Rethinking Networking: From Belly-To-Belly To Browser-To-Browser with Chris Lipper and James Prokop

Sick of long flights and awkward trade-show chatter? Chris Lipper and James Prokop share how a mastermind-led community transformed trade shows into high-ROI virtual events that actually feel human.

From early Zoom “booths” to a polished metaverse-style floor, they reveal the systems that help business owners meet the right people, learn faster, and close smarter. The results speak: new clients, nationwide partnerships, and attendees who show up for 10 minutes and stay for hours.

We also hit lessons learned (RIP Lipperville), simple onboarding that calms newbies, and the next frontier—AI-assisted mastermind sessions for sharper feedback.

If you want networking that actually works, this convo is your roadmap. Tune in and register for the next On The Bus virtual conference at onthebus.biz.

Chris Lipper
Business Coaching, Sales Training & Mastermind Programs | Since 2008

Phone: 973-285-3993
Email: chris@onthebus.biz
Website: onthebus.biz
Schedule a Meeting with Chris Lipper

Books:
The Entrepreneur’s Big Book
– Amazon | Audible also in Paperback/Hardcover | Kindle | Audiobook

 The On The Bus™ Sales Training WorkBook
– Amazon | Audible

Please come as my guest, at NO CHARGE, to the December 4th On The Bus™ International Virtual Conference from 2:00 - 6:00 EST, and 11:00 - 3:00 PST. 
Register here: https://onthebus.biz/ivc-signup-q4 

James Prokop
CEO/ Website Designer/ Digital Marketing Specialist Vogue Website Design
Phone: 424-281-9415
Address: 1211 Sunset Plaza Drive, West Hollywood, CA 90069
Email: voguewebsitedesign@gmail.com
Website: www.voguewebsitedesign.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Intros
• 0:37 Chris’s Journey From Inventor To Coach
• 3:34 Why Masterminds Beat One-To-One Coaching
• 7:10 Birth Of The Trade Show And Early Wins
• 11:19 Pivot To Virtual And Zoom Experiments
• 16:20 Enter The Metaverse: Building The Venue
• 21:57 Lessons From Lipperville And Tech Hurdles
• 26:30 Live Walkthrough Of The Virtual Floor
• 31:35 Presentations, Booths, And Navigation Tips

Transcript

Carl: 0:04

Welcome to Communication Connection Community, the Podcasters Podcast. This podcast takes a deep dive into modern-day communication strategies in the podcasting space. We chat with interesting people who make the podcasting and speaking spaces exciting and vibrant. We also dive into the podcasting community with news, updates, latest trends, and topics from this ever-evolving space. Let's dive into today's episode. Well, we have two very special guests today. Our first guest is Chris Lipper, who is an inventor, author, small business coach, and consultant. He runs On the Bus, Small Business Owners Coaching. He has a very interesting story to tell. We're going to find out more about Chris and an event that he runs quarterly, but we have a big one coming up here in December. We're going to talk about that. And also joining us today, we have James Prokop, who is a CEO, business entrepreneur, and web designer with a passion for helping small businesses succeed online. He has the skills and knowledge to create beautiful, functional websites that'll help your business reach its goals. And him and Chris work very hand in hand through something we call on the bus gentlemen. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you.

James : 1:25

Thank you for having us.

Carl: 1:27

James, when you said that you really wanted to get Chris on the show, there was no hesitation at all. I have attended the On the Bus virtual conference that happens quarterly. But before we get to that, Chris, you say you've got one heck of a story. So what is it that led you to this space that we're in now where you have these virtual conferences and all these amazing things that you do under the On the Bus umbrella?

Chris : 1:53

Well, first and foremost, I need to remember, and everybody else needs to remember, that the trade shows are only part of what we do. That, you know, what we have is a community for small business owners. And if you boil it down, I'm really a business coach. But what's spun out of that were the conferences. And we started live. But just to rewind a little bit to let you know what got me here is I used to be a professional inventor. And I was a professional inventor for 15 years and have a dozen different patented products. And I learned a lot about multiple industries because each product was in a different industry, ranging from the pharmaceutical industry to the apparel industry, and so many in between. So I got to learn a little about a lot along the way. And through that journey, I had a coach, which I dreaded, and I had a mastermind group, which I loved. And I learned quickly that entrepreneurs don't do well with one-to-one coaching. We're very good at manipulating the coaches because we're good at manipulating people in general. And the coaches generally are pretty desperate to hold on to the client. So I don't find the one-to-one model works great for entrepreneurs, but mastermind groups are tremendous because we like community and we like the respect we can share with the other entrepreneurs in our groups. And that's why I went that way.

Carl: 3:15

Certainly is an interesting point that you make there. I think the the three of us have all had coaches to know that, and Chris, correct me if I'm wrong here too, that sometimes the coach is also, hey, I didn't do this when I was in business. Maybe you'll do this. It's kind of like you're trying to save people from making mistakes, which is fine. But then we also have coaches who don't really coach. They're just sort of a check-in point. And I would venture to say, and James, I don't know what your experience is, but both are not very effective.

Chris : 3:43

I agree. What we try to do is so we offer our members one-to-one coaching prior to the meeting. So they come with a challenge. They come prepared for each meeting. And the feed I can manipulate the feedback because I facilitate most of our meetings and know where the answer is going to be from the members who's been there and done that. So you don't want the tech spurt response. You don't want somebody who's read something about it. You want somebody who can say, no, no, no, don't do that. I did it that way, and this is why it didn't work out, and this is how I should have done it, or this is what I did do, and it worked out much better. That's a much better response. To learn from others' mistakes is a lot in it more inexpensive than having to make them ourselves. Yeah, no kidding. And actually, sidetrack this book, The Entrepreneur's Big Book. Eleven of us tell our stories in there, and it's primarily about the mistakes we've made with that premise. Shameless promotion for the book, by the way.

Carl: 4:40

No, no, that's good. No, I'm glad you do that. We'll make sure that the link and all of that information is in the show notes after today, by all means for sure, to direct people to that. James, how did you and Chris get connected? What was the connection point for you?

James : 4:52

Well, I think from my um perspective, I went to one of his international virtual conferences and was just in awe by the platform, the metaverse in which it was and how you could navigate. And I've been to traditional trade shows, right? Where there's a lot of setup, there's a lot of backbreaking work. This I thought was an amazing platform because people don't even have to leave their office or leave their house and can attend this and network in a way that is more 2025. And this platform is. And how I connected with Chris is by explaining my business and my need for being open-minded to business coaching for my business, and then also understanding that you know he needed some help with some digital marketing. So that's kind of how our business relationship uh fit.

Chris : 5:45

Actually, it was a step beyond that. So James had come to the conference and it was probably at a busy moment. And I get pulled in a million directions, and there's, you know, it doesn't matter how much tech support we have, it kind of all comes back to me. And James saw this, and when he approached me, he said, you really could use a buffer at these shows. Someone to make sure that everyone's prepared and ready and they're kind of in their seats type of thing. Let me be that person for you. That was a great sales pitch. He had my attention then.

Carl: 6:16

Apparently it worked because he's, you know, you're still there, and you're you're both doing amazing things, by the way. I'm not just blowing smoke and saying that I've been to two of these conferences, I've been to a couple of events, I believe, between conferences, and just really appreciate what the conference brings to people. Let's talk about the conference because really that's what we want to do is to encourage people to check it out. And it's because it's different. It's something that's different. We all know what conferences are, we all know what trade shows are. As James said, they're very backbreaking. You go and do you really get a lot out of them for all the work and that you're putting into them, you know, and that's a metric that only the individual can measure, of course. But let me ask this question, Chris, because you indicated that you shifted from in-person to virtual. Was it a shift because of the pandemic, or did the shift happen even before that? Like, were you recognizing the value of the virtual world before that even all happened?

Chris : 7:16

All right, great question. And I'll two-part it for you. So in 2014, one of our members, I was coaching him, said, trade shows suck. I'm never doing another one. And I looked him in the eye and I said, trade shows don't suck, you suck at doing them. And I'll prove it to you, and we're gonna have a trade show. And he was like, Oh, yeah, when? And it was almost like a dare. And I said, The first Friday in June. I was making it up on the spot. He goes, Where are you gonna do it? I said, uh at a college campus, you know, and that's how it all came together. And I said, But we're gonna use our sales training, which we offer three times a month, and we're gonna offer use it two of the classes to teach you how to get more out of trade shows, and then we'll have a class afterwards to figure out what worked and what didn't. And he took a booth, as did all our other members, and it was a great experience. Before the pandemic, many of our members wanted our virtual bus meetings, which are you know, board meetings, however you want to describe them. We call them bus meetings because we're on the bus to be virtual and not live. We were live, strictly live. And one-to-one, everything was live. Sometimes there'd be two, three people in my waiting room in my office, and they were like, why can't we do this virtually? And I said, Because business is done belly to belly, eyeball to eyeball, and I need to shake your hand, and that's how business is done. And I was wrong. And I've told them all I was wrong, and they were right. Because when the pandemic happened, I remember I shut down our office on March 20th of 2020, and we had just opened new offices. It was heartbreaking, shut them down. I moved from New Jersey up to Woodstock, New York, and we had a June show scheduled that we had to cancel because we couldn't do anything live. And we were always doing them in June and December at that point when we were live. And I figured, all right, we've got to figure out how to do this virtual thing by December. And the first one we did, we did on Zoom. And we stacked 40 breakout rooms. I I was dating someone at the time who was great with Zoom, and she knew how to set up um we made all the the backgrounds look like booths, and we made everybody's back and it was terrific if you had an imagination. It felt like you were at a trade show if you had an imagination. There were really just forty breakout rooms. And then we did one the following March. It was a two-day one. We did an afternoon on a Thursday and a morning on a Friday, and we had traffic from all over the world, and Zoom called me up that Monday, someone from Zoom, and said, What are you guys doing and how are you doing it? Because they must have seen the algorithm spike and we're getting traffic from India and all over the place, night and day. And I I told them and I said, We have another show in June. Why don't you guys speak and sponsor? We'll spotlight you and no charge, but let us thank you for this community, this platform you've provided, the small business owners. And they said, No, thank you. And my feelings got hurt. I was like, What? Are you sure? And they said, Yeah. And so then we figured, all right, let's try the metaverse. And it took a while to find the platform that we're using. Well, we've had a few. I I hired a consultant to help us find a platform that we thought could work. We had some specs we needed. We needed to make sure it was safe. We could get people out if we needed to. We needed to make sure there was video as well as the animation and and some other things. But there were four primary objectives that we wanted met with the metaverse platform. And we did it a few times and it was great. There there were some hiccups. No shows perfect. And live or on virtual. And one time we built a city called Lipperville. My email was the mayor of Lipperville.com. I missed that email address. But we broke the metaverse. Too many people came. We had too much traffic. We had a a city with retail space and conferen and um office space and a trade show floor and a theater district, and it was just too much. If you view the the metaverse as a whole, like OPEC, right? Endless oil forever kind of thing. I know that's not accurate, but endless body of something. Browsers are the nozzle at the tank. And the nozzle's only so big. And the browsers can only handle so much traffic and so many assets. And so we gave up on having our own city and just went back to having the conference floor. And it's fine. It works. The kinks are for the most part out. There's always a problem with someone. There's always one person who has a bad show. And that's the one person I think of the next time, for you know, the whole time in between. And it's generally user error. We do like people to come in using Chrome, so all of our volume levels are the same. If somebody comes in with Safari with their car stereo going on their iPhone, it kind of ruins it for everyone, and we have to kick them out. That's a long-winded answer to your question.

Carl: 12:09

And that's okay. I mean, I think there are definitely some, and I've been through the show a couple of times to know that there are, if you're not tech savvy, if you're coming as a guest, you might have some issues in learning, but you've got a great team that's helping people as they're coming in navigate the controls because we're doing things we haven't done in years, and that's use our keyboards. We're such a mouse-driven world, technologically speaking, or if we're on a tablet, we're using our thumbs all the time. Using a numbers or the arrow keys on your keyboard is just we don't think about that much these days, right? But then also, like you say, Lipperville, by the way. I have to say Lipperville, you gotta have to bring that back at some point. We are we someday, it's on the list. We need to build it first and then say, okay, well, we'll build the conference floor and then we'll build the town of Lipperville. How about that?

Chris : 12:59

Maybe that's the way to do it. That's exactly, yeah. And we want the metaverses to connect to each other, so other metaverse, there's a whole plan in place, but I need technology to catch up and me it to only focus on that for a little while, which I just can't do right.

Carl: 13:12

Yeah. James, from a technological standpoint, because I know obviously the tech is a space that you work in, certainly with web design and all of that. What's your take on the space that Chris has created?

James : 13:24

I think it's uh advanced. I think you know he really knocked it out of the park when he created this metaverse because, like I said, I've been to several trade shows, and I don't have to get into a car, I don't have to sit in three hours worth of traffic, I don't have to get on a flight, and I just have to, you know, look pretty sharp when I show up and articulate. But just the convenience of it and the convenience of getting to meet all of these businesses and these uh small businesses or entrepreneurs and networking with them and bouncing ideas off of them and having this community like Chris Fed that you can be a part of. Chris does an amazing job with his coaching, but then you also get the folks that are on you know your bus and that you're you know bouncing ideas off of and you know, just the whole concept around the metaverse and the coaching and how it all works and fits, it has definitely changed me as a professional and helped me be stronger as a business owner. So I'm grateful for that. And you know, as far as the technological aspect of the metaverse, I mean, there's so many features there's you know that you can use with your booth and talking to people. And I will be also presenting on December 4th, which is our next international virtual conference. And it just has so many dynamic different parts to it that allows people to fit in where they fit. And some people are gonna try to you know navigate the arrow loops on their keyboard and they're gonna talk to a few folks. So last convention that I was at, I brought all my guests around to talk to all the different booth owners because that's how I network. And introducing people, and I'm not just sitting there to you know take up space. I'm there to to network and make sure that people are talking and business is flowing, and that's what the metaverse that Chris has built and provides for us. So it's just a really great space. And you know, he kind of got in on it before anybody else. So I see him as a pioneer in this industry and a leader in this industry. So it's very impressive to it.

Carl: 15:33

I was blown away when I first saw it, and I think that give me your gut feeling on this, either one of you, uh, Chris, maybe it will ask you, but I find the virtual trade show floor versus a real trade show a little bit easier, maybe not technology-wise to approach, but I find it easier to walk up to a booth virtually than I do to walk up to a booth when I'm physically at a trade show.

Chris : 15:58

Yeah, we we have a mask, right? We have a digital mask on. We can be very brave this way. But let's just rewind for a second because I don't want you guys giving me more credit than I deserve. I I did not create the metaverse, I did not create this venue that we're in. I rent the room, basically, and dress it up. And that's fine. You know, we do everything else and we do it well. I don't want to belittle what we do, but I didn't create the platform. I just want to be clear with that. And this is our 28th show coming up, so we are very much a leader in this space. And that was not the plan, but I'm happy to be there and lead the way, you know, and others can learn from our mistakes if they like.

Carl: 16:37

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm I'm certainly glad that you shared that. Why don't we, if you're watching the video version of this, you'll be able to see. Chris is going to share his screen, but why don't we, for those who can't see it, let's just uh walk them through as we're because this will be airing on you know Apple and Spotify and some of the other audio platforms as well. But let's paint the picture in people's minds for what we're doing as we do this.

Chris : 17:00

I also want to bookmark something that James said. He had talked about his bus meeting. We'll come back to that because there's stuff we can do in the metaverse you can't do on Zoom and other platforms. But let's come back to that afterwards. But I'll show you the floor now. So sharing screen. So you should see it now. So this is where people spawn in, and we have six tech support here greeting people because we could get a hundred people at a time spawning in, and they walk up the hall this way, and we assume they'll go straight, but you can go anywhere you want. You can go up the room, ramp there to the presentation room, and look, here's James, and this is James's booth. So, hey James, give us a wave. Say hi. Hello. There you go.

Carl: 17:41

Yeah, so if you're hearing this, obviously it's you know, visuals don't work well on an audio platform, but basically, Chris has entered this digital room and now he's using on his computer, he's using his arrow keys to navigate the floor. By the way, when he walks in, there's a marquee at the top so you can kind of says what it's all about. And then there's individual booths, you can kind of walk around.

Chris : 18:03

And you see the blue line on the floor? Those are speaking zones. So let's go back to James. Let me go backwards. If you hold down the shift button, you can run. So James is standing outside his booth, and he might say something like, Hey Chris, how are you? What are you finding interesting at the show? And we coach them on what to how to have the small talk. And if I wanted to learn more about James and say, Hey, James, so what do you do? He might say, Well, come on into the booth and we can have a talk. So then we go behind the blue line and it turns green. Now we're in a speaking zone. So now we're having a private conversation. So the whole floor doesn't hear what we're saying. So we can talk numbers or you know, whatever. But then I go back outside the booth and I can walk the rest of the floor.

James : 18:44

And also, too, if you click on a lot of these booths, you'll see a video that can play. So it's not disturbing the rest of the metaverse or the conference. If you click on someone's video, then it plays on your screen and you can see that without disturbing anyone else.

Chris : 19:02

Oh, you're talking about the YouTube links. Yeah, we have that too, where you can click on a link and leave the floor uh without leaving the floor, if you know what I mean. And up top, we have presentations. So each of our exhibitors can present, and there's a presentation schedule listed here and other places on the floor, and then we have the presentation rooms up here.

Carl: 19:23

And by the way, this is two levels. If you were thinking of it as a you know in a physical space where you have a trade show on a on a lower level or maybe in a different room, and then basically what Chris has done is navigated up to the top floor or the next floor. How many breakout rooms are up there, Chris? Three?

Chris : 19:40

Yeah, we have three now. We we had to add one at the last show. We were working with two. Now we have three. And the downside to that is there might be two presentations at the same time you want to make. We can't record them. May you flip a coin and go to the one you want.

Carl: 19:54

But the nice thing is if you don't make the presentation, you can still go later on and talk to the individual at the booth. Yes, right? So it's not like you miss completely because everyone who's presenting in that space as a speaker also has a booth, correct?

Chris : 20:10

Correct. And if you notice the back wall, we just opened some more booths. So the show is December 4th, and so there's a whole row back here of available booths. Yep, there's James waving. Very good, James. Thank you. James, you're very good at waving. He's well trained.

Carl: 20:27

He's he's figured out how to wave. He's figured it out. Yeah. So what we're looking at now is a bunch of empty booths, which by the way, one of those booths could be yours. And we'll make sure that we put all of that information in the show notes later so you can connect with Chris and his team to get a booth at the conference. We've talked a lot about the platform, Chris. We've talked about your background. I'd like to be a little bit more emphatic and just say, why should people attend? Why this event? What is it about of all the events I could attend virtual or in person between now and the end of this year? This is being recorded in the fall of 2025. Why should I attend this conference? What do I get out of it as a business owner or as a consumer? What am I going to get out of it?

Chris : 21:11

Well, my first question is, why wouldn't you? Right? It's in-between appointments. You pop in, you pop out. My favorite thing people say is, I'm only staying for 10 minutes. Two hours later, they're still there and they've brought all their appointments with them, you know? You never know who you're going to meet, right? Part of trade shows is creating luck for yourself. Jeannie Asante's done every show we've ever had since we were live, and she always every show she's made a new contact. One of her businesses, she sells solar, and she was in the New York area, but because of our trade show, she met someone and now can do all 50 states. And that was a big connection for her, right? So you never know who you're going to meet if you do trade shows right. And that's why we offered the training. Right.

Carl: 21:55

And thank you so much for sharing that, by the way. I wanted to hear it out of your mouth as opposed to me saying it. I can honestly say, with the two that I have attended, that I have landed probably three or four connections. And of those three or four connections from each one, so eight connections total from the last two events I've been at, two of those people have become clients or network partners in some capacity. That's great. That warms my heart to hear. That to me is a success. And like you say, the convenience of doing it from your office or your home or wherever it is that you're working, you don't have to get dressed, fight traffic, whatever it is to well, maybe get dressed, but you know, you don't have to gus get gussied up to, you know, look all I've got my trade show gear on.

Chris : 22:42

Yeah, and you don't have sore feet and you don't have to lug a booth around or any of that. And what did it cost you to get those four clients? Time.

Carl: 22:51

Yeah. And to your point, Chris, you said 15 minutes, you know, someone that's that's come for 15 minutes. I think I was the first time I was literally there because I had appointments throughout the day. So I came for 15 minutes, met someone, had a follow-up call with them later, but met someone in that 15 minutes, went and did some appointments virtual, of course, and came back. Came back, made another couple of connections, and then at the end of the show, I think is also where the magic happens. I don't know if you want to talk about that or not. But yeah, so from that event alone, popped in, popped out, and again, still made some amazing connections. I wouldn't have met James if I hadn't been at the last show in the fall of 2025. So we wouldn't have made that connection. We've already developed some great rapport there. So you just never know who you're going to meet and what it's going to do. And I think if you look at people at events like this with dollar signs, you're not going to be successful. But if you look at them as it's a connection point, it's a I'm learning, I'm meeting people, that's where I think the magic, in my estimation, happens.

Chris : 23:55

Am I right in saying that? Yeah, it's centers of influence, right? It's tentacles, it's people who can introduce you, the people you want to meet. And good for you. I like the stories that you've told, and I think you did the trade show the right way. You don't need to camp out there for two hours. But you can. You certainly can, but we don't want everybody coming at two o'clock Eastern because then it it clogs everything up. So we don't mind it when people spread it out a little bit.

Carl: 24:21

Right. Let's talk about what happens after, because as I said, I think that's where some of the magic happens. Yes, the trade show is great. The breakout rooms are phenomenal. James and I actually met in one of the breakout rooms, which was great. Or one of the um presentation. I'm calling it a breakout presentation rooms. We didn't have the right terminology here. I I was gonna let it go the first time, not the second.

James : 24:41

Yes, Carl came in in and listened to my entire presentation. I was very impressed that he stayed for the entire thing. And he sat down and uh I bet you learned a lot about web design and digital marketing, didn't you, Carl?

Carl: 24:55

I did, but what's funny was I wasn't even planning on staying. I was just again navigating, and somebody said, I think it was you, James, that said, Oh, this is how you sit down, press this button, and I'm like, okay, I was at and I was planning on getting up and leaving, and you clearly captured my attention enough to stay there the whole time. So thank you for that, and thanks for the connection.

Chris : 25:14

James is great. And by the way, everybody out there should know he did our website on the bus.biz, and James gets all the credit for that. And the blame, but mainly credit.

Carl: 25:23

The credit and the blame. There you go. Okay, so let's talk about the magic after the show because once everything is shut down, the event's not over. But we shut the trade show floor, the breakout rooms are done, and then you invite people in.

Chris : 25:35

So we've done this out 28 times the same way every time, and it started on Zoom. And what we do at the end of the show is we go back to Zoom. And so we ask everybody to leave the floor, and we have a link up top, it says go to, where you can go to our Zoom room. So everybody on the floor, exhibitors and anybody who's there, we chase up to the Zoom room for an hour of networking where people can say who they are, what they do, and we ask them for feedback on the show and what we could do better next time. And we get great advice and great feedback. One we're wrestling with now, and James, maybe you and I should talk about this. I listen to James a lot. He's got great input. And Carl, if you want to give feedback, is not having presentation rooms and letting people present in their booths instead. But I don't know. I I think it's better to have the presentation area, and that's why we're doing it still. But it's come up a couple of times of just letting the presentations happen in the booth. My feeling is people can do whatever they want in their booths. That's true.

Carl: 26:34

So if you're listening to this or watching this, I think you need to come to the event to see what Chris is talking about because it sounds like you're going to continue to do the presentation rooms at least for this go-around.

Chris : 26:47

We're set up for the next show. Yeah. And I I just put the link in the chat to register. Yeah. And it's on our website on thebus.biz.

Carl: 26:54

Yeah. So on the bus.biz, and we'll make sure the link to register is there. But I think that to get a good feel for what Chris and James have been talking about, and I do have an opinion based on in-person trade shows, but I think that if you're hearing this or watching this, come to the event. That's the big thing. But yeah, so my personal opinion is I think they need to be separated. Because if I want to have a conversation with you at your booth, I want to have a conversation with you at your booth. And I don't want to come at the wrong time thinking that there's a presentation. So I and I might have a small window of time to do that. So that's my gut. But I know that other people have different feelings. James, what are your thoughts as we unbundle this together? Who knew we were going to take this time to do that?

James : 27:36

And yes, I mean, I I think you both bring up excellent points. I like the fact that there's presentation space so that you have a chance to really present, share a screen. Some booths don't have that depending on where you come in at. But I mean, some people will gravitate towards the presentation area. Some people, you know, you kind of have to check all the boxes and see how people are going to respond. Some people are going to go to each booth and connect with people. Some people are going to walk around. Some people are going to, you know, connect via LinkedIn. So you really, I mean, there's so many different elements to this amazing international virtual conference that you can participate in with, like I said, without even getting into a car and being in front of all of these decision makers and small business owners. I mean, it's just a really good platform all around.

Chris : 28:26

Some people never leave the presentation area. They never make it down to the floor. They go up there and just bounce from presentation room to presentation room, which I find interesting also.

Carl: 28:35

So there's more than one way to look at this, but the big thing is On the Bus, international virtual conference, 2 til 6 Eastern or 11 til 3 or 11 to 4, I guess it would. No, 11 to 3. That's right. 11 to 3 Pacific. Math is hard.

Chris : 28:49

It's 2 to 5 Eastern with an hour of networking afterwards, or 11 to 3 Pacific with an hour of networking afterwards.

Carl: 28:56

You definitely want to make sure you're there, as I said, if for no other reason, the connections, the connections you're going to make. And again, I can't say this enough. It's not rocket science. I mean, if you're the type of person who is about connecting with people and about making a difference, not just for you, but for the people who you serve, this is a great way to do that. And you will meet some of the most amazing people on the planet. Outside of the planet, because we're in the metaverse. We're in the metaverse. Yeah, we're beyond that. I'm going to give James, I'll give each of you a quick final thought. James, we'll start with you. Quick final thought before we uh wrap things up.

James : 29:29

Yes, we also do have uh training to the metaverse, a link on the website in the footer of every page. So if you need extra training on that, but overall, I do encourage everybody that's a small business owner to attend. Bring a colleague, bring a friend with you. And like I said, we have the link to register uh in the podcast notes. So you can do that or go to on the bus.biz and register there and um just have a really good time and um network and increase your um network. And who knows, maybe you even might sign up with On the Bus and Chris's business coaching.

Carl: 30:05

All right. Excellent. And we should mention, by the way, this is a free event. If you're a vendor, different story. But as an attendee, you can come for free. So if you're wondering, can I afford this? Yes. You can't not afford it. I guess that's the only way to put it. Chris, I'll give you the final thought.

Chris : 30:21

I have two thoughts. One is every Monday we have a networking group on the floor so people can practice. They can dress up their avatar, they can get used to using it. There's no charge. Come, it's 12 o'clock Pacific time, 3 o'clock Eastern, and experience it. Then you're ready to go for showtime on December 4th. James brought up a point earlier that I wanted to go back to. But we don't use Zoom anymore. We're now using the metaverse. And the reason is we have an advantage tool in the Metaverse, and we can invite an AI bot into the meeting with us. And I can upload data on each member into the bot, and we're developing this platform. So now the feedback doesn't just come from the seven other owners in your group, but also an AI bot. And it's fascinating because it gets to know the owners and the personalities and the numbers. And it's just very interesting where this whole thing's evolving to. Wow.

Carl: 31:32

Fascinating. Again, we're going to put the links for Chris and James, and of course, on the bus, December 4th, International Virtual Conference, 2 to 6 or 11 to 3, if you're in Pacific time zone. Gentlemen, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you. Thank you for having us. And hey, thank you for being a part of the show today. So glad you could join us. Believe it or not, I can't work this magic by myself. So thanks to my amazing team, our audio engineer Dom Carillo, our sonic grinding genius Kenton Dolborowski, and the person who works the arms. All of our arms, actually, our project manager and my trusty assistant Julovell Tiongco, known to us here simply as July. If you like what you heard today, let us know. You can leave us a comment or review or even send us a voice note. And if you really liked it, we hope you'll share it with your friends and your colleagues. If you don't like what you heard today, well, please feel free to share it with your enemies. And if you know of someone who would make a great guest on the show, let us know about it. You can get in touch with us by going to our show notes where all of our connection points are there, including the links to our website, LinkedIn, and Facebook as well. And if you're ready to be a guest on podcasts, or even start your own show, let's have a conversation. We'll show you the simplest way to get into the podcasting space and rock it. Because after all, we're Podcast Solutions Made Simple. Catch again next time.