The girls over at AKMG put together a Meetup202 event for the Los Angeles area.  I have a real great working relationship with my affiliate manager, Eleah Portillo and Amber Paul.  Eleah had this great idea that I should speak at the Meetup202 gathering.  I’m terrified of public speaking, but I agreed to it anyways.  I was worried that I couldn’t find any good material, but I calmed down and decided I would speak on buying banner inventory on websites.  I rehashed the post where I lost $250 on my first media buy and went into more detailed information about what things you need to know before signing an insertion order.  I’ll make another, more detailed post about this in the coming week or two.

Friday

One of the things I always wanted to do was visit Los Angeles, but I have yet to do it.  I was so excited about the trip,  I didn’t get any sleep the night before and I flew out at 5am Friday morning without much hassle.  Once I got there and got my rental car I headed over to the AKMG office in Santa Monica.   Missed an exit or two and ended up East LA.  Oops!  But the trusty iPhone got me where I needed to be.  Once I got there I got to meet the whole AKMG crew and worked out of their offices for a few hours until I could go check into my room over in Marina Del Ray.

Once checked in, I took a desperately needed nap.  The girls with AKMG all had their plans that night and that was fine by me because I had a rental car and I won tickets on Twitter to a Crooked I concert in Pasadena.  I’m a huge fan of Crooked I and he just happened to live in Tulsa for a few years.  I was able to talk to him when he came to Tulsa back in November with his group, Slaughterhouse.  Anyways, after the show was over I got up on stage and was able to chop it up with him for a few years.  This night set the whole weekend off for me.  I knew it was going to be great.  You can see a some footage of the show below.  Too see my cameo, skip to 6:21 in the video.

Saturday

I finally was able to get around Saturday and start getting prepared for Meetup202 LA.  I had to live it up while I was out there so you know I had to eat at In-N-Out Burger.  That’s my favorite place to eat on the west coast.  So, I knew my presentation was drawing near and I was starting to get nervous.  Finally after eating Eleah Portillo came and picked a brother up and took me to Meetup202 LA.  Thank god there was a little bit of alcohol there to calm my nerves.  Good ol’ Lennisse Ambriz,  Amber Paul and Eva knew I was nervous so they had a great idea for all us to take a shot and Lennisse was a little hesitant until Amber gave her a little whisper.  Well, it came time to take a shot and I requested to trade cups with Lennisse and of course she wouldn’t.  Guess who had water and who had liquor.  I politefully informed them that, “You can’t play a player!“  Silly AKMG girls!

I was the first speaker and I spoke on how to buy banner inventory on websites.  I’m not going to get into much detail here because I’ll dedicate a whole blog post to this.  Even though I was fairly nervous, I settled in rather quickly.  After I was done, I had great feedback from a number of guys, which really made me feel like I had accomplished something. I hope everyone that was there was able to take something away from it.

Next up was Jason Akatiff aka Smaxor, the network owner of Ads4Dough and Nana Gilbert from Tracking202.  They were put up there without much notice for a Q&A session.   There were a number of good questions that both were able to answer and some very specific questions that wouldn’t be answered.  For everybody that was there, take a hint!  There’s probably some gold somewhere around those questions.  You just have to figure out the answer!

After Meetup202 we all went out to some restaurant/bar in Venice.  I think it was Hal’s.  There was probably a good 15 of us or so crammed into a corner.  It was a good time to relax and have a couple drinks after the event.  As far as I know, business was on the back burner and we were all out to have fun.  I, personally, was still tired from the night before and was ready to head home, which I did after we finished eating.  Most everybody else went to another bar in Venice called The Brig, I think.  I chunked the deuce and headed home with Eva and Amber.

Sunday

Today was my day to go have fun and go sightseeing.  To start it off I ate at Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles.  Everybody was hating on my picture on Facebook because the fried chicken was smothered in gravy.  Who doesn’t like gravy on their chicken anyways?  Weirdos.  Once I was done eating Eleah Portillo came and picked me up from the hotel and unfortunately for her, she got to drive me all over Southern California. To start out I had her drive me down Wilmington Avenue which is right in the middle of Compton, California.  We proceeded to hit the 710 Freeway down to Long Beach.  We took Ocean Boulevard, which was beautiful, to the Eastside of Long Beach and drove through the heart of it.  Then I had her take me to Inglewood where we drove down Crenshaw and finally hit Slauson and Crenshaw.  After we were tired of seeing all the ghetto parts we decided to liven up the drive and hit Rodeo Drive and took Wilshire over to the Pacific Coast Highway and headed north to Malibu.  We ate at  Dukes, got a table outside and was able to watch the sunset on the Pacific.  We were even lucky enough to watch some dolphins swim by.  Then it was time to head home and crash!

Monday

Monday I was able to get up and head over to the AKMG office for a few hours before my departure.  In those few hours, I was able to get a lot more work than I thought done.  Maybe I need to get a office here in Tulsa, who knows.  Before I knew it, it was time to head home and was ready for it.

Thanks to Steven, the AKMG Girls, Kim, Amber, Eleah and Lennisse for all letting me come out to beautiful Los Angeles, California.  I had a blast!

Any of you guys attending the Meetup202 event this Saturday in SoCal?