I'm going to play jazz sax during my webinar tomorrow... good idea or epic fail?

Sounds like a bad idea to me. It's not niche related and sounds a little out there for some jazzing up.

I mean, most people seem to enjoy a little personality showing through, which can easily done by showing some humor, or speaking in a way that reveals your interests, or way of thinking.

But I think the sax idea, which is cool and all, is too far out of left field for it to work effectively for your campaign.

Unless you had a way to integrate your playing along with your script... which sounds unlikely because of your niche.

Idk, it sounds far too dangerous to attempt when weighing the consequences and rewards.

Fail.

Give people what they came to see, not something they have expressed no interest in seeing.

If you go ahead and do it, you might have 90% fewer subscribers after the fact.

If I were on the list, as soon as you started playing, I'd leave.

Hey, if people have signed up and some follow you then why not

You could ask them, during the webinar, People like realism. You will always have mixed answers, but if you want to just ask the audience. I have a feeling you really want to play !

Do it as an intro lol be the first

Samuel

I think you're not thinking in terms of your attendees. What if none of them like sax?

The only way I could think to do something there, is just for a bit of a laugh, play on the spelling mistake... 'Live sex performed in webinar'...

I think that this is something that you could perhaps do on youtube, as you're not taking up peoples time in the same way. They can switch it off if they don't like it, or it might go viral...

Ken I am shocked someone who has been in this business successfully this long would test their subscribers patience implementing your taste on them. It is liken to adding your moral views on your audience. Especially, dealing with people in the financial markets. They have little patience for anything else, but, getting to the money.

If you do it as a "that's all folks, thanks for watching. For those who have time to kill, I'm going to play... watch or don't" type way, that's cool. But if it's a "After I play, you get ___ " type thing, then no.

-G

Just do it at the end of the webinar and then it's no big deal. Those who want to stay and listen can and those who don't can log off. No biggie.

I'd recommend you do it. People should inject their personality (and fun) into things when they can and as long as it's after the content, I don't see how it could be a bad thing at all.

Fail.

I will sign up for a webinar solely for the purpose of furthering my knowledge in an area - my time is precious and I'm sure that's the same for 99% of people...especially if they're learning how to increase their bank accounts.

It's great to give an insight into your personality, likes, interests because it shows your customers that you are human and have interests outside of trading - especially if you know your customer base MAY share your interests - but I think you could do this outside of your webinar.

You could use your extensive experience in jazz as a fantastic intro for an email to your list for example. Something similar to what you wrote here would be great!

Make a video, upload to YouTube and insert a link so they could see you play if they wanted to....then, "this is why I'm celebrating good trading wins and how I did it"...link to sales page

I know you'll be ultra cool in my eyes if I got that email lol.

By the way, I'm a huge jazz fan but if I'm going to a webinar I just want what I went there for and nothing else

If it's at the end, I honestly don't see the problem. Just tell them thanks for coming and it's over, but you're gonna play your sax for fun and play them out.

Hi - thanks for the comments; you all make some great points. And yes that's my approach is at the end of the webinar, I say "ok that's it for our official webinar, thanks so much for being here, see you next week".... and for fun, for those that want to stay around afterwards and talk music/hear it, here's something fun. And then bridge from how music can be like trading, with the need for correct timing and pattern/note/chart recognition, etc.. so it's a bit related.

I would never do something like that in the middle of a content webinar, eg play sax or talk about unrelated stuff; I'm always 110% on topic during the "Main Event"...the reason my webinars are the #1-attended in the trading industry (when I compare to competitor's turnouts), is that I cover a ton of On topic specific content that's best-in-class. I'm just trying to figure out a way to share a personal side of myself with them.

Good idea re youtube videos, I'd done that in earlier years and they had very high view-rates, so I'll bring that back... maybe best to just reference those at the end, vs playing live.. thanks. That's what I like about the community here, is you all have some well thought-out perspectives I wouldn't have thought of.. thanks very much for the candid comments, it helps.

-k

p.s. most of my competitors' trading webinars are boring-as-heck + pitchfests/snoozers.. so I like to differentiate by making mine fast-paced (30 minutes), useful, and much more interesting to my audience... avatar/differentiation; several top IM gurus also play guitar in their videos... amiright? I asked them last week if they'd like to hear me play sax this week, and a huge flood of "yeses" came scrolling in, in the gotowebinar chatbox, fwiw, so that's why I wanted to try it out, after the main event is over. I will add a ppt slide though to clearly mark that "Ok the main event's over now, folks, thanks for being here".. and Then do the sax bit.

I think a few minutes in the intro especially if you can ty it into a story that relates to what you are teaching later or it has some relation to a message somehow or just to crack the ice get them laughing can work. The answer is that it depends. I have have had over 200 people on webinars and seen some do weird things and close fantastic at the end and others follow all "rules" and do horrible. My observation it's about the people who invest the time to attend the presentation and if they feel they are getting value for it, and not just that but are entertained at the same time. So tell stories and break the pattern. People come to these webinars to find something new and you playing your Sax could be that, or it can fail, it all depends how you do it. Good luck.

QUESTION: are you pitching any product/offer at the end of the webinar?

If so, do not play the sax. You do not want to disrupt the sales flow with any distraction (sax). You want them to observe your Call To Action message, not your sax message.

good point about not interrupting sales flow/cta attention... and yes there's always a time limited special offer briefly presented at the end well I'll test it today, webinar starts in less than an hour, report back... should be a fun marketing/jazz experiment. I like to do a lot of embedded NLP/pattern interrupts/mirroring/pacing, so hey playing jazz that'll do it, question is, does it add value/relevance or not. Sent out an email last night telling them I'd be playing today, and a new record for attendance (1,522 registered total, for this morning), so that's encouraging.

Hi Ken:
I think it is a great idea and will help brand you. Talk about jazzing it up. Still, not everyone is like me. I love jazz sax and like most kinds of music. Perhaps you should ask your target audience and do it at least once. If over 90% like it, then go all in.