TED

Pay to be in the right room: $30K of TED tickets, $10-20M of revenue

Andrew Wilkinson's networking philosophy: pay to be in rooms where everyone is pre-vetted as legit. As a small operator doing ~$15-20K/month he spent $10K on a TED ticket against friends' objections; roughly $30K of TED tickets over three years led to $10-20M of revenue across his businesses.

“I paid $10,000 to go to the TED Conference. And all my friends were like, what the hell are you thinking? You're spending all this money on this? I have this whole thing about paying to be in the right room, right? So when you go to TED, it's like a secret club. If you get into TED, every single person that's there is someone interesting. And at the very least, they've paid a lot of money to be there, so they're legit. And being in the room, if you're in the room, everyone goes, "Oh, they're legit too."”

Steal thisSpend real money to get into pre-vetted rooms; being there signals you're legit and the connections compound into revenue.