Intro: Welcome to the Lucky Titan podcast where you will learn how to fill your favorite platform with tons of your dream customers from some of the world's top entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Josh Tapp now let's get started.
Josh: What is up everybody, Josh Tapp here again and welcome back to the lucky Titan and today we're here with Shay Wheat. I am so excited to have her here this is actually an interview that came out of nowhere. Kyle, shout out to you. He just like threw it on my calendar and I'm like, What the heck and I started looking at what she's doing going. We've been needing this on this show so as most of you probably know, I mean, she's pretty well known but this lady is all about using events as an entrepreneur, to monetize scale upsell, and like 5000 other things so I'm excited because she's basically like the event version of me, you know, you guys all know this, my response to any marketing related question is, should have podcasts right say to everybody, she says the exact same thing about events so I love it. So Shay say, what's up to everybody and we'll hop in.
Shay: Oh, what's up everybody, I'm excited to be here and kind of throw you a loop just kind of showing up on your calendar, like fun.
Josh: It was glorious. When that happens. I know it's a good guest and I'm like, oh, so glad I missed this one so I want to throw this out there this is kind of a explanation. So you know, most of our listeners here, they've done quite well in their business, you know, they've figured out product market fit they've said, Okay, we're getting a decent amount of sales, and we're almost at a million in sales. How do I scale? What's the next step? Right? And you would say events? And I'm curious as to how why where what all of that. So I'll shut up now let you go.
Shay: Yes, I absolutely would say events, there's actually like five phases of event leverage and you know, like you were saying, your audience is not in phase 1 2 3, maybe even not even four, they've skipped through it and they're at the point where they're at Phase Five and this is leverage this is where you are staying in your zone of genius, you're continuing to grow your client base, you've accomplished this by delegating things to your team and you're now looking at systems and structure to leverage your time, that's where it comes into events, right? Because we're looking to create, especially three day sales and enrollment events, to create a community of raving fans, and also offer your high ticket programs in a one to many model and that is the leveraging and scaling part of events, that is my specialty, that's the niche that we play in every single day, to the point where we've got clients just a few months ago at a client that ended up generating $2.1 million in her three day sales and enrollment event.
Josh: Geez, I'm kind of curious, what was the price point on that on that one?
Shay: was a $20,000 offer, which is funny, because she came to me originally going, I want to do this three day event but I want to do an offer into I think it was probably around $5,000 and I looked at her and went, that doesn't quite make sense, why are we selling into a two month program when we're spending so much time and energy and effort into building this amazing event? You need to be selling into a year long program so we actually supported her in helping to create and craft a year long program that she ended up offering $20,000 from the stage and yeah, $2.1 million later.
Josh: Yeah. But I had to check my math because I'm like, I'm gonna sound like an idiot, percent round numbers that was over 100 sales right at 20,000, most people that's like their dream in their lifetime to make 100 sales, right? Yes, how many people came to the event? I'm just curious.
Shay: We had just under 15000.
Josh: Wow.
Shay: So she had spent years building her community and selling these smaller low ticket items into like a seven week course right rinse and repeat seven week course and then would do these like offshoot kind of programs and what we did, instead of doing all these offshoots, we took those programs and packaged it into one.
Josh: Yeah,
Shay: so it just made more sense. It's like, if you want to go this route, or this route, here's what you need to do it's all in one package.
Josh: Yeah.
Shay: So that helped streamline what their team was doing too.
Josh: Oh, I'm sure it's what's so fascinating to me about selling from stage like this and being able to close like you said, the one to many model is that when most people do it, they're doing a really low ticket offer right they're doing $1000 or $3,000 after days and days of being at an event and I'm like you got me hooked you could have sold me on 50 grand I probably would have paid you but I buy the $3,000 program anyways right maybe it's because I'm a hyper buyer, I'm way easily sold the, Shay over here going take note of that. So, you know, I look at that and say okay, what are some are these offers that they can be upselling right because you mentioned you kind of clumped everything together but was it a coaching program, was it a done for you service or would you sell those differently, I'm just gonna curious.
Shay: I've seen both so this particular one, we ended up taking a couple of their offshoot programs and putting them together so they had like a coaching route and then they had a facilitator route and then they had, like, some implementation and how to be a leader of leaders and we ended up crafting it in a way so it all fit together so it had a little bit of the book work as well as the experiential, and she also has a team of coaches, that's included as a part of that program.
Josh: See, that's cool and I'm curious, because this isn't your first offer. I mean, you've done dozens of these at this point, right and I probably I could wait under shooting that but you've done a lot of these different offers and the way that you're structuring them, you kind of mentioned to me if it's a one day event, you should be doing $4,000, right, something less than 4000.
Shay: Yeah.
Josh: And then you can probably explain the rest of the numbers better. But I'm curious the breakdown of that and why.
Shay: Yeah, yeah. So we're utilizing a three day or a one day sales and enrollment event as an opportunity to fill your programs, right. So we bring people in, whether they're cold market, or they're already a part of your audience, into showing them the next best step and we also, let me back up a little bit. In every single event we do, there has to be a event promise absolutely has to be an event promise. So whether or not they do business with you, they walk away with X, Y, and Z. Okay, that's how you're adding value to your audience you get them started and then we also know that a percentage of the audience will always say yes to that next step, they're saying yes to the accountability, they're saying, Yes, I need you to show me the way so I don't freakin eff it up, like everybody else is done, right and they want that hand holding opportunity. They want that community that you're going to be offering to be in a space where you can bounce stuff off of other people so you have your event promise and then once you're in your event, promise, you're going to want to craft the run of show in a way that is going from Hi, nice to meet you, too this is your next step and when you do a Hi, nice to meet you and uh, one day and you end up offering a $10,000 program, they go way way you're going Nice to meet you, let's get married, right? There's no dating in there and so that's part of the reason why we do a lower ticket item on your one day, and we do a higher ticket item on your three-day event because you're spending much more time together, you're getting to showcase what it is that you're doing, you get to have them engage with you, engagement is absolutely, that is the new currency experience and engagement is the new currency, whether it is a virtual live event, or it's an in person event, you must have engagement and not only engagement with you, but engagement with each other because everybody's lacking community right now.
Josh: Yeah, I would agree with that entirely. I love that last point because I've gone to a lot of events and I can be really talkative on camera and with one person but I go to events, and I'm the guy who hides in the corner, you know, and I'm like, I just wish they would create an opportunity for me to meet even the person next to me without feeling like an idiot. You know, I always try to do that and meet the next two people next to me but if they're like, yeah, that's my name, nice to meet you. Like throws me off so bad so but then you go speak at these events, and everybody's like, Oh, my gosh, I want to talk to you right and that's always fun to be a speaker. Yeah, you can't always be the speaker,
Shay: a mob.
Josh: Right, exactly. So, you know, I look at that and I say, how can you get them to engage in a way that the audience is actually getting that connection because most events don't facilitate that?
Shay: Yeah and we absolutely require it essentially, of our clients, they have to have engagement, we purposely put it in there. So you teach some content, and then you have them do something, whether it's a writing exercise, or what have you answering or thought about it, and then you put them into breakout session rooms, or you put them into partner shares, or whatever the case may be, and then you end up bringing it back to the group as a whole so it's kind of a couple of step process here, teach, have them do something, have them share and then share as a group. So then we're breaking down that fourth wall, I kind of like to think of events as a movie so in a movie, you are watching the experience of the person on the screen, right,
Josh: right.
Shay: in an event The only difference is you are the person in the movie You're experiencing it, you're, we're breaking down that fourth wall. So we need to kind of come into your space, shake you up a little bit, because you're coming for some reason you're coming for some pain point, you're coming to work on something, you're coming to change something in your world, it's not working, whether it's relationships, personal development, and business, whatever finances, and then once we shake you up, we kind of start putting you back together and so in three days, I have a lot more time to go through that process, and have that arc of the event happening so that you go, I get it, I see the 30,000 foot view, and I have the steps now I can go and try and do it on my own, or I can pay you to help me go faster.
Josh: Right? Well, so I'm curious, though, is are a lot of the people who are attending these events are they already followers of the person? Are these like cold contacts where they have to go through the whole sales process because I've seen both?
Shay: Both? Yes, yeah. So I've had the only time that I've ever really recommended a two-day event, because normally I do a one day or a three day, right one or three, the only time I've done a two-day event is when it was already a warm market, meaning they were already in a program, they had already said yes, and they're looking for the next high level ticket offering. So was no cold market. So you can condense that sales process and you know, that works really, really well. She had so much swag, oh my gosh, that that's a total side note. Literally, it was a box, like this big and it had a note in it that when you open it up, it's like I told you not to open this up, you can do hard things, close the box until it's time to open super cute but anyways, one day or three day event is really what I recommend and you can do it from cold market, either one and you can also do it with a combination of warm and cold, which I also recommend, because then you kind of already have built in sales people see
Josh: Yeah, exactly.
Shay: Testimonials, and everybody who's already showing up loving on you and being in the community, and they just want to keep being a part of it.
Josh: Right? Yeah, I see like Funnel Hacking live is a great example of that, you know, it's like there are some new people come, but it's usually all the same people and it's more of a once a yearly meetup. So that's interesting, you know, it's kind of bizarre to me about the event world is that you can put a lot of time and money into getting people into a room and a lot of them run it kind of like a loss leader product where they're not generating any real revenue from it, right? It's either free or it's basically just covering the cost of the venue and you know, the event planners and whatnot
Shay: Production, yeah.
Josh: With, what if they suck at selling, that's what it comes down to?
Shay: Well, I don't think your audience sucks at selling. If they're, you know, half I think you all are amazing at selling, Josh may not think you will Yeah. So I mean, if you've never done an event, and you mainly only done one on one, and you're looking to move into the one to many, there's 17 different types of events that you can be doing out in this space so to get your feet wet, you might want to look at being a sponsor on other people's stages so somebody else has the event that you're coming in paying to play, and do a one to many sell that way to get your feet wet, and really get down your offer and doing the one to many, so then you're not the one necessarily putting it all together and paying the high ticket for it but you get to come in and reap some of the benefits and then pay on the back end perhaps also look at setting up your own summit and do more of a legion opportunity where you're either selling your ticket so the summit is to sell a ticket into your event or some type of lower level price point just to kind of learn the muscle of selling one to many to get you to the point where you're feeling comfortable to sell $20,000 package from the stage
Josh: right yeah, yeah, that's awesome, I will look at I don't mean to say that audience sucks assigned to obviously know what they're doing but I look at a lot of people may think that the skill is going to translate from a one to one sale to a stage sale and it's it's difficult. Yeah, having sold from stage it's a different ballgame because you have to read the energy of the room and if they're not reacting, it's the most awkward thing you'll ever do, they’re like here's my offer.
Shay: Go at the back of the room and sign up and it's like cricket, cricket.
Josh: Okay, I'll go sign up so you guys pay myself with like an idiot, Yeah, so it's it's, uh, I'm curious with what you guys do. Do you help with that at all as far as, as the flow of the sales presentations throughout the whole program or excuse me?
Shay: Yeah, at that point, I would bring in one of my sales consultants, who that's what they do is they helped you craft the offer from you standing on stage and making that sale, that's all they do. Now I can watch you do it and I can go ahead and say, okay, tweak this, adjust this, you need to have something else here, you need to have a party have your story but it's not my genius zone, I've seen a lot of really good ones and not so good ones, that I have like a really good idea of what's working and what's not but I would refer you to somebody that that's their specialty.
Josh: Awesome. See? And that's good. I like those sort of answers, because it's not, oh, no, we don't do that right.
Shay: I'm very clear what we do we, you know, we rock out events with as much grace and ease as possible but we don't do everything, like I don't do graphics.
Josh: Nobody likes to do that
Shay: I don’t your funnels to you know, I can give you examples of what other people do, but I'm not going to write your funnels,
Josh: right and I'm just going to sneak this in here. If you are interested in doing that go to events where the events are powerful, but it's the letter r not the word R. So make sure you go check that out
Shay: the letter, the letter, the word R correct,
Josh: the word R is the letter? R Correct?
Shay: Nope. spelling it all out eventsarepowerful.com
Josh: Oh, there we go. There you go eventsarepowerful.com and I'm going to be talking about that here in a minute anyways, but coming back, I want to kind of give you a scenario here shakes, I want to make sure that people can kind of grasp this, I want to give you a situation to kind of see what your answer would be to it and Politic putting you on the spot here but I'm gonna give you one of our one of our clients situation, right? So he has a very successful business in the insurance space, right? He has multiple firms, but he's kind of stepping out of that and wanting to start something new and we've been running his podcasts he's getting 20 30,000 listens a month, you know, he's starting to build an actual audience, he's got the funding. He's got a message to share, he's actually a very good presenter, what type of event, would you have him run at first and then what would he sell?
Shay: Yeah, what is the intention? Is he looking for lead gen? Is he looking to increase his email list? Is he looking for? What is he looking for?
Josh: Yeah, his his core, his core business right now is he's wanting to build a whole product around helping agents become more successful as like insurance agents right. Now, that'd be where he's trying to go to write it, his end goal is to attract more agents, I don't know if it's going to be just agents for him that's that's a good question but I know he wants to build a whole program around it. I'm just gonna curious,
Shay: does he have a program already created?
Josh: Not yet? Nope.
Shay: Okay. So he needs proof of concept that that's actually going to sell.
Josh: Okay.
Shay: Okay. So actually, in a sense, he's going back to the first phase of event leverage, he needs to validate, he needs to make sure that there are clients that are interested in that offer, and he needs to get eight to 10 Full paying clients, get them crazy, awesome results, tweak and adjust that offer, and then go get more visibility, right and move into phase two and then three, four, and five.
Josh: Yeah. Would you mind me asking what three, four and five are?
Shay: Yeah, phase two is visibility. So you're going to increase your visibility, you're using podcasts you're using guest on other people's stages, you're doing Facebook Lives and clubhouse rooms, you're sponsoring events to the point where you're making $5,000 a month consistently from that offer, right so essentially, he's making a new vertical in his business and that vertical is brand new so he needs to make sure that it's got proof of concept and people are buying it, they're getting results out of it, and he can leverage it. So then he's moving to phase three, which is the growth phase, and you're going to increase your visibility by being on more stages, as well as looking to create your own stage like hosting a masterclass or doing a webinar or a summit. You're also going to look at larger sponsorships o he could go to the Association of Insurance people, I'm sure that's a very technical term.
Josh: Probably what it is in that space, that's right.
Shay: and make the offer to, you know, come and join him for learning more about that program to the point where you're now reaching $10,000, a month consistently in that offer to move into Phase four, which is scale and now you're looking to have that one on one model convert to a one to many, and you can do a one-day enrollment event or retreat workshop. You've got team that supporting that program and the people in that pool program, you're generating more leads to fill that event and that program also to think about the reason we do it step by step like that is you need to have the testimonials you need to know what's working, you need to know what is happening with your audience, I think I've heard you on one of your podcasts going, people would come back to you and go, why is this not in the program and you're like, that's a great idea. I'm now adding it.
Josh: Next Next Video.
Shay: So you beta tested it, you got proof of concept in the beginning to know what's working, what's not working what they want and then we just work towards scaling and leveraging it.
Jsoh: Yeah, that's awesome. See, ya love, I would kind of want to throw that scenario out there. Because I was curious if you'd say, well, he's already got the money, he's got some influence. Let's start at Phase Five and I'm glad you went the other way and said, let's start him at phase one, I was curious how you take it so good job, Shay we put you on the coals and said, Hey, figure it out. I don't often do that, because it makes people uncomfortable but it's genuine curiosity o we do need to wrap up the interview here Shay, I'm having a good time, I felt like 25 questions, but we'll have you back on at some point and ask, especially when I'm ready to watch an event sometime next few months so yeah, go ahead.
Shay: Anybody looking to run a like a three-day event, I like to have three months of planning time.
Josh: Perfect.
Shay: Okay. So the reason being is we go through probably 17 different calls leading into the event, whether it's a virtual event, or it's an in person event, and it's going through, what is the vision? What is the enrollment strategy? What is the marketing? How, what is the budget, right and actually going, this is what you think the budget is and this is what it's turning out to be? You know, what do we need to tweak and adjust based on your expectations are here so on and so forth, what is the AV and tech, what is the run a show what like all of those details, take some time and energy and effort so I want to make sure that your audience has enough runway to not only fill the room, which is what they're supposed to focus on and me do the production side and pull information out of you so I can lead your team.
Josh: Yeah, brilliant. I love it. Well, and I hope people will think about it. I mean, it takes a year to plan an event, in my opinion, but I'll just plan it but sell tickets to it but yeah, I love that. So I do want to just say if you do are interested in working with Shay and what they're doing over there and launching an event, make sure you go again to its events are powerful and that is ARE spelled out, I now know that. Make sure you guys go check that out and then Shay, I want to ask you just one final question just to kind of wrap this up so what's the number one thing that you've seen hold people back from starting events and how have you helped them overcome it?
Shay: So I've seen a couple of different things that are holding them back. One is the overwhelm, right? You know, as I was just saying, there's 17 different calls that we take you through in order to get through all the logistics and all of the tasks, and it can be very, very overwhelming and the reason we wait until phase four, or Phase Five of event leverage is because by then you have teams, and you have income, and you're at the point where you get to be in your genius zone, and I want to keep you there as long as possible so really what it is, is like you bring me on as a part of your team, right? My team and I come in and go, okay, this is what this looks like so you can just show up and go, Oh, yeah, I like this, I'm not sure about this, this is my thought on this piece versus you having to project manage what's supposed to happen, you get to stay in your zone of genius and when I see when people are wanting to do their own events is like, well I can do that I can lead the team and I can do these meetings and I can do this piece but then you're all over the place and you're not actually supporting the audience that is your main objective, only you can do that only you can bring them in and show them what it is that they need to do in order to be powerful, profitable human beings in whatever niche it is that you serve.
Josh: Yeah. I love that and what's funny is that everybody thinks that they're capable of doing every step and it's not about capabilities, it's about maximizing on on abilities so I love that response. Well you know Shay I do appreciate you coming on today and sharing you know all this wisdom about growing events, I would hope everybody goes one more time is going to put out there eventsarepowerful.com make sure you go check that out set up a time to meet with Sha, given event and your business, I know I will so hopefully you're all doing fantastic today and I'm excited to see you all on the next episode. Thanks Shay.
Shay: Thanks!
Outro: Hopefully you enjoyed this episode of The lucky Titan podcast. If you've learned anything from this or any other episode, make sure you rate it and share it with another entrepreneur could help. Thanks again and I'll catch you on the flip side