April 29, 2025 • 53 mins
What happens when you quit your bartending job, book the largest event space in Las Vegas, and only sell two tickets? For most, that would signal the end of an entrepreneurial journey—but for Steve Werner, it was just the beginning of a remarkable transformation from failure to seven-figure success.
Steve pulls back the curtain on his journey from working seven days a week in a Vail ski town to building a thriving business helping entrepreneurs craft signature talks, high-converting offers, and emotionally resonant content. The turning point? A Tony Robbins event that forced him to confront the uncomfortable truth about where his life was heading if he continued on the same path.
What sets Steve's story apart is his refreshing approach to failure. Rather than retreating after his disastrous first event, he developed a powerful methodology: "Take action, learn without emotion. Did this work? Did this not work? What can I learn from it?" By removing emotional attachment from his analysis, he could iterate rapidly, holding progressively more successful events and crossing the million-dollar mark within just three years.
For e-commerce entrepreneurs struggling to create emotional connections with "ordinary" products, Steve offers two practical pathways: either align your brand with a meaningful cause (like TOMS Shoes) or incorporate authentic personal storytelling into your marketing. He emphasizes that everyone has a story worth telling—it's about finding the right angle that resonates with your audience.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Steve reveals the dramatic shifts in the post-COVID event landscape. Virtual events have surged in popularity but suffer from abysmal attendance rates, while traditional conferences are struggling as consumers increasingly demand solutions to specific pain points rather than generalized content. This explains why even established events like Traffic and Conversion Summit are canceling shows that would have been considered successful by previous standards.
Ready to transform your message into a movement? Steve's insights will help you build deeper connections with your audience while avoiding the pitfalls that derail most entrepreneurs. The question isn't whether you'll face obstacles—it's whether you'll have the mindset to turn those obstacles into opportunities.
How to connect with Steve:
Website: https://stevenphillipwerner.com/
Steve.coffee.com
Book a call with Steve: https://bookacall.reachingmillions.co/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-phillip-werner/
Podcast: Grow Your Impact, Income & Influence Podcast - [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/grow-your-impact-income-influence/id1532299107]
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenphillipwerner/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SteveWernerStories
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StevenPhillipWerner
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a
show for anyone who wants to betheir own boss.
If you sit in a cubicle everyday and know you are capable of
more, then join us.
This show will help you build abusiness and grow your passive
income streams in just a fewshort hours per day.
And now your hosts, serialentrepreneurs David Shomer and
(00:22):
Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast,
where we dive deep with today'stop entrepreneurs, creators and
business leaders to uncover thereal stories behind their
success.
Today, we've got a powerhouseof a guest joining us Steve
Werner.
Steve is a master at helpingcoaches, consultants and course
(00:44):
creators grow their impact,income and influence by turning
their message into a movement.
With over a decade ofexperience, he's built a
thriving business, helpingentrepreneurs craft powerful
signature talks, high convertingoffers and content that
connects on a deep emotionallevel and content that connects
(01:05):
on a deep emotional level.
He's hosted more than 65 liveevents, spoken on over 250
stages, and his podcast Growyour Impact, income and
Influence has become a go-toresource for heart-centered
entrepreneurs looking to scalewith authenticity.
Whether you're trying to landmore clients, sell out your next
offer or become unforgettableon stage or online, steve brings
(01:28):
the heat, so grab a notebook.
You're going to want to takenotes on this one.
Steve, super excited to haveyou on the show.
Welcome.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Thank you so much, David.
I'm excited to be here.
I know we've got a lot oftopics to dive into.
I know you're a great host, soI'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
a lot of topics to dive into.
I know you're a great host, soI'm excited to be here
Outstanding.
So, to start things off, canyou tell us a little bit?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
about your path in the entrepreneurial world.
Sure, I'll make it brief.
Like most people, I got thishuge vision At the time.
I was working in restaurants.
I lived in Vail, colorado,which is a great place to live.
I love skiing, but I workedseven days a week.
So when you work in a ski town,most times you have two or
(02:12):
three jobs and you fit in anhour or two of skiing where you
can in between jobs and usuallywork out of 130 day season.
You're probably going to worklike stretches of 30, 40 days
straight, maybe a day or two offhere and there, but it's.
It's a grind.
You tell yourself that it'sworth it.
(02:33):
I ended up going to a TonyRobbins event, got super
inspired and had this vision ofyou know, I'm going to live this
laptop lifestyle and I'm goingto go all in.
So I did.
I'm a guy that is not scared totake chances and I definitely
take a lot of action.
So I jumped in.
I quit my job.
I gave them six months notice.
2012 to 2013 season was my lastyear and I went forward.
(02:59):
I quit my job.
I thought I was going to holdlive events.
That's what I wanted to do.
So I booked the largest venuein Las Vegas that I could find,
which at the time was a 2,500person ballroom at Treasure
Island Proceeded to spend allthe money that I had all the
money that was in my retirementaccounts, pretty much everything
(03:21):
trying to hold this event andfailed miserably.
We sold two tickets.
I had to cancel the event.
It was a complete mess, butfrom that I learned a lot of
lessons and we, like, grindedforward.
We'll probably get into this alittle bit later, but I had some
friends that were entrepreneursand they sat me down the day
(03:44):
that I had to cancel that eventand they ask you know, why did
you fail?
What do you need to learn to besuccessful?
Like, where were your errors inthis?
And they they helped me nicelypull back the curtain and see
what I did wrong.
And then they said what are youwilling to do to learn this?
And then they said what are youwilling to do to learn this?
(04:07):
Who do you?
And it goes back to TonyRobbins quote of who do you need
to become to be the life thatyou want to have.
And it's not about making thelife fit me, it's about who do
who do we need to become?
We always need to grow, wealways need to change and, being
honest with that, that then ledto me holding the next event.
The next event was much, muchsmaller 80 people but I was able
(04:31):
to sell that out in 90 days andwe started to make a little bit
of money.
And then, baby steps and what doI need to learn?
Same questions, and just movingforward by 2015, we crossed, I
think.
2015, we crossed 300 K and then2016, we crossed a million
dollar mark and then just keptgrowing.
Um, before long, people werecoming to me asking for help
(04:53):
with events, asking for helpwith their offers, asking for
help filling their events.
And here we are today.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
That's outstanding.
That is outstanding.
I love the, the grinding in aski town, working crazy hours,
crazy schedule.
And because of the title of theshow, I want to dive into your
firing the man moment, themoment that you've realized I'm
doing this, I'm going in to putsix months notice, which is more
(05:20):
than generous, and can you talkabout that, that particular day
?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah, um, I actually have two uh that we'll come to.
I'll do the the ski town onefirst, and then I want to go
back to college, cause I hadthis actually happened um 12
years earlier, 10 years earlier,um, so what happened?
I went to the Tony Robbinsevent and I made this decision
right.
If you've gone to Tony, haveyou gone to a Tony event?
Speaker 2 (05:46):
No, I have not, but I've heard enough stories to
know the power and influencethat he has.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
It totally, totally worth going.
So I went to UPW and he doesthis immersion experience.
It's called the Dickens process.
You can look it up on YouTubeif you want to learn more.
But he basically it's named theDickens process because it's
after the Christmas Carol.
You're visited by three ghostsof your life in the future your
(06:14):
life If you paint the versionthat you want and he does this
really powerful, like probably90 minute group hypnosis,
basically, where you you'vespent the morning drawing out
what your dream life would looklike.
What does that mean to you?
To like?
A lot of people say they want alot of money or they want more
free time.
But what?
What does money really get us?
(06:34):
Money is just a piece of paper.
It's just caught.
What does money really get us?
Well, it gets us.
Maybe it's travel.
Travel and freedom is thebiggest thing for me.
I want to go have a lot ofexperiences.
I want to eat at nicerestaurants.
I want to go to nice cities.
That doesn't mean thateverything has to be first class
.
I enjoy walking off the beatenpath.
If you saw me backpackingEurope, I'm in a dirty T-shirt
(06:57):
because I only packed fiveT-shirts.
I'm in a pair of Costco hikingpants and some Costco hiking
pants and some beat up tennisshoes with a 30 liter backpack.
But I love that stuff.
I also love going, you know, onnice vacations.
I love staying on on cruiseships.
I love going to greatrestaurants.
But I painted all of this.
And then he goes into theDickens process, which is what
(07:19):
does your life look like threeyears from now?
What does your life look like10 years from now?
What does it look like 25 yearsfrom now?
What does your life look like10 years from now?
What does it look like 25 yearsfrom now?
Then he does the exact opposite.
If you stay making thedecisions that you are making
right now and if you're honestwith yourself and you take
responsibility, you are thereason that you are where you
are right now.
You made the decisions,ultimately, to get you here we
(07:41):
can talk about.
Well, there's outside forces.
Somebody told me I need to dosomething.
The end of the day, you areresponsible for your decisions.
So if I made the decisions thatgot me here now and I continue
making those decisions, whatdoes my life look like three
years from now?
What does my life look likefive years, 10 years, 25 years?
Well, so the time that I wentto Tony Robbins I was I think I
was 34.
(08:02):
I went to Tony Robbins I was Ithink I was 34.
And I looked at it and I saidyou know, if I keep on this path
, yeah, I'll live in Vail,colorado.
I'll live here for as long as Ipossibly can.
I'm going to have a bunch ofroommates.
I'm going to work a bunch ofjobs waiting tables.
I might get to do some cooltravel, I'll get to ski some,
(08:25):
but I'm not going to have asolid retirement.
I'm not going to actually livein a house by myself.
Chances of getting marriedmaybe slim to none.
Like it's a ski down.
It's a one girl to about 20guys and they're not thinking
long-term.
Um, that's not nothing wrongwith any of that right.
(08:46):
But I started asking thosequestions and I was like three
years, five years, ten years.
And he does this rubber bandprocess where you've just spent
90 minutes looking at what yourlife could be and then 90
minutes looking at where yourlife is most likely headed, and
the amount of people that breakdown in tears and have strong
emotional response to that ishuge.
(09:09):
And the reason I'm goingthrough all of this is because
you anchor a decision.
We make decisions emotionally.
You anchor decisions on emotionand he has a way of maximizing
your emotion to the point.
I mean you obviously had amoment when you quit your job
and you were like I can't dothis anymore and you had looked
(09:30):
at a future.
But imagine, and you werestrong enough to leave.
So my hat is off to you.
A lot of people have thismoment like they have moments
where they're like I don't wantmy I don't want to work at my
job anymore, I want to dosomething else.
My sister had that for 20 yearsprobably working, before she
finally went out and opened herown business.
The fastest way to get yourselfto go do something is to have a
(09:56):
strong emotional anchor.
So Tony gets you in a strongemotional anchor.
Then, from there, I went back toVail and I looked at it.
So the reason that I gave sixmonths notice I had already
signed in for a winter lease.
I had a great job for a skitown and I said you know what?
I'll stay through the seasonand I'll use this as a runway.
(10:17):
So what did that change in mylife?
I stopped going out to the barafter work.
I went home so I could get upearly and I started spending one
hour a day studying, whetherthat was reading a book,
listening to a podcast, watchingYouTube videos.
This was 2013,.
So it was a different landscapeback then, but I started
spending an hour on personaldevelopment.
I started listening when I wasout skiing.
(10:38):
Instead of listening to musicall the time, I started
listening to personaldevelopment stuff, whether it
was Tony Robbins or Zig Ziglaror a book on tape like audible
was around back then.
So I started listening to stuff.
But that that was like themoment.
So then I went into my boss andI gave my boss the notice and my
boss was both supportive andnot supportive at the same time.
(11:01):
Oh, that's great.
I want you to live your dreams.
That sounds really cool.
And well, we have this nicecareer path laid out for you
here.
If you stay here a little bitlonger, you're going to make a
little bit more money.
You'll probably eventually beable to get a house, you know,
30 miles away, and you'll beable to drive into work every
day.
But you'll be able to like,live in the mountains and blah,
blah, blah.
You'll have retirement.
(11:21):
And I said Nope.
The the thing that rang reallytrue for me, in that my friends
asked me this when the eventwent sideways as well.
There will always be jobsbartending.
There will always be jobs in arestaurant.
I can always go back to that.
But what happens if I lean inand take a chance?
(11:46):
That's the only way that you'regoing to find out if it works,
and the secret is that it willwork as hard as you work.
That sounds very you knowbelongs on a T-shirt or
something, but it's very true.
If you start working atsomething and you say I will
work on this till it issuccessful, chances are you're
(12:06):
going to be successful.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Yeah, absolutely.
I could not agree with thatmore.
And continuing on with yourstory, one of the things that I
think is really awesome aboutyour story is your first
entrepreneurial venture did notgo well and a lot of people
retreat.
They go back to the bartendingjob.
(12:28):
They say this isn't for me, I'mnot cut out for this, I didn't
go to an Ivy League school, Ihave an average IQ.
And they justify their nextstep.
And so walk me through thatFrom a mindset standpoint and
I'm sure that's not the onlyfailure you've had throughout
(12:51):
your career, and I can say thatas an entrepreneur that has a
laundry list of failures.
But what mindset do you need tohave to appropriately handle
failure like you did in yourfirst venture?
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Yeah.
So I'll give a couple cheatsfirst.
I guess Cheats or shortcuts.
There's a book by Carol Dweckthat is called Mindset and I
would recommend that to anybodylistening to the Audible.
Tom Bilyeu does a great podcaston this as well.
I didn't have that mindset atthe time.
(13:28):
I had the mindset of I'm goingto go all in, I'm going to give
this a shot and if I fail I'llcome back to bartending.
Well, fast forward to whathappened with the event.
If you don't know the eventspace, when you sign the
contract, you sign up for a foodand beverage minimum for the
event space and you sign up forwhat's called a room block,
which is a guaranteed number ofhotel rooms that you will be
(13:50):
responsible for.
Well, because I went as big asI possibly could, I had 250
hotel rooms that I wasresponsible for and about I
think it was $50,000 or $60,000in food and beverage minimum.
We're six weeks from the event.
I think I'd had maybe threecalls with the head of events at
(14:12):
Treasure Island.
I had lied through my teeth.
I don't recommend doing that,but I was like fake it till you
make it.
We're going, we're doing.
Well, the website's up.
I'm advertising.
I was burning money.
I had about.
I think I had about 40 or 50 Kin my 401k and then I had about
20 grand saved up in cash andthat I thought that was going to
(14:34):
be enough to last me for twoyears.
That lasted me about fourmonths.
My burn rate was way too high.
I didn't know anything, though.
I was just taking action, whichI still recommend to people.
Take action, because you willlearn very quickly.
Um, but all of this to say, uh,we're now four or four or five
weeks from the event and theevent host calls me up and she
says, hey, uh, we noticed thatyou have not had one single
(14:58):
hotel room of your hotel blockfilled.
What's going on?
I knew the gig was up.
I went in, I sat down with her.
I had to face the music and myfriends to their credit, they
were new friends to me, but theywent with me.
I told them what was going on.
They were entrepreneurs.
They kind of know that it hasups and downs they went with me.
We sat down at a place calledthe frog bar it's in treasure
(15:21):
Island after this and they hadthis discussion with me of, like
, what are you going to do?
And I said well, right now I'vegot ski job offers, I can go
back to Vail, I can go to theseother ski resorts One of them
was up here in Tahoe, where Inow live, I think I could go
back and they said, okay, youcould.
(15:43):
Or what about learning from whatyou did?
How do you learn and iterate?
And this was a lesson that I amstill learning and I'm getting
better at every day, and I thinkit is the core of
entrepreneurship and that istake action, learn without
(16:03):
emotion.
Did this work?
Did this not work?
I'm not going to be emotionallyattached to it.
I don't care what people think.
I don't care what people see.
Did this work or did this not?
What worked in it?
What can I learn from it?
And let's iterate again and thefaster you can remove emotion
and take that process, so thatfirst, that first time.
(16:24):
If we look at it, it took Ithink it was probably six months
from when I left my job tillthe event failed.
The next event took me a 90days and we got that done and I
made about 10 grand.
The next event after that took45 days and then the next event
(16:45):
after that took about the same,but we made more money because I
changed things around.
It's, how fast can you iterate?
And you ask about the mindset.
The mindset is I am not, myfailures, the the challenge that
all of us grow up with,especially in Western world.
Um, I don't know about yourupbringing.
(17:06):
I have friends, um, I havefriends that are like I've.
I've a lot of multiculturalfriends, um, that have it even
worse than I did.
But I was raised that you, youshould be a straight, A student,
you should be doing thesethings correctly, and if you're
not doing it correctly, shame onyou, and that is a personal
failure.
Our parents didn't say that,but those are things that we
(17:28):
learned.
It is not a personal failureunless you own it as a personal
failure.
And it's not a failure alsotill you stop, If you learn from
it and you iterate and you doit again.
Let's just go back to highschool or I don't know, even
like fifth or sixth grade.
If you look at a spelling test,you spelled the word wrong.
(17:51):
Okay, let me try again.
Let me try to sound it out.
Let me think about it Insteadof being right and wrong.
Okay, I spelled it wrong.
How should that be spelled?
Okay, I'm going to practice itNow, I'm spelling it correctly.
And Okay, I'm going to practiceit Now, I'm spelling it
correctly, and you move on right.
That's how you learn.
You shouldn't own the failure.
Instead, you say did I do what?
There's two caveats to this one.
(18:11):
You have to take personalresponsibility.
I am responsible for doing thisthing, for learning from this
and for the actions.
And the second thing is that Iwill have a positive attitude.
I'm not going to yell at people, I'm not going to play the
victim, I'm not going to take itout on people around me and I'm
not going to be emotional.
Okay, did it work?
Did it not work?
What did work?
(18:32):
How do I learn that and how dowe do it again as fast as
possible and have no the balance?
I've had this conversation withsome entrepreneurs.
Sometimes you go down a road,you start climbing a mountain.
I'm going to start a YouTubechannel.
How far do you have to go downbefore you learn?
Is YouTube something I want todo?
(18:53):
Because it takes.
You're going to be at it forprobably a year before you get a
decent amount of subs.
So if you know that going in,okay, I'm going to commit to a
year.
Put a timeframe on it.
I didn't do that in thebeginning, but that's advice
that I give people.
Now I'm going to put atimeframe on it.
Between now and the end of thattimeframe.
(19:13):
I'm going to be unemotional andI'm going to iterate as fast as
I possibly can.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
I like it.
I like it.
One of your comments about theWestern world and the success,
failure and how school systemsare set up as I raise my own
kids, it's something that I havetried to instill in them is
failing is okay as long asyou're learning from it, and I
(19:41):
don't think the first 18 yearsof your life, just like the
traditional upbringing in the US, really sets you up for that
mindset.
It is something that you need todevelop after the fact or after
hours, after school type ofsituation, and so one of the
things that I want to kind ofturn the page and discuss is the
(20:04):
role of emotion, and, as you'reanswering some of those first
questions, you were talkingabout removing emotion when you
are analyzing the outcome.
I also, as I was prepping forthis, listened to a couple of
your podcasts, and you talkabout crafting a message that
appeals to people's emotions,and so you know we are all the
(20:29):
CEOs of our own emotions.
We may not think of it that way, but we are, and so you know,
for entrepreneurs, they'resitting in the seat consciously
thinking I'm the CEO of myemotion.
How do they best navigate ormanage that?
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah, that is a great question.
So there are a couple ofdifferent ways I can talk about
that.
So the first thing that I willsay is, when you start off as an
entrepreneur Alex Ramosi hasthis piece where he talks about
he broke down.
It was him and the guy fromModern Wisdom.
(21:08):
They broke down traits thatthey had seen in successful
entrepreneurs, and two of themare in direct contrast.
One is that I am better thaneverybody else.
I have a secret sauce thatnobody else has else.
I have a secret sauce thatnobody else has.
(21:28):
And the second one is that isin direct opposition but I think
drives people.
A lot is a crippling flaw of I'mnot good enough.
I have to prove myself, and Ithink when we start in business,
we have those two going on.
I have the secret sauce I'mreally good at or I really like
doing, and then we have thisother piece that like drives us.
It's, it's the stick, and Ithink that works, maybe up until
(21:55):
a couple million dollars Mostpeople it's, I would say, like
one to $2 million, and then youhave to switch.
I've seen people that keepgoing in that and they
eventually reach a point wherethey burn out.
And it's, it's burnout becauseyou're.
You will always not be goodenough if you're looking for
reasons to not be good enoughand as the stage gets bigger
that I'm not good enough, weightgets heavier and heavier.
(22:18):
What I think you need to switchto and I mean Tony Robbins said
it in the beginning I rememberhearing people talk about it and
being like, yeah, yeah, that'snice, simon Sinek talks about it
.
Your why, right?
Why are you doing this?
What drives you?
What's your positive?
It's really hard to have thatin the beginning.
I think a lot for people I know.
(22:40):
The first, probably two years Iwas in business I didn't have a
solid why, other than I did notwant to be a bartender, and
that's a difficult thing.
But as you move and as you grow, your whys become a lot clearer
.
I mean, I'm sure when you quitand you started growing your
(23:03):
e-com businesses, you startedbeing able to have more time
with your family, you startedbeing able to teach your kids
different lessons, you startedbeing able to take them
different places and ultimatelyyou started to show them a
different world which you feltdeeply in your core was
worthwhile.
Not only that, but then yourwhole worldview kind of changes,
(23:26):
and the more you can lean intothat, and it's Alex Ramosi has
done this.
I point to him because I thinkhe's a really interesting case
study that is on view for mostpeople to see.
When he started one of his corestories, he built a business up
to a couple million dollars.
Then he got into a DUI head-oncollision that he was lucky to
walk away from.
(23:47):
Why was he drinking?
He was like I was drinking afifth of Jack a day because I
hated my life.
I built up money but I hatedwhat I was doing.
I didn't know how to break outof that.
The key is you have to build,and this is if we go all the way
back to Tony Robbins, where Istarted, I had this life dream
and that dream is allowed tochange, and it did for me as I
(24:08):
got better at business.
But from the CEO standpoint tobring it full circle, back to
your question, the CEO we areultimately in charge of our own
emotions and if we choose tolive in a negative emotion state
, that is our choice.
We have to, and it is difficult.
There are some tactics I cangive you, but we have to change
(24:31):
it to a positive.
I am serving people.
These are the outcomes that I'mgetting for people.
This is what I'm going to focuson, and as you slowly start to
do that, it will actually allowyou to iterate faster, because
you're when you're iteratingslow, it's because you're
emotionally attached to negativeemotions.
What are people going to thinkif I do this wrong?
What if I try this and I failon a big stage?
(24:53):
What, oh my goodness, if I failand I go bankrupt?
What happens?
Throw all that out the windowand go to the positive side, but
it takes a lot to focus on thepositive side and go to the
positive side, but it takes alot to focus on the positive
side Absolutely, and thatshifting why.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
I definitely experienced that myself.
First it was I don't want towork in corporate America, and
then it was I have a team, Iwant to be a great leader and
provide a prosperous life forthem, and then I had kids and I
was married, and that shiftingwhy is critical, and so I really
(25:31):
liked that perspective of whatyou're saying about how
entrepreneurs need to managethat manage the emotions.
And so let's talk about emotionson the other side of things,
and this is to entrepreneursthat are selling things, and one
of the things that I and a lotof people that are tuning in are
(25:55):
in e-commerce, and that issometimes a nameless, faceless
exchange.
Sometimes a nameless, facelessexchange, I would say,
especially on Amazon, where youhave pictures and a video to
communicate with that customer,but you're limited.
And so I'd like to talk aboutthe appealing to the emotions.
(26:17):
And one thing I'll mention andI experienced this too if I was
selling, say, prosthetic legsfor children, boy, do you have a
great story there.
But a lot of people don't havethat type of company.
They're selling practicalproducts that are useful, but
not necessarily things that arelife-changing, and I know this
(26:39):
is something that I've struggledwith is creating a compelling
message that appeals to people'semotions on, say, a product
like a dog collar, or you knowwhat I mean, and so can you
speak to that.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
I mean, I can give you my best.
I'm not an e-com, but I cangive you the two things that I
would say.
The first thing is your brand.
What comes to mind for me isthere's two.
One is like Tom's If you give aportion to something that you
care about and you make thatknown in your messaging, people
(27:14):
like that.
People also like there are somepeople on Amazon that I've seen
do this Well.
They sell based on a personalbrand.
They put a little bit ofpersonality.
Um, there were t-shirts thatI've seen do this well.
They sell based on a personalbrand.
They put a little bit ofpersonality.
There were t-shirts that I waslooking at.
Actually, this is great.
If you travel a lot, you'regoing to want to buy.
It's a specific kind of woolthat does not need washed very
(27:36):
often.
It's very light.
It breathes really well.
I can't remember the name of it.
It starts with an M MarinaSearching.
Yeah, there we go, thank you,um.
So I was searching it.
There's a brand on there andit's a.
It's two brothers talking aboutwhy they built the, the company.
They're putting a personalstory to something that is not.
(27:56):
You could just sell a t-shirt,right.
So that's the first thing, puta little bit of your story in
there, and everybody I hear thiswith people that I build
speeches for all the time Idon't have a story.
Everybody's got a story.
You have kids.
You have a story.
You have a reason of why it'simportant.
You know this, I know you knowthis.
(28:17):
But people out there listeningto this are like I'm just a
normal guy, I'm trying to launchsome products on Amazon.
Well, talk about the journey.
What will you do?
Because your brand issuccessful?
Put something to it.
So that's the first one, and sothe second one.
The first one is the Tom'spiece.
Give away a small fraction to acause that you really care
(28:40):
about.
Don't just pick a cause becauseit's something social that
looks good.
Pick a cause that you careabout.
I was adopted.
I'm adopted from birth.
I give to adoption clinics.
That is something that is verymeaningful to me.
It's part of my story.
It's not necessarily part of myentrepreneurial story, but it's
(29:01):
part of my story and peopleknow that about me, so I talk
about that.
Those are two that you can addthat will give you some
emotional resonance.
There's a one other piece thatI'll talk to here.
It's your own personal.
Why so I if I don't think Icould do e-commerce?
(29:24):
I can't work in front of acomputer forever.
Like doing all that stuff seemsvery hard, but if I needed to,
what I would do is the reasonthat I am doing X thing.
There are things that I don'tlove doing in my business, but
the reason that I'm doing Xthing is because it will impact
people this way, it will impactmy team this way and it will
(29:44):
impact people this way, it willimpact my team this way and it
will impact me this way.
So I start with what's theimpact that's going to have on
my customers, on my audience, onpeople who see me.
I don't love posting on socialmedia.
I left social media for years.
I'm back on social mediabecause somebody at an event
told me I wish I would havefound you six months ago why
(30:07):
aren't you on Facebook?
And like that was a moment Iwasn't real happy with myself.
I was like crap, he's right, Idon't want to be on Facebook.
I don't like taking the time, Idon't like all the energy there
.
One of the things I came upwith for myself was if I'm going
to post on Facebook, I'm goingto make sure that they're
meaningful and that they impactpeople.
They'll either make peoplelaugh, they'll inspire people,
(30:29):
or they will share meaningfulcontent, and that's what I've
tried to do.
But see how that emotion isdifferent than I'm going to post
on social media to blow up mybusiness.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, and that's something
that I run into.
I'm a very private person and Istruggle with that push and
pull of creating a personalbrand and sharing with people
but also keeping that privacy.
(31:06):
And it's a delicate push andpull that I think a lot of
people go through.
But you're back.
You're back on social media andyou've laid out some rules for
yourself.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Yeah, I think it's about having clear boundaries.
I want to talk, because yousaid private person.
I want to share one other storythat I think is really
meaningful.
Around that there's a guy namedLaw Payne.
He's got the number one sellingclick funnels funnel of all
time.
Um, he's one of the biggestpeople in the fitness space but
(31:37):
he has a faceless brand.
He does not put himself or hiswife on his brand and he did for
a while.
Um, he's not.
He doesn't need super private,I mean.
But what he discovered was mybrand will do better without my
face on it because I can marketto a wider group of people.
(32:00):
But then from there, in orderto really grow, he had to go to
a faceless brand.
But where I'm going with thisis he still has brand of values
that are front and center forhis brand and he makes sure that
people know what his brandstands for, even if they don't
(32:21):
know he's the person behind hisbrand.
You know where I'm going to go.
Back to Tom's.
You know what Tom's stands for.
You don't necessarily know theowner of Tom's, you don't know
his or her personal value system, but you know what Tom's stands
for.
So you can build a company.
You can build an e-brandcompany that maybe has a
(32:43):
different value than you.
That's definitely possible.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
I really like that, and those are two really good
examples.
To take a look at Tom's inparticular I'm very familiar
with that.
I have no idea who the CEO is.
However, just the word Tom's, Ican you resonate?
Yes, absolutely Absolutely, andso I think that is a really
good message, especially forpeople that are a little bit
more private and are hesitant onposting or promoting, and so no
(33:12):
, that's great advice.
I want to spend a little bit oftime on live events and
specifically post-COVID liveevents.
What is and you've been around,you saw the pre-COVID and
post-COVID, so what?
To start things off, what'skind of the status of post-COVID
(33:33):
live events?
Are they back?
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Great question.
Yes and no.
People, definitely followingCOVID, wanted to get back out
and meet people.
I think that was.
I mean, we saw like travel gothrough the roof.
Now we've kind of come to aplateau like spike, and now
we're back down to level.
What we've seen in the eventspace is actually there's.
(33:57):
There's a lot of interestingthings.
The first thing is virtualevents have gone through the
roof because so many people gotcomfortable with zoom that they
they say that to event eventhosts.
If you look at pre-eventsurveys, if you look at general
consensus, people say you know,I really want the outcome of the
(34:17):
event, can you do it virtually?
So people have done virtualevents.
From the host standpoint, it ismuch cheaper to hold a virtual
event.
You're going to have someadvertising costs, for sure, but
you're not spending $100,000 ona venue.
You don't have the room blocks,you don't have the food and
beverage.
Now the challenge that we seeis show up rates for virtual
(34:41):
events are abysmal.
You're even with a paid ticketlike a $200 paid ticket to a
virtual event you're going tosee 50 to 60% show up rates on
average.
You're going to see a largeamount of drop off from day one
to day two, you're probablygoing to lose 25% of your
audience.
The people who are attendingare driving, they're on Facebook
, they're at work on their phone, like that is that's virtual
(35:04):
events, live events, what you'reseeing.
It's really interesting.
People do like live events, butyou're having a different way of
selling the ticket to getpeople to live events.
You used to be able to run ads.
You used to be able to emailyour list and sell the ticket to
a live event.
You'd have a 90% 95% show uprate.
That is not the case.
So you're seeing event salesfall off because some people
(35:30):
just won't commit.
They've been to a lot of eventstoo, like the reason if they've
gone to a couple of virtualevents, usually the layout is
very similar.
They kind of know what they'regetting.
So you're seeing sales fall offon live events because of that
and because people don't want totravel like they did pre
COVIDCOVID not for events anyway.
So what we're seeing is,instead of selling directly to a
(35:53):
live event ticket, it worksmuch better to sell something,
whether it's a mini course,whether it's a one-day VIP,
something that comes with thelive event ticket as
implementation.
The second thing is you have towarm people up to get them to
show up.
What that means is you have tohave somebody on your team.
Call them.
You have to do a pre-event.
(36:14):
Where it's a networking event,you get to know everybody.
You have to give them a reasonto show up to the event we have.
Inside of my business we doseven different steps to
maximize show up rates, whetherit's a virtual event or a live
event.
But you have to do that.
The other big change that we'reseeing are you familiar with
(36:34):
traffic and conversion?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Yep, they canceled their event.
Right, they canceled theirevent and they put out a public
statement.
I'm really I my hat is off tothem Like a lot of respect for
putting out a public statementthat says we weren't able to
fulfill on our mission statement, so we're canceling the event.
They were at 800 ticket sales.
Some people would think that'sa successful event.
(36:57):
They're used to having 3,000 to5,000.
Click Funnels I love Russell todeath.
I love the Click Funnelscommunity.
I think it's a good community.
Their goal I believe I heardthat their goal was 7,000 to
8,000 people.
I don't know the event count.
I was there.
I would say maybe 3,500.
(37:18):
Show up rates are down becauseone it costs money, it costs
energy, it costs time.
You're getting on a plane.
People also though the bigchange, the reason that I think
both of those and other eventsare starting to pull back.
People want specific solves tospecific pain points.
(37:39):
You used to see general events.
Fhl, funnel Hacking Live is ageneral event.
We're going to show you theworld of funnels.
That does not solve a specificburning problem for me.
Traffic and conversion samething.
We're going to show you traffic.
We're going to show you someconversion.
General event.
You want your event to solve, Iwould say, three to five
(38:03):
ultra-specific pain points ofyour audience.
This might mean you have asmaller event, which is actually
a win in two different ways.
If ClickFunnels would have donethis and they are moving to
this model Russell kind ofannounced it from stage If you
solve three to five specificpain points, you are going to
have a smaller overall audience,but your audience is going to
(38:24):
be red hot for the solution.
Your sales are going to go upand your event cost.
Russell said Russell also saidthis from Sage their event
budget for FHL this year was $9million.
You think about outlying $9million.
I don't think.
I don't know their salesnumbers, but I don't think he
(38:47):
sold nine million at the event.
I think it was a loss leaderthe old school events.
You look at events pre-COVID.
Russell spent three milliondollars to put on an event and
he sold 12 million at the eventbecause it was ultra specific.
It was how do you build that?
I went to the event in 2017.
It was how do you build that?
(39:07):
I went to the event in 2017.
How do you build a?
We're going to show you threedifferent lead gen funnels that
will turn cold traffic into warmtraffic, into a low ticket
buyer into a high ticket buyer.
We're going to show you theexact funnels and the value
ladder to do that at the event.
That solves a lot of specificpain points Right there.
(39:29):
That got people in.
And then his offer at the event.
It was the first year that heoffered uh to ccx.
It was a 20k offer and he did12 million in sales wow okay
that he did not do that thisyear at fhl.
This year at fhl he had sevendifferent offers that were kind
of all over the place.
They didn't really solveanything specific.
They kind of all over the place.
They didn't really solveanything specific.
(39:50):
They kind of did, but not likethat offer did, and the event
was hey, it's FHL.
That's why you're seeing thoseevents start to dry up and go
away.
I can give more examples, butthat's.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
No, those are the trends that you're talking about
.
It's interesting because on theconsumer side of things I have,
if I think of some of thevirtual events that I've
attended this year, they havebeen very specific.
Uh, problems in problemsolution and I this is probably
one of the first I go to prosperin las vegas every year.
(40:26):
This is the first of the firstI go to Prosper in Las Vegas
every year.
This is the first year I'vechosen not to and it wasn't like
a conscious decision, it wasjust I got the email, I got the
reminder email.
I didn't book the flight andall of a sudden it's coming past
and I'm okay with that, I'm atpeace with that.
(40:50):
And that one was very generallyAmazon.
But had it been lower youradvertising costs and increased
conversions on Amazon orincrease your average cart value
on Amazon, I can kind ofjustify the cost of that.
I'm like, okay, $2,000 to goout to Vegas and I'll definitely
make that up in my business,whereas some of the more general
(41:13):
topics are hard to like.
Immediately make thatconnection on value.
And so you know, for I think alot of service driven agencies
use live events to drum upbusiness and for any of those
people listening.
What do you think the move is?
Is it a virtual event?
(41:34):
Is it a live event?
What would you say?
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Great question and I'll give you a couple different
answers.
So I love that you just laidout you just literally laid out
the buying process that goes onin somebody's head.
You see the email come in andyou're like, even if you've gone
to the event before, yeah, itwas a good time, but is it worth
three or four grand in ticket,travel costs, food, hotel, a
burning need right now, whereasif you solve something specific,
(42:06):
it is.
So there's a couple.
I see if you want to hold a biggeneralized event, you're
either going to have to bringthe cost of the ticket and
travel down or have anindividual.
That something that you can add.
If Russell would have done thisfor FHL, I think it would have
been really powerful.
He made seven different offers,each one of those offers
(42:29):
aligned with a different avatar,different place where somebody
was in that realm.
If he would have built themarketing to specifically
address that and he would havedone a breakout session dealing
with one specific thing.
Because then think about theemail marketing I'm dealing.
There's somebody that I've hada couple phone calls with.
They have an event coming up inSan Diego they're dealing with.
(42:53):
I want to point out one othermistake and trend that I think
is happening right now.
They're dealing with very badsales rate.
This is their fourth yearholding the event.
Last year was their biggest.
Second biggest year, threeyears ago, was their biggest.
Last year came down a littlebit.
This year's fallen off.
And the guy said to me on thecall we have more speakers than
we have ever had.
He thought that was a plus andthen I had the kind of
(43:17):
discussion that we just had.
People do not want topicaldiscussions.
I know if I go to an event thathas 20 speakers, I'm going to
hear 20 different points of viewthat are all surface level.
We are not going deep onanything and I'm probably going
to hear contradictoryinformation.
What I want is a deep dive onhow to do two or three specific
(43:39):
things, solve these specificpain points for me.
And when I told him that, hewas like he said some four
letter words and he was like Ispent $400,000 on speakers and I
was like, yeah, and it'sactually hurting your event
Bringing in outside people.
Event hosts think that because Ibrought in these big names,
(44:03):
people are going to come.
If I want to see insert anyone,I can go to YouTube and watch
their intro level stuff.
Unless it is a deep dive, oneor two days with that person,
it's not worth it.
But this is what worked in thepast and event hosts God love
(44:23):
them, like a lot of people holdevents and they go into it with
we're going to put on this event, it's going to be amazing,
we're throwing some money at it,it's going to work.
You've really got to thinkthrough the strategy.
That's what I do with myclients and I can tell you the
number of people I've dealt withthat have multimillion dollar
budgets and have not thoughtthrough the customer journey of
(44:45):
going back to the emails of wesolve this specific pain point,
here's 10 emails that show howwe do that.
We show customer journey.
We show case studies of that.
We show how the speaker isgoing to do that.
We show how the event's goingto do that that gets people to
buy tickets.
Absolutely, that's missing.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Absolutely and tell me if you agree with this.
But I would say if mastermindswere a publicly traded stock and
you bought them a decade ago,you would be rolling in money
right now.
And I could personally say oneof the things I like about
masterminds is I'm talking toother business owners who I'm
not in competition with and Ilay out very specific problems
(45:24):
that I'm having in my businessand oftentimes they'll say, oh,
I had that too.
Here's specifically how Isolved it, here's the agency
that I used to fix that.
And I really like masterminds.
And as we're talking about this, I'm kind of like realizing why
it's not generalized advice,it's very specific advice and
(45:48):
it's an open form to share veryspecific things and get very
specific instructions onsolutions to problems.
And so would you agree withthat?
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Yeah, absolutely.
I also love masterminds.
I've spent more than $700,000on masterminds over the last 10
years.
I think it is the best way togrow because you get specific
advice from people that are atthe same level or higher than
you.
What's interesting is, eventsare usually what is used to sell
(46:19):
masterminds and because theevents are now going away and
becoming too broad, you'veactually seen masterminds fall
off or they're being solddifferently.
It's such an interesting.
There's a lot of.
There's probably a lot.
I do love masterminds.
I think masterminds are theprobably the best vehicle to
(46:42):
take you from I would say, likea hundred thousand dollars a
year to a couple million,because you can find I can name
just when you said that like Ican think of specific challenges
I had in my business over thelast 10 years.
I can tell you the person thatsolved it for me Because we were
in a mastermind.
I can also say I helped a lotof people.
(47:02):
That is the best possible placeto go to change actions and get
actions to what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Absolutely, absolutely Well, if people are
thinking about hosting a liveevent and want some help, can
you talk about what type ofclients you work with?
Speaker 3 (47:23):
Sure, I've helped people all the way from.
This is my first event.
We don't get involved too manytimes with those people anymore.
First events I would recommendholding 10 to 20 people Small
event.
Don't blow everything on tryingto hold a massive event.
Get 20 people in a room andlearn from that.
(47:43):
From that, um, I would say ouraverage avatar right now is
somewhere between, I would say,50 to 75 people in the room up
to our largest event now hasbeen about 8 000 people.
Um, virtually we've doneanywhere from, I would say, 50
to 75 to, yeah, a couplethousand.
Um, I love taking people ifthey just need help.
(48:06):
I'm seeing the m MC is yoursecret weapon in the room and I
love I'm seeing events.
A good MC does not read off notecards.
I take the time I go throughtheir entire last year's event
so that I know the language.
I do interviews with the avatar, like I want to be able to
speak the language of the people.
The reason the MC works so wellfrom stage in sales is because
(48:28):
they're expecting a pitch fromthe person on stage, like the
guru or the speakers.
The MC is the audience's friend.
I can reframe beliefs.
I can point in new directions.
I can tell the outcome of like.
You just heard somebody speakfor 45 minutes.
If you ask everybody in theaudience what did they share
with you, you're going to get 50different answers at least.
(48:50):
Right.
I can summarize give them themain point that we want them to
have, tie that to the next pieceand then tie that to the offer.
If I do that over and over, itdoes drive buying decisions.
So I will emcee anybody's eventthat I, as long as I feel their
integrity I love.
Emcee anybody's event as longas I feel their integrity I love
emceeing.
If we do strategy, we usuallylike to start three to six
(49:11):
months out and we build out thethings that we've been talking
about.
How do you solve specific painpoints?
How do you sell something at alow ticket price that includes
the ticket?
What is the right thing to sell?
We do all of that with ourcustomers.
We help them get the eventreally dialed in.
We've been able to increasefirst off ticket sales and then,
more importantly, show up rates.
(49:32):
We've been able to move a lotof our show up rates to 90, 95%
through.
We have seven steps that wetake people through how to fill
that event, how to activatepeople, how to get them in the
room, and then, if you do allthat correctly, you have a much
hotter audience in the room.
You'll get higher sales numbers.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Very nice, very nice.
And to all the listeners, we'llpost links to Steve's website
and how to book a call with himin the show notes.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Really quick, really quick.
I'll just throw out If you wantto book a call with me, if you
want to learn more about what wedo, uh, you can go to
stevecoffee.
S, t, e, v, e, dot, c, o, f, f,e.
Uh, that will take you tobasically my link tree.
You can book a call with me.
Uh, we have some free resourcesthere as well.
We have a full website, uh, youcan go to as well.
(50:21):
It's the one uh link down belowin the description.
It's stephenphiliphornercom,but we have case studies on
there, plus the entire buffet ofwhat we do.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Outstanding.
Now, before we wrap up the show, we have something called the
fire round.
This is four questions we askevery guest at the end of the
interview.
Are you ready?
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
All right, what is your favorite book?
Speaker 3 (50:47):
Ooh right now I would say 10X is easier than 2X.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
I'm going to add that to my reading list.
What are your hobbies?
Speaker 3 (50:56):
I like skiing, skiing , snowboarding, I like hiking, I
like international travel and Iplay poker.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Very nice.
What is one thing you do notmiss about working for the man?
Speaker 3 (51:10):
Gosh, just one, I would say a schedule.
I like freedom and autonomy.
I like to build my own scheduleand work on my own terms.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
I definitely agree with that.
And final question what do youthink sets apart successful
entrepreneurs from those whogive up, fail or never get
started?
Speaker 3 (51:32):
Mindset.
You just have to have themindset that, yes, I can do this
and I am not going to stop.
I'm going to keep going, I'mgoing to keep iterating and I'm
going to keep growing.
If you have that mindset, youwill find that you have to
believe that it's possible,possible, and then you have to
take actions to do it.
It goes back to the question Ithink I led with somewhere in
(51:54):
early on, which is who do I needto become to have the life that
I want?
Speaker 2 (51:59):
Very nice, very nice.
Well, steve, this has been anoutstanding interview.
I think we could have gone onfor hours today, but I want to
thank you for your time and lookforward to staying in touch.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Awesome, david, thanks for having me on.
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a
show for anyone who wants to betheir own boss.
If you sit in a cubicle everyday and know you are capable of
more, then join us.
This show will help you build abusiness and grow your passive
income streams in just a fewshort hours per day.
And now your hosts, serialentrepreneurs David Shomer and
(00:22):
Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast,
where we dive deep with today'stop entrepreneurs, creators and
business leaders to uncover thereal stories behind their
success.
Today, we've got a powerhouseof a guest joining us Steve
Werner.
Steve is a master at helpingcoaches, consultants and course
(00:44):
creators grow their impact,income and influence by turning
their message into a movement.
With over a decade ofexperience, he's built a
thriving business, helpingentrepreneurs craft powerful
signature talks, high convertingoffers and content that
connects on a deep emotionallevel and content that connects
(01:05):
on a deep emotional level.
He's hosted more than 65 liveevents, spoken on over 250
stages, and his podcast Growyour Impact, income and
Influence has become a go-toresource for heart-centered
entrepreneurs looking to scalewith authenticity.
Whether you're trying to landmore clients, sell out your next
offer or become unforgettableon stage or online, steve brings
(01:28):
the heat, so grab a notebook.
You're going to want to takenotes on this one.
Steve, super excited to haveyou on the show.
Welcome.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Thank you so much, David.
I'm excited to be here.
I know we've got a lot oftopics to dive into.
I know you're a great host, soI'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
a lot of topics to dive into.
I know you're a great host, soI'm excited to be here
Outstanding.
So, to start things off, canyou tell us a little bit?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
about your path in the entrepreneurial world.
Sure, I'll make it brief.
Like most people, I got thishuge vision At the time.
I was working in restaurants.
I lived in Vail, colorado,which is a great place to live.
I love skiing, but I workedseven days a week.
So when you work in a ski town,most times you have two or
(02:12):
three jobs and you fit in anhour or two of skiing where you
can in between jobs and usuallywork out of 130 day season.
You're probably going to worklike stretches of 30, 40 days
straight, maybe a day or two offhere and there, but it's.
It's a grind.
You tell yourself that it'sworth it.
(02:33):
I ended up going to a TonyRobbins event, got super
inspired and had this vision ofyou know, I'm going to live this
laptop lifestyle and I'm goingto go all in.
So I did.
I'm a guy that is not scared totake chances and I definitely
take a lot of action.
So I jumped in.
I quit my job.
I gave them six months notice.
2012 to 2013 season was my lastyear and I went forward.
(02:59):
I quit my job.
I thought I was going to holdlive events.
That's what I wanted to do.
So I booked the largest venuein Las Vegas that I could find,
which at the time was a 2,500person ballroom at Treasure
Island Proceeded to spend allthe money that I had all the
money that was in my retirementaccounts, pretty much everything
(03:21):
trying to hold this event andfailed miserably.
We sold two tickets.
I had to cancel the event.
It was a complete mess, butfrom that I learned a lot of
lessons and we, like, grindedforward.
We'll probably get into this alittle bit later, but I had some
friends that were entrepreneursand they sat me down the day
(03:44):
that I had to cancel that eventand they ask you know, why did
you fail?
What do you need to learn to besuccessful?
Like, where were your errors inthis?
And they they helped me nicelypull back the curtain and see
what I did wrong.
And then they said what are youwilling to do to learn this?
And then they said what are youwilling to do to learn this?
(04:07):
Who do you?
And it goes back to TonyRobbins quote of who do you need
to become to be the life thatyou want to have.
And it's not about making thelife fit me, it's about who do
who do we need to become?
We always need to grow, wealways need to change and, being
honest with that, that then ledto me holding the next event.
The next event was much, muchsmaller 80 people but I was able
(04:31):
to sell that out in 90 days andwe started to make a little bit
of money.
And then, baby steps and what doI need to learn?
Same questions, and just movingforward by 2015, we crossed, I
think.
2015, we crossed 300 K and then2016, we crossed a million
dollar mark and then just keptgrowing.
Um, before long, people werecoming to me asking for help
(04:53):
with events, asking for helpwith their offers, asking for
help filling their events.
And here we are today.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
That's outstanding.
That is outstanding.
I love the, the grinding in aski town, working crazy hours,
crazy schedule.
And because of the title of theshow, I want to dive into your
firing the man moment, themoment that you've realized I'm
doing this, I'm going in to putsix months notice, which is more
(05:20):
than generous, and can you talkabout that, that particular day
?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah, um, I actually have two uh that we'll come to.
I'll do the the ski town onefirst, and then I want to go
back to college, cause I hadthis actually happened um 12
years earlier, 10 years earlier,um, so what happened?
I went to the Tony Robbinsevent and I made this decision
right.
If you've gone to Tony, haveyou gone to a Tony event?
Speaker 2 (05:46):
No, I have not, but I've heard enough stories to
know the power and influencethat he has.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
It totally, totally worth going.
So I went to UPW and he doesthis immersion experience.
It's called the Dickens process.
You can look it up on YouTubeif you want to learn more.
But he basically it's named theDickens process because it's
after the Christmas Carol.
You're visited by three ghostsof your life in the future your
(06:14):
life If you paint the versionthat you want and he does this
really powerful, like probably90 minute group hypnosis,
basically, where you you'vespent the morning drawing out
what your dream life would looklike.
What does that mean to you?
To like?
A lot of people say they want alot of money or they want more
free time.
But what?
What does money really get us?
(06:34):
Money is just a piece of paper.
It's just caught.
What does money really get us?
Well, it gets us.
Maybe it's travel.
Travel and freedom is thebiggest thing for me.
I want to go have a lot ofexperiences.
I want to eat at nicerestaurants.
I want to go to nice cities.
That doesn't mean thateverything has to be first class
.
I enjoy walking off the beatenpath.
If you saw me backpackingEurope, I'm in a dirty T-shirt
(06:57):
because I only packed fiveT-shirts.
I'm in a pair of Costco hikingpants and some Costco hiking
pants and some beat up tennisshoes with a 30 liter backpack.
But I love that stuff.
I also love going, you know, onnice vacations.
I love staying on on cruiseships.
I love going to greatrestaurants.
But I painted all of this.
And then he goes into theDickens process, which is what
(07:19):
does your life look like threeyears from now?
What does your life look like10 years from now?
What does it look like 25 yearsfrom now?
What does your life look like10 years from now?
What does it look like 25 yearsfrom now?
Then he does the exact opposite.
If you stay making thedecisions that you are making
right now and if you're honestwith yourself and you take
responsibility, you are thereason that you are where you
are right now.
You made the decisions,ultimately, to get you here we
(07:41):
can talk about.
Well, there's outside forces.
Somebody told me I need to dosomething.
The end of the day, you areresponsible for your decisions.
So if I made the decisions thatgot me here now and I continue
making those decisions, whatdoes my life look like three
years from now?
What does my life look likefive years, 10 years, 25 years?
Well, so the time that I wentto Tony Robbins I was I think I
was 34.
(08:02):
I went to Tony Robbins I was Ithink I was 34.
And I looked at it and I saidyou know, if I keep on this path
, yeah, I'll live in Vail,colorado.
I'll live here for as long as Ipossibly can.
I'm going to have a bunch ofroommates.
I'm going to work a bunch ofjobs waiting tables.
I might get to do some cooltravel, I'll get to ski some,
(08:25):
but I'm not going to have asolid retirement.
I'm not going to actually livein a house by myself.
Chances of getting marriedmaybe slim to none.
Like it's a ski down.
It's a one girl to about 20guys and they're not thinking
long-term.
Um, that's not nothing wrongwith any of that right.
(08:46):
But I started asking thosequestions and I was like three
years, five years, ten years.
And he does this rubber bandprocess where you've just spent
90 minutes looking at what yourlife could be and then 90
minutes looking at where yourlife is most likely headed, and
the amount of people that breakdown in tears and have strong
emotional response to that ishuge.
(09:09):
And the reason I'm goingthrough all of this is because
you anchor a decision.
We make decisions emotionally.
You anchor decisions on emotionand he has a way of maximizing
your emotion to the point.
I mean you obviously had amoment when you quit your job
and you were like I can't dothis anymore and you had looked
(09:30):
at a future.
But imagine, and you werestrong enough to leave.
So my hat is off to you.
A lot of people have thismoment like they have moments
where they're like I don't wantmy I don't want to work at my
job anymore, I want to dosomething else.
My sister had that for 20 yearsprobably working, before she
finally went out and opened herown business.
The fastest way to get yourselfto go do something is to have a
(09:56):
strong emotional anchor.
So Tony gets you in a strongemotional anchor.
Then, from there, I went back toVail and I looked at it.
So the reason that I gave sixmonths notice I had already
signed in for a winter lease.
I had a great job for a skitown and I said you know what?
I'll stay through the seasonand I'll use this as a runway.
(10:17):
So what did that change in mylife?
I stopped going out to the barafter work.
I went home so I could get upearly and I started spending one
hour a day studying, whetherthat was reading a book,
listening to a podcast, watchingYouTube videos.
This was 2013,.
So it was a different landscapeback then, but I started
spending an hour on personaldevelopment.
I started listening when I wasout skiing.
(10:38):
Instead of listening to musicall the time, I started
listening to personaldevelopment stuff, whether it
was Tony Robbins or Zig Ziglaror a book on tape like audible
was around back then.
So I started listening to stuff.
But that that was like themoment.
So then I went into my boss andI gave my boss the notice and my
boss was both supportive andnot supportive at the same time.
(11:01):
Oh, that's great.
I want you to live your dreams.
That sounds really cool.
And well, we have this nicecareer path laid out for you
here.
If you stay here a little bitlonger, you're going to make a
little bit more money.
You'll probably eventually beable to get a house, you know,
30 miles away, and you'll beable to drive into work every
day.
But you'll be able to like,live in the mountains and blah,
blah, blah.
You'll have retirement.
(11:21):
And I said Nope.
The the thing that rang reallytrue for me, in that my friends
asked me this when the eventwent sideways as well.
There will always be jobsbartending.
There will always be jobs in arestaurant.
I can always go back to that.
But what happens if I lean inand take a chance?
(11:46):
That's the only way that you'regoing to find out if it works,
and the secret is that it willwork as hard as you work.
That sounds very you knowbelongs on a T-shirt or
something, but it's very true.
If you start working atsomething and you say I will
work on this till it issuccessful, chances are you're
(12:06):
going to be successful.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Yeah, absolutely.
I could not agree with thatmore.
And continuing on with yourstory, one of the things that I
think is really awesome aboutyour story is your first
entrepreneurial venture did notgo well and a lot of people
retreat.
They go back to the bartendingjob.
(12:28):
They say this isn't for me, I'mnot cut out for this, I didn't
go to an Ivy League school, Ihave an average IQ.
And they justify their nextstep.
And so walk me through thatFrom a mindset standpoint and
I'm sure that's not the onlyfailure you've had throughout
(12:51):
your career, and I can say thatas an entrepreneur that has a
laundry list of failures.
But what mindset do you need tohave to appropriately handle
failure like you did in yourfirst venture?
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Yeah.
So I'll give a couple cheatsfirst.
I guess Cheats or shortcuts.
There's a book by Carol Dweckthat is called Mindset and I
would recommend that to anybodylistening to the Audible.
Tom Bilyeu does a great podcaston this as well.
I didn't have that mindset atthe time.
(13:28):
I had the mindset of I'm goingto go all in, I'm going to give
this a shot and if I fail I'llcome back to bartending.
Well, fast forward to whathappened with the event.
If you don't know the eventspace, when you sign the
contract, you sign up for a foodand beverage minimum for the
event space and you sign up forwhat's called a room block,
which is a guaranteed number ofhotel rooms that you will be
(13:50):
responsible for.
Well, because I went as big asI possibly could, I had 250
hotel rooms that I wasresponsible for and about I
think it was $50,000 or $60,000in food and beverage minimum.
We're six weeks from the event.
I think I'd had maybe threecalls with the head of events at
(14:12):
Treasure Island.
I had lied through my teeth.
I don't recommend doing that,but I was like fake it till you
make it.
We're going, we're doing.
Well, the website's up.
I'm advertising.
I was burning money.
I had about.
I think I had about 40 or 50 Kin my 401k and then I had about
20 grand saved up in cash andthat I thought that was going to
(14:34):
be enough to last me for twoyears.
That lasted me about fourmonths.
My burn rate was way too high.
I didn't know anything, though.
I was just taking action, whichI still recommend to people.
Take action, because you willlearn very quickly.
Um, but all of this to say, uh,we're now four or four or five
weeks from the event and theevent host calls me up and she
says, hey, uh, we noticed thatyou have not had one single
(14:58):
hotel room of your hotel blockfilled.
What's going on?
I knew the gig was up.
I went in, I sat down with her.
I had to face the music and myfriends to their credit, they
were new friends to me, but theywent with me.
I told them what was going on.
They were entrepreneurs.
They kind of know that it hasups and downs they went with me.
We sat down at a place calledthe frog bar it's in treasure
(15:21):
Island after this and they hadthis discussion with me of, like
, what are you going to do?
And I said well, right now I'vegot ski job offers, I can go
back to Vail, I can go to theseother ski resorts One of them
was up here in Tahoe, where Inow live, I think I could go
back and they said, okay, youcould.
(15:43):
Or what about learning from whatyou did?
How do you learn and iterate?
And this was a lesson that I amstill learning and I'm getting
better at every day, and I thinkit is the core of
entrepreneurship and that istake action, learn without
(16:03):
emotion.
Did this work?
Did this not work?
I'm not going to be emotionallyattached to it.
I don't care what people think.
I don't care what people see.
Did this work or did this not?
What worked in it?
What can I learn from it?
And let's iterate again and thefaster you can remove emotion
and take that process, so thatfirst, that first time.
(16:24):
If we look at it, it took Ithink it was probably six months
from when I left my job tillthe event failed.
The next event took me a 90days and we got that done and I
made about 10 grand.
The next event after that took45 days and then the next event
(16:45):
after that took about the same,but we made more money because I
changed things around.
It's, how fast can you iterate?
And you ask about the mindset.
The mindset is I am not, myfailures, the the challenge that
all of us grow up with,especially in Western world.
Um, I don't know about yourupbringing.
(17:06):
I have friends, um, I havefriends that are like I've.
I've a lot of multiculturalfriends, um, that have it even
worse than I did.
But I was raised that you, youshould be a straight, A student,
you should be doing thesethings correctly, and if you're
not doing it correctly, shame onyou, and that is a personal
failure.
Our parents didn't say that,but those are things that we
(17:28):
learned.
It is not a personal failureunless you own it as a personal
failure.
And it's not a failure alsotill you stop, If you learn from
it and you iterate and you doit again.
Let's just go back to highschool or I don't know, even
like fifth or sixth grade.
If you look at a spelling test,you spelled the word wrong.
(17:51):
Okay, let me try again.
Let me try to sound it out.
Let me think about it Insteadof being right and wrong.
Okay, I spelled it wrong.
How should that be spelled?
Okay, I'm going to practice itNow, I'm spelling it correctly.
And Okay, I'm going to practiceit Now, I'm spelling it
correctly, and you move on right.
That's how you learn.
You shouldn't own the failure.
Instead, you say did I do what?
There's two caveats to this one.
(18:11):
You have to take personalresponsibility.
I am responsible for doing thisthing, for learning from this
and for the actions.
And the second thing is that Iwill have a positive attitude.
I'm not going to yell at people, I'm not going to play the
victim, I'm not going to take itout on people around me and I'm
not going to be emotional.
Okay, did it work?
Did it not work?
What did work?
(18:32):
How do I learn that and how dowe do it again as fast as
possible and have no the balance?
I've had this conversation withsome entrepreneurs.
Sometimes you go down a road,you start climbing a mountain.
I'm going to start a YouTubechannel.
How far do you have to go downbefore you learn?
Is YouTube something I want todo?
(18:53):
Because it takes.
You're going to be at it forprobably a year before you get a
decent amount of subs.
So if you know that going in,okay, I'm going to commit to a
year.
Put a timeframe on it.
I didn't do that in thebeginning, but that's advice
that I give people.
Now I'm going to put atimeframe on it.
Between now and the end of thattimeframe.
(19:13):
I'm going to be unemotional andI'm going to iterate as fast as
I possibly can.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
I like it.
I like it.
One of your comments about theWestern world and the success,
failure and how school systemsare set up as I raise my own
kids, it's something that I havetried to instill in them is
failing is okay as long asyou're learning from it, and I
(19:41):
don't think the first 18 yearsof your life, just like the
traditional upbringing in the US, really sets you up for that
mindset.
It is something that you need todevelop after the fact or after
hours, after school type ofsituation, and so one of the
things that I want to kind ofturn the page and discuss is the
(20:04):
role of emotion, and, as you'reanswering some of those first
questions, you were talkingabout removing emotion when you
are analyzing the outcome.
I also, as I was prepping forthis, listened to a couple of
your podcasts, and you talkabout crafting a message that
appeals to people's emotions,and so you know we are all the
(20:29):
CEOs of our own emotions.
We may not think of it that way, but we are, and so you know,
for entrepreneurs, they'resitting in the seat consciously
thinking I'm the CEO of myemotion.
How do they best navigate ormanage that?
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah, that is a great question.
So there are a couple ofdifferent ways I can talk about
that.
So the first thing that I willsay is, when you start off as an
entrepreneur Alex Ramosi hasthis piece where he talks about
he broke down.
It was him and the guy fromModern Wisdom.
(21:08):
They broke down traits thatthey had seen in successful
entrepreneurs, and two of themare in direct contrast.
One is that I am better thaneverybody else.
I have a secret sauce thatnobody else has else.
I have a secret sauce thatnobody else has.
(21:28):
And the second one is that isin direct opposition but I think
drives people.
A lot is a crippling flaw of I'mnot good enough.
I have to prove myself, and Ithink when we start in business,
we have those two going on.
I have the secret sauce I'mreally good at or I really like
doing, and then we have thisother piece that like drives us.
It's, it's the stick, and Ithink that works, maybe up until
(21:55):
a couple million dollars Mostpeople it's, I would say, like
one to $2 million, and then youhave to switch.
I've seen people that keepgoing in that and they
eventually reach a point wherethey burn out.
And it's, it's burnout becauseyou're.
You will always not be goodenough if you're looking for
reasons to not be good enoughand as the stage gets bigger
that I'm not good enough, weightgets heavier and heavier.
(22:18):
What I think you need to switchto and I mean Tony Robbins said
it in the beginning I rememberhearing people talk about it and
being like, yeah, yeah, that'snice, simon Sinek talks about it
.
Your why, right?
Why are you doing this?
What drives you?
What's your positive?
It's really hard to have thatin the beginning.
I think a lot for people I know.
(22:40):
The first, probably two years Iwas in business I didn't have a
solid why, other than I did notwant to be a bartender, and
that's a difficult thing.
But as you move and as you grow, your whys become a lot clearer
.
I mean, I'm sure when you quitand you started growing your
(23:03):
e-com businesses, you startedbeing able to have more time
with your family, you startedbeing able to teach your kids
different lessons, you startedbeing able to take them
different places and ultimatelyyou started to show them a
different world which you feltdeeply in your core was
worthwhile.
Not only that, but then yourwhole worldview kind of changes,
(23:26):
and the more you can lean intothat, and it's Alex Ramosi has
done this.
I point to him because I thinkhe's a really interesting case
study that is on view for mostpeople to see.
When he started one of his corestories, he built a business up
to a couple million dollars.
Then he got into a DUI head-oncollision that he was lucky to
walk away from.
(23:47):
Why was he drinking?
He was like I was drinking afifth of Jack a day because I
hated my life.
I built up money but I hatedwhat I was doing.
I didn't know how to break outof that.
The key is you have to build,and this is if we go all the way
back to Tony Robbins, where Istarted, I had this life dream
and that dream is allowed tochange, and it did for me as I
(24:08):
got better at business.
But from the CEO standpoint tobring it full circle, back to
your question, the CEO we areultimately in charge of our own
emotions and if we choose tolive in a negative emotion state
, that is our choice.
We have to, and it is difficult.
There are some tactics I cangive you, but we have to change
(24:31):
it to a positive.
I am serving people.
These are the outcomes that I'mgetting for people.
This is what I'm going to focuson, and as you slowly start to
do that, it will actually allowyou to iterate faster, because
you're when you're iteratingslow, it's because you're
emotionally attached to negativeemotions.
What are people going to thinkif I do this wrong?
What if I try this and I failon a big stage?
(24:53):
What, oh my goodness, if I failand I go bankrupt?
What happens?
Throw all that out the windowand go to the positive side, but
it takes a lot to focus on thepositive side and go to the
positive side, but it takes alot to focus on the positive
side Absolutely, and thatshifting why.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
I definitely experienced that myself.
First it was I don't want towork in corporate America, and
then it was I have a team, Iwant to be a great leader and
provide a prosperous life forthem, and then I had kids and I
was married, and that shiftingwhy is critical, and so I really
(25:31):
liked that perspective of whatyou're saying about how
entrepreneurs need to managethat manage the emotions.
And so let's talk about emotionson the other side of things,
and this is to entrepreneursthat are selling things, and one
of the things that I and a lotof people that are tuning in are
(25:55):
in e-commerce, and that issometimes a nameless, faceless
exchange.
Sometimes a nameless, facelessexchange, I would say,
especially on Amazon, where youhave pictures and a video to
communicate with that customer,but you're limited.
And so I'd like to talk aboutthe appealing to the emotions.
(26:17):
And one thing I'll mention andI experienced this too if I was
selling, say, prosthetic legsfor children, boy, do you have a
great story there.
But a lot of people don't havethat type of company.
They're selling practicalproducts that are useful, but
not necessarily things that arelife-changing, and I know this
(26:39):
is something that I've struggledwith is creating a compelling
message that appeals to people'semotions on, say, a product
like a dog collar, or you knowwhat I mean, and so can you
speak to that.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
I mean, I can give you my best.
I'm not an e-com, but I cangive you the two things that I
would say.
The first thing is your brand.
What comes to mind for me isthere's two.
One is like Tom's If you give aportion to something that you
care about and you make thatknown in your messaging, people
(27:14):
like that.
People also like there are somepeople on Amazon that I've seen
do this Well.
They sell based on a personalbrand.
They put a little bit ofpersonality.
Um, there were t-shirts thatI've seen do this well.
They sell based on a personalbrand.
They put a little bit ofpersonality.
There were t-shirts that I waslooking at.
Actually, this is great.
If you travel a lot, you'regoing to want to buy.
It's a specific kind of woolthat does not need washed very
(27:36):
often.
It's very light.
It breathes really well.
I can't remember the name of it.
It starts with an M MarinaSearching.
Yeah, there we go, thank you,um.
So I was searching it.
There's a brand on there andit's a.
It's two brothers talking aboutwhy they built the, the company.
They're putting a personalstory to something that is not.
(27:56):
You could just sell a t-shirt,right.
So that's the first thing, puta little bit of your story in
there, and everybody I hear thiswith people that I build
speeches for all the time Idon't have a story.
Everybody's got a story.
You have kids.
You have a story.
You have a reason of why it'simportant.
You know this, I know you knowthis.
(28:17):
But people out there listeningto this are like I'm just a
normal guy, I'm trying to launchsome products on Amazon.
Well, talk about the journey.
What will you do?
Because your brand issuccessful?
Put something to it.
So that's the first one, and sothe second one.
The first one is the Tom'spiece.
Give away a small fraction to acause that you really care
(28:40):
about.
Don't just pick a cause becauseit's something social that
looks good.
Pick a cause that you careabout.
I was adopted.
I'm adopted from birth.
I give to adoption clinics.
That is something that is verymeaningful to me.
It's part of my story.
It's not necessarily part of myentrepreneurial story, but it's
(29:01):
part of my story and peopleknow that about me, so I talk
about that.
Those are two that you can addthat will give you some
emotional resonance.
There's a one other piece thatI'll talk to here.
It's your own personal.
Why so I if I don't think Icould do e-commerce?
(29:24):
I can't work in front of acomputer forever.
Like doing all that stuff seemsvery hard, but if I needed to,
what I would do is the reasonthat I am doing X thing.
There are things that I don'tlove doing in my business, but
the reason that I'm doing Xthing is because it will impact
people this way, it will impactmy team this way and it will
(29:44):
impact people this way, it willimpact my team this way and it
will impact me this way.
So I start with what's theimpact that's going to have on
my customers, on my audience, onpeople who see me.
I don't love posting on socialmedia.
I left social media for years.
I'm back on social mediabecause somebody at an event
told me I wish I would havefound you six months ago why
(30:07):
aren't you on Facebook?
And like that was a moment Iwasn't real happy with myself.
I was like crap, he's right, Idon't want to be on Facebook.
I don't like taking the time, Idon't like all the energy there
.
One of the things I came upwith for myself was if I'm going
to post on Facebook, I'm goingto make sure that they're
meaningful and that they impactpeople.
They'll either make peoplelaugh, they'll inspire people,
(30:29):
or they will share meaningfulcontent, and that's what I've
tried to do.
But see how that emotion isdifferent than I'm going to post
on social media to blow up mybusiness.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, and that's something
that I run into.
I'm a very private person and Istruggle with that push and
pull of creating a personalbrand and sharing with people
but also keeping that privacy.
(31:06):
And it's a delicate push andpull that I think a lot of
people go through.
But you're back.
You're back on social media andyou've laid out some rules for
yourself.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Yeah, I think it's about having clear boundaries.
I want to talk, because yousaid private person.
I want to share one other storythat I think is really
meaningful.
Around that there's a guy namedLaw Payne.
He's got the number one sellingclick funnels funnel of all
time.
Um, he's one of the biggestpeople in the fitness space but
(31:37):
he has a faceless brand.
He does not put himself or hiswife on his brand and he did for
a while.
Um, he's not.
He doesn't need super private,I mean.
But what he discovered was mybrand will do better without my
face on it because I can marketto a wider group of people.
(32:00):
But then from there, in orderto really grow, he had to go to
a faceless brand.
But where I'm going with thisis he still has brand of values
that are front and center forhis brand and he makes sure that
people know what his brandstands for, even if they don't
(32:21):
know he's the person behind hisbrand.
You know where I'm going to go.
Back to Tom's.
You know what Tom's stands for.
You don't necessarily know theowner of Tom's, you don't know
his or her personal value system, but you know what Tom's stands
for.
So you can build a company.
You can build an e-brandcompany that maybe has a
(32:43):
different value than you.
That's definitely possible.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
I really like that, and those are two really good
examples.
To take a look at Tom's inparticular I'm very familiar
with that.
I have no idea who the CEO is.
However, just the word Tom's, Ican you resonate?
Yes, absolutely Absolutely, andso I think that is a really
good message, especially forpeople that are a little bit
more private and are hesitant onposting or promoting, and so no
(33:12):
, that's great advice.
I want to spend a little bit oftime on live events and
specifically post-COVID liveevents.
What is and you've been around,you saw the pre-COVID and
post-COVID, so what?
To start things off, what'skind of the status of post-COVID
(33:33):
live events?
Are they back?
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Great question.
Yes and no.
People, definitely followingCOVID, wanted to get back out
and meet people.
I think that was.
I mean, we saw like travel gothrough the roof.
Now we've kind of come to aplateau like spike, and now
we're back down to level.
What we've seen in the eventspace is actually there's.
(33:57):
There's a lot of interestingthings.
The first thing is virtualevents have gone through the
roof because so many people gotcomfortable with zoom that they
they say that to event eventhosts.
If you look at pre-eventsurveys, if you look at general
consensus, people say you know,I really want the outcome of the
(34:17):
event, can you do it virtually?
So people have done virtualevents.
From the host standpoint, it ismuch cheaper to hold a virtual
event.
You're going to have someadvertising costs, for sure, but
you're not spending $100,000 ona venue.
You don't have the room blocks,you don't have the food and
beverage.
Now the challenge that we seeis show up rates for virtual
(34:41):
events are abysmal.
You're even with a paid ticketlike a $200 paid ticket to a
virtual event you're going tosee 50 to 60% show up rates on
average.
You're going to see a largeamount of drop off from day one
to day two, you're probablygoing to lose 25% of your
audience.
The people who are attendingare driving, they're on Facebook
, they're at work on their phone, like that is that's virtual
(35:04):
events, live events, what you'reseeing.
It's really interesting.
People do like live events, butyou're having a different way of
selling the ticket to getpeople to live events.
You used to be able to run ads.
You used to be able to emailyour list and sell the ticket to
a live event.
You'd have a 90% 95% show uprate.
That is not the case.
So you're seeing event salesfall off because some people
(35:30):
just won't commit.
They've been to a lot of eventstoo, like the reason if they've
gone to a couple of virtualevents, usually the layout is
very similar.
They kind of know what they'regetting.
So you're seeing sales fall offon live events because of that
and because people don't want totravel like they did pre
COVIDCOVID not for events anyway.
So what we're seeing is,instead of selling directly to a
(35:53):
live event ticket, it worksmuch better to sell something,
whether it's a mini course,whether it's a one-day VIP,
something that comes with thelive event ticket as
implementation.
The second thing is you have towarm people up to get them to
show up.
What that means is you have tohave somebody on your team.
Call them.
You have to do a pre-event.
(36:14):
Where it's a networking event,you get to know everybody.
You have to give them a reasonto show up to the event we have.
Inside of my business we doseven different steps to
maximize show up rates, whetherit's a virtual event or a live
event.
But you have to do that.
The other big change that we'reseeing are you familiar with
(36:34):
traffic and conversion?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Yep, they canceled their event.
Right, they canceled theirevent and they put out a public
statement.
I'm really I my hat is off tothem Like a lot of respect for
putting out a public statementthat says we weren't able to
fulfill on our mission statement, so we're canceling the event.
They were at 800 ticket sales.
Some people would think that'sa successful event.
(36:57):
They're used to having 3,000 to5,000.
Click Funnels I love Russell todeath.
I love the Click Funnelscommunity.
I think it's a good community.
Their goal I believe I heardthat their goal was 7,000 to
8,000 people.
I don't know the event count.
I was there.
I would say maybe 3,500.
(37:18):
Show up rates are down becauseone it costs money, it costs
energy, it costs time.
You're getting on a plane.
People also though the bigchange, the reason that I think
both of those and other eventsare starting to pull back.
People want specific solves tospecific pain points.
(37:39):
You used to see general events.
Fhl, funnel Hacking Live is ageneral event.
We're going to show you theworld of funnels.
That does not solve a specificburning problem for me.
Traffic and conversion samething.
We're going to show you traffic.
We're going to show you someconversion.
General event.
You want your event to solve, Iwould say, three to five
(38:03):
ultra-specific pain points ofyour audience.
This might mean you have asmaller event, which is actually
a win in two different ways.
If ClickFunnels would have donethis and they are moving to
this model Russell kind ofannounced it from stage If you
solve three to five specificpain points, you are going to
have a smaller overall audience,but your audience is going to
(38:24):
be red hot for the solution.
Your sales are going to go upand your event cost.
Russell said Russell also saidthis from Sage their event
budget for FHL this year was $9million.
You think about outlying $9million.
I don't think.
I don't know their salesnumbers, but I don't think he
(38:47):
sold nine million at the event.
I think it was a loss leaderthe old school events.
You look at events pre-COVID.
Russell spent three milliondollars to put on an event and
he sold 12 million at the eventbecause it was ultra specific.
It was how do you build that?
I went to the event in 2017.
It was how do you build that?
(39:07):
I went to the event in 2017.
How do you build a?
We're going to show you threedifferent lead gen funnels that
will turn cold traffic into warmtraffic, into a low ticket
buyer into a high ticket buyer.
We're going to show you theexact funnels and the value
ladder to do that at the event.
That solves a lot of specificpain points Right there.
(39:29):
That got people in.
And then his offer at the event.
It was the first year that heoffered uh to ccx.
It was a 20k offer and he did12 million in sales wow okay
that he did not do that thisyear at fhl.
This year at fhl he had sevendifferent offers that were kind
of all over the place.
They didn't really solveanything specific.
They kind of all over the place.
They didn't really solveanything specific.
(39:50):
They kind of did, but not likethat offer did, and the event
was hey, it's FHL.
That's why you're seeing thoseevents start to dry up and go
away.
I can give more examples, butthat's.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
No, those are the trends that you're talking about
.
It's interesting because on theconsumer side of things I have,
if I think of some of thevirtual events that I've
attended this year, they havebeen very specific.
Uh, problems in problemsolution and I this is probably
one of the first I go to prosperin las vegas every year.
(40:26):
This is the first of the firstI go to Prosper in Las Vegas
every year.
This is the first year I'vechosen not to and it wasn't like
a conscious decision, it wasjust I got the email, I got the
reminder email.
I didn't book the flight andall of a sudden it's coming past
and I'm okay with that, I'm atpeace with that.
(40:50):
And that one was very generallyAmazon.
But had it been lower youradvertising costs and increased
conversions on Amazon orincrease your average cart value
on Amazon, I can kind ofjustify the cost of that.
I'm like, okay, $2,000 to goout to Vegas and I'll definitely
make that up in my business,whereas some of the more general
(41:13):
topics are hard to like.
Immediately make thatconnection on value.
And so you know, for I think alot of service driven agencies
use live events to drum upbusiness and for any of those
people listening.
What do you think the move is?
Is it a virtual event?
(41:34):
Is it a live event?
What would you say?
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Great question and I'll give you a couple different
answers.
So I love that you just laidout you just literally laid out
the buying process that goes onin somebody's head.
You see the email come in andyou're like, even if you've gone
to the event before, yeah, itwas a good time, but is it worth
three or four grand in ticket,travel costs, food, hotel, a
burning need right now, whereasif you solve something specific,
(42:06):
it is.
So there's a couple.
I see if you want to hold a biggeneralized event, you're
either going to have to bringthe cost of the ticket and
travel down or have anindividual.
That something that you can add.
If Russell would have done thisfor FHL, I think it would have
been really powerful.
He made seven different offers,each one of those offers
(42:29):
aligned with a different avatar,different place where somebody
was in that realm.
If he would have built themarketing to specifically
address that and he would havedone a breakout session dealing
with one specific thing.
Because then think about theemail marketing I'm dealing.
There's somebody that I've hada couple phone calls with.
They have an event coming up inSan Diego they're dealing with.
(42:53):
I want to point out one othermistake and trend that I think
is happening right now.
They're dealing with very badsales rate.
This is their fourth yearholding the event.
Last year was their biggest.
Second biggest year, threeyears ago, was their biggest.
Last year came down a littlebit.
This year's fallen off.
And the guy said to me on thecall we have more speakers than
we have ever had.
He thought that was a plus andthen I had the kind of
(43:17):
discussion that we just had.
People do not want topicaldiscussions.
I know if I go to an event thathas 20 speakers, I'm going to
hear 20 different points of viewthat are all surface level.
We are not going deep onanything and I'm probably going
to hear contradictoryinformation.
What I want is a deep dive onhow to do two or three specific
(43:39):
things, solve these specificpain points for me.
And when I told him that, hewas like he said some four
letter words and he was like Ispent $400,000 on speakers and I
was like, yeah, and it'sactually hurting your event
Bringing in outside people.
Event hosts think that because Ibrought in these big names,
(44:03):
people are going to come.
If I want to see insert anyone,I can go to YouTube and watch
their intro level stuff.
Unless it is a deep dive, oneor two days with that person,
it's not worth it.
But this is what worked in thepast and event hosts God love
(44:23):
them, like a lot of people holdevents and they go into it with
we're going to put on this event, it's going to be amazing,
we're throwing some money at it,it's going to work.
You've really got to thinkthrough the strategy.
That's what I do with myclients and I can tell you the
number of people I've dealt withthat have multimillion dollar
budgets and have not thoughtthrough the customer journey of
(44:45):
going back to the emails of wesolve this specific pain point,
here's 10 emails that show howwe do that.
We show customer journey.
We show case studies of that.
We show how the speaker isgoing to do that.
We show how the event's goingto do that that gets people to
buy tickets.
Absolutely, that's missing.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Absolutely and tell me if you agree with this.
But I would say if mastermindswere a publicly traded stock and
you bought them a decade ago,you would be rolling in money
right now.
And I could personally say oneof the things I like about
masterminds is I'm talking toother business owners who I'm
not in competition with and Ilay out very specific problems
(45:24):
that I'm having in my businessand oftentimes they'll say, oh,
I had that too.
Here's specifically how Isolved it, here's the agency
that I used to fix that.
And I really like masterminds.
And as we're talking about this, I'm kind of like realizing why
it's not generalized advice,it's very specific advice and
(45:48):
it's an open form to share veryspecific things and get very
specific instructions onsolutions to problems.
And so would you agree withthat?
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Yeah, absolutely.
I also love masterminds.
I've spent more than $700,000on masterminds over the last 10
years.
I think it is the best way togrow because you get specific
advice from people that are atthe same level or higher than
you.
What's interesting is, eventsare usually what is used to sell
(46:19):
masterminds and because theevents are now going away and
becoming too broad, you'veactually seen masterminds fall
off or they're being solddifferently.
It's such an interesting.
There's a lot of.
There's probably a lot.
I do love masterminds.
I think masterminds are theprobably the best vehicle to
(46:42):
take you from I would say, likea hundred thousand dollars a
year to a couple million,because you can find I can name
just when you said that like Ican think of specific challenges
I had in my business over thelast 10 years.
I can tell you the person thatsolved it for me Because we were
in a mastermind.
I can also say I helped a lotof people.
(47:02):
That is the best possible placeto go to change actions and get
actions to what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Absolutely, absolutely Well, if people are
thinking about hosting a liveevent and want some help, can
you talk about what type ofclients you work with?
Speaker 3 (47:23):
Sure, I've helped people all the way from.
This is my first event.
We don't get involved too manytimes with those people anymore.
First events I would recommendholding 10 to 20 people Small
event.
Don't blow everything on tryingto hold a massive event.
Get 20 people in a room andlearn from that.
(47:43):
From that, um, I would say ouraverage avatar right now is
somewhere between, I would say,50 to 75 people in the room up
to our largest event now hasbeen about 8 000 people.
Um, virtually we've doneanywhere from, I would say, 50
to 75 to, yeah, a couplethousand.
Um, I love taking people ifthey just need help.
(48:06):
I'm seeing the m MC is yoursecret weapon in the room and I
love I'm seeing events.
A good MC does not read off notecards.
I take the time I go throughtheir entire last year's event
so that I know the language.
I do interviews with the avatar, like I want to be able to
speak the language of the people.
The reason the MC works so wellfrom stage in sales is because
(48:28):
they're expecting a pitch fromthe person on stage, like the
guru or the speakers.
The MC is the audience's friend.
I can reframe beliefs.
I can point in new directions.
I can tell the outcome of like.
You just heard somebody speakfor 45 minutes.
If you ask everybody in theaudience what did they share
with you, you're going to get 50different answers at least.
(48:50):
Right.
I can summarize give them themain point that we want them to
have, tie that to the next pieceand then tie that to the offer.
If I do that over and over, itdoes drive buying decisions.
So I will emcee anybody's eventthat I, as long as I feel their
integrity I love.
Emcee anybody's event as longas I feel their integrity I love
emceeing.
If we do strategy, we usuallylike to start three to six
(49:11):
months out and we build out thethings that we've been talking
about.
How do you solve specific painpoints?
How do you sell something at alow ticket price that includes
the ticket?
What is the right thing to sell?
We do all of that with ourcustomers.
We help them get the eventreally dialed in.
We've been able to increasefirst off ticket sales and then,
more importantly, show up rates.
(49:32):
We've been able to move a lotof our show up rates to 90, 95%
through.
We have seven steps that wetake people through how to fill
that event, how to activatepeople, how to get them in the
room, and then, if you do allthat correctly, you have a much
hotter audience in the room.
You'll get higher sales numbers.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Very nice, very nice.
And to all the listeners, we'llpost links to Steve's website
and how to book a call with himin the show notes.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Really quick, really quick.
I'll just throw out If you wantto book a call with me, if you
want to learn more about what wedo, uh, you can go to
stevecoffee.
S, t, e, v, e, dot, c, o, f, f,e.
Uh, that will take you tobasically my link tree.
You can book a call with me.
Uh, we have some free resourcesthere as well.
We have a full website, uh, youcan go to as well.
(50:21):
It's the one uh link down belowin the description.
It's stephenphiliphornercom,but we have case studies on
there, plus the entire buffet ofwhat we do.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Outstanding.
Now, before we wrap up the show, we have something called the
fire round.
This is four questions we askevery guest at the end of the
interview.
Are you ready?
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
All right, what is your favorite book?
Speaker 3 (50:47):
Ooh right now I would say 10X is easier than 2X.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
I'm going to add that to my reading list.
What are your hobbies?
Speaker 3 (50:56):
I like skiing, skiing , snowboarding, I like hiking, I
like international travel and Iplay poker.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Very nice.
What is one thing you do notmiss about working for the man?
Speaker 3 (51:10):
Gosh, just one, I would say a schedule.
I like freedom and autonomy.
I like to build my own scheduleand work on my own terms.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
I definitely agree with that.
And final question what do youthink sets apart successful
entrepreneurs from those whogive up, fail or never get
started?
Speaker 3 (51:32):
Mindset.
You just have to have themindset that, yes, I can do this
and I am not going to stop.
I'm going to keep going, I'mgoing to keep iterating and I'm
going to keep growing.
If you have that mindset, youwill find that you have to
believe that it's possible,possible, and then you have to
take actions to do it.
It goes back to the question Ithink I led with somewhere in
(51:54):
early on, which is who do I needto become to have the life that
I want?
Speaker 2 (51:59):
Very nice, very nice.
Well, steve, this has been anoutstanding interview.
I think we could have gone onfor hours today, but I want to
thank you for your time and lookforward to staying in touch.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Awesome, david, thanks for having me on.
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