 minutes to like freshen up change, iron my clothes, and then Uber to the restaurant, and mind you, the restaurant is basically the direct middle of the Aria Hotel, the casino. And so we didn't know where it was, we were finding it. So by the time that we got there, we were basically four minutes late.

And that may not sound like a big deal, but I was so upset. I am someone who wants to be punctual all the time. And so when we got into the restaurant, everyone was already sat down, the agency, the brand, and the creators. And so, yeah, it may not seem like a big deal, but this was that they're very first impression of us, was that we relate.

And so this is mistake number one, is always be prompt, always be on time, even if that means maybe coming in on a much earlier flight than you expected, or even the day before, especially if there's any concerns that you have about flight delays, misconnections, a different airports, if it's not a non-stop flight, but the first impression that this brand in this agency has with you is gonna set the tone for the entire relationship. Now I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, right?

The brand, the agency, they were not upset at all, but I have my own standards of how I want to conduct business, and I didn't meet that. And so that was disappointing to me. And so I want to talk about a couple other mistakes that I see people making on these types of brand trips, because not only has my wife April and I been on a bunch of these types of brand trips, but I've also paid creators to go and fly out for opportunities with brands, great content and all that, and I've seen just a ton of bad behaviors.

So I wanna go through some of the top mistakes that I see creators making. So the first is that the creators are not posting in real time at the event. Yeah, they might create a bunch of great content, but they wait until a week or two weeks later to post the content. You have to understand that the brand team, especially if it's a large event like this, they are so eager to be resharing content live, because that's when enthusiasm is highest, that's when there's a lot of eyeballs focus on the event.

Everyone who's not attending is watching the hashtag and they're watching the accounts and seeing what's going on, and feeling full mo to attend next year, and maybe purchase that really bird ticket for next year. And so it's super important, because also how the brand and agency is being measured often has to do with the posts that people are making during the term of the event. So they collect all the posts that all the creators are making, they try to get the analytics, the impressions, the engagement, the comments, and then they have to put together a recap report to their superiors, right?

And so if you are not posting during the days that the event is happening, that's a huge mess. A related mistake is when you do post, you tag the wrong brand handle, or you use the wrong hashtags, or you mischaracterize the features or the announcements that they made. You incorrectly spell the name, or incorrectly demonstrate that the product or something, because that severely reduces the chances that this brand is going to be able to reshare, repost your content. Again, they're so eager for you to share this type of content, but they can't, if you fall on your face and don't adhere to the social guidelines or Google's credit, they shared out this social toolkit that included all the hashtags, and the announcements that they were going to talk about, the sessions that they would love for you to attend, and Google Workspace on Instagram actually shared a bunch of my stories that I shared, which was super cool.

I have a lot of followers on there. Now, this is a critical one. You have to make sure that you make a thank you post on LinkedIn. Why do you do that?

So in addition to sharing that I was at this conference, I tagged everyone from the agency and the brand and thanked them for hosting me. And then guess what happens? Is that those people engage on that post, those people reshare to their network, and I got a bunch of awesome key decision-makers from Google connecting with me on LinkedIn. I'm in their DMs now.

They know who I am. I am super interested in trying to forge a longer term relationship, especially with Google Workspace, because I think there's a huge opportunity for creators who run their own businesses, who have a couple full-time employees and contractors like I do, to also utilize Google Workspace in their workflows. And so I'm super motivated to try to continue this relationship, and you better believe that I'm going to be pitching them a larger partnership after this event goes down.

But had I not done that thank you post, especially on LinkedIn, because again, when you make that post and those people engage on it, it shows up to everyone in their network. That is kind of the secret little hack. Another huge mistake is only showing up to the fun stuff. You don't go to the keynotes that they ask you to.

You don't go to the breakouts. You don't show up to the most important stuff that they're excited about. And you, for example, I have to see this poster over here, Benson, Boone, and Weezer. They have a concert here tonight.

Oh yeah, that's cool, I want to go to that. And so you just basically forget that the brand footed the bill for you to come out here. Now you might be wondering, yeah, but how do you handle the situation where maybe they fly you out, they pay for your travel, pay for your accommodations? But it's a little loose of like, what's up with content are you required to post?

Like maybe that wasn't scoped out before you agreed to come. That's also like a big mistake, is that you absolutely need to get clarity on what the brand is expecting of you, because you never want to get into a situation where they fly you out and they're expecting that you're going to be like, live streaming and doing Instagram stories and posting on every platform and doing a dedicated YouTube video. And that's not in the agreement, but that's just what they assume, maybe based on a phone call that you had with them or something, but again, you never clarified with that, clarified with them.

And then now all the sudden they're all pissed off. And so I really implore you to, even if the brand is being like, oh, no big deal, like make a couple posts or whatever, no, you need to articulate it. Here is how many posts I'm going to do for you. Here's the usage rights that you get with that.

Are you allowing them to reshare it? Are you allowing them to run paid advertising with it? If they download it and try to use for future years, like you need to articulate all this stuff, you need to memorialize all this stuff in an agreement so that there's no misalignment there. And again, the whole goal of these types of events is to reinforce the relationship not sourish.

Now perhaps the biggest mistake is not putting together a post campaign report after the event. Now, I haven't done it yet because I'm still at the event, but what this is going to look like is going to depend based on what you've committed to for that brand, right? So if you did commit to a bunch of posts, you better be sharing all the analytics. If you had people in your DMs asking, inquiring about what happened, I actually have a comment that I'm in a screenshot from my buddy John, Chef John, who went to sponsor games, he commented on my LinkedIn posts.

Basically saying like, I use Google products, but I feel like I could be doing more with that because that's gold. Don't you think the brand team, the agency, would love to see that I'm generating legitimate interests from my audience of people who could become power users of their tool? I could potentially influence other creators in my ecosystem to double down on Google Workspace. And so again, regardless of what they're asking, whether it's the letter of the law of you actually needed to do posts or not, I'm gonna put together a really comprehensive report because again, what do I teach?

The reason that you're doing this is because you're gonna use this as a springboard to pitch a more comprehensive partnership. So that's what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna say this was amazing. I got a ton of ideas about how I could communicate to my audience of creators, of small business owners of entrepreneurs, why they should be using Google Workspace and how it can be powerful for their business, help them make more money, help them grow and so on. And so I guarantee you that none of the other creators that are here are gonna do that, but I am and that's gonna differentiate me.

So the most important thing to remember is that these types of brand trips are auditions. There are auditions for whether the brand wants to deepen their partnership with you. Now I mentioned the importance of putting together a post campaign report. And if you're thinking, I have no idea how to do that.

Make sure to check out this episode right here.