Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - How to Make a Huge Profit From Live Events - 033

Episode Date: February 7, 2018

A live event doesn’t have to be a boring seminar that holds your audience hostage for 3 days. Your event is a chance to get creative, entertain, inspire, and educate people in your industry. Craig Ballantyne and Bedros Keuilian are masters at putting on high energy events that bring the value and the fun. In this episode, they’re going to show you how putting on your own event will build your empire faster and create stronger relationships with your raving fans. Here’s what you’ll discover: 2:04 - How to treat your live event like a show that delivers both entertainment and education without taking away the value. 3:50 - How to get your seminar off the ground and break even in expenses through ticket upsells and sponsorships. 11:16 - How to use sponsorships to cover the costs of your event while adding value to their business and keep them coming back every year. 14:10 - The big ideas you need to have before you move forward with your event. 18:08 - How to work your way up to your big pitch without eroding your relationship with your audience. 22:33 - Why you should start selling tickets 5 months before your event so that you can create buying frenzies and increase ticket sales.

You create a deeper, more meaningful relationship with your prospects and clients, and they very quickly ascend up that ladder of purchasing more at a higher price and more frequently, which means you make more money and they get bigger, better outcomes in life. Hey, do you want to build your empire faster and build deeper, stronger connections with your raving fans? Well, we're going to reveal one secret that you need in your business today. Welcome to the Empire podcast. I'm Craig Valentine with... Pedro Coolean. And we're going to talk about live events because you are a master of live events

and creating great experiences for people and delivering information that's going to change your lives. So let's talk about the game-changing opportunity of having a live event in your business because you are now Fitness Business Summit 20? 18. Wow. Yeah, yeah, 18, yeah. So we're rocking it. So we've done a whole bunch of these.

And, you know, the first Fitness Business Summit started off with about 100 people in a small conference room. Was it a janky? Was it a janky conference? It wasn't a, dude, I didn't even have a stage. I didn't even have a stage. And I remember sweating profusely realizing that only the first three rows of people can see me. Everyone else back there can't see me because you need a stage. That's amazing.

And the irony is the hotel never told me. When I said, I'm going to have 118 people here, they never said you need a stage, right? And so the bottom line here is that there is no rulebook for having live events. But those who are willing to get off the internet and bring their audience to a live event, like you're going to do here with the perfect life retreat. Yeah. Let me tell you, it is a game-changing thing because you create a deeper, more meaningful relationship with your prospects and clients, and they very quickly ascend up that ladder of purchasing more at a higher price and more frequently,

which means you make more money, and they get bigger, better outcomes in life. So, you know, where do people even start with this live event thing, and where are most people going wrong, and what are you doing right that's separating you from, you know, and you've gone from 100, and the first year to now you have over a thousand people of the event and it is just like a rock concert sure sure and you kind of stole it there first and foremost you got to pretend like it's a show got we just treat it like an actual show a stage show just happens to be in addition to entertainment we're also giving great information that people can take action on and go make more money for example people go what what do you mean entertainment well one year we brought um Polynesian fire dancers

And you had a marching band? We had a marching band. We brought a little tank where the hundreds of dollars of bills are floating around. And the audience comes up and whatever you can catch in an hour or in a minute in an hour. In a minute is yours. Until this day, we take over 200 plastic Easter eggs loaded up with tens, 20s, $100 bills. And we throw it to the audience. We have a fun game where after the breaks, we play Lowrider, that music lowrider.

and if you're not in your seat by the time the music ends, you have to do 20 push-ups or donate $20 to my favorite charity. Right. Those are all the things. And you have your daughter singing an amazing song. My daughter sings amazing songs, right? But those are the things that really make a seminar more tolerable for people. Because at the end of the day, you're locking people down for two or three days

and you're just trying to force feed them knowledge. Yeah. It's not going to work. But if you bring them in and you entertain as you educate, right? Infotainment, as you often say, that is one of the best ways to do it. So let's kind of go into the ground level of how to get a seminar off the ground. So people always ask me, if I'm doing a seminar, what should I expect to make financially? So right off the bat, if you're going to run a two or three day live event,

odds are the cost of the tickets and the sponsors you're going to get are going to get you to break even. Yeah. Right? So you have to have something that you're going to sell from the stage that's going to make you money then and on the long run. Yeah. So we all know that obviously hotels get expensive and, you know, when you're doing banquet orders and food and beverage, and then you have audio and visual, and now you're going to have a beautiful backdrop. Just a backdrop for Fitness Business Summit cost $80,000, the lighting and all that stuff. Wow. But at the time we were done with Fitness Business Summit this

last year, we were just under $400,000. And that doesn't even count the Land Rover that we gave away. Right. Right. That was just like something we give away to one of our successful clients. And so no one says that you have to run a $400,000 event. Our first event cost us under $30,000. Sure. Right? But you certainly can run an event that's fun and entertaining. So let's start there.

One, you have to have sponsors who are going to help offset the cost of the event. Between the sponsors and ticket sales, you're going to break even or make a little bit of money. Got it. That's fantastic. That's thing number one. Number two, when you're selling the tickets, offer upsells. So many of us who have information products online, that are coaches or info marketers.

You have the upsell funnel in place for info products. I'm shocked to see that no one has different tiers of offers for an event. Yeah, so I'll tell you what I did. It's Perfect Life Retreat. So we had, first of all, a $1,000 ticket, and then first upsell was recordings. And then second upsell was a real big jump of a workshop. And we did have people take a $5,000 upsell after buying a $1,000 ticket. So right there, you know, that allowed us to breathe a little bit easier.

So what about you? Yeah, that's exactly right. So with Fitness Business Summit, we sell our ticket to the event. And the next upsell is video footage and notes. So I bring in a professional note taker. And professional note taker, by the way, you just got a really smart college student. And you say, hey, look, you're going to take notes on every speaker, and they're going to be in bullet point fashion. And we put that in a PDF format.

And we hand it over to the people who took that up. with the notes and the videos. That's the first upsell now. The second upsell is, you want to come the day before to a meet and greet with me and the presenters. Got it. So that's a little VIP experience

that they get for an addition to like $400. Yeah. And, you know, the first 100 people who take that, get that. And then, of course, there is the bonus day. You want to stay an extra day after Fitness Business Summit and get some private coaching with me

in a group environment. Yeah. Right? And so you have to really make sure that you get the most out of that shopping cart experience. that you're putting the person through. Listen, if they only want to take the ticket for the seat and that's it, they will.

They'll just say, no, thanks, no thanks, no thanks, three times. But you have to give them the opportunity to give you more money in exchange for them to get a better experience. Yeah. Can I give you a little insider tip here as well? Sure. So that mindset that you had there of leveraging everything that you can offer somebody can also be used into the idea that not only are you going to be able to sell a lot of stuff, but

you're going to be having 300, 500, 100, 1,000 people. awesome people come into this one location. You have to also be thinking, how can I leverage the fact that all these people are going to be here? Dan Kennedy is one of my mentors, and he'll schedule meetings while he's not on stage, and you can have stuff the day before, the night before, the day after. You just need to cram in as much stuff.

We're actually filming behind-the-scenes footage, which we're selling in our video recording. So even the people that are VIPs, they're still not going to see everything because they're going to see stuff in these recordings from up in my suite as I'm preparing for the event, plus the dinner at night. You're just thinking, how can you get and use every part of the pig? It's a phrase that I use all the time.

If you're doing something, why not get 10 times the results from every single thing that you do? It's so important. I'll be filming podcasts and doing interviews, stepping outside, even for five-minute YouTube videos. If you're going to be in the same room as somebody and you want to leverage their social media, You have to take advantage of it. Be prepared for that. By the way, to that point, one thing we did last year that we're going to do even better this year because it really paid off is we've got a green room set up,

and we've invited influencers in my industry who are podcasters and who have big social media followings and say, hey, look, basically it's the equivalent of, remember back in the day if you're going to go to the Oscars or the Emmys, media gets to come for free because they get to broadcast, right? And you get more exposure. Well, today's media are the influencers and the podcasters in your, your space. So we're bringing, allowing a lot of these guys and gals to come for free and set up their podcasts and do podcasts with our speakers. So literally a speaker is going to get up on stage,

do their talk, get off, get escorted to the media room where they do a podcast with me and they do a podcast, a video shoot with me. And then they go to the next podcaster, next podcaster. And what we're really doing is getting the word out because every year I want more people in the event for that to happen. We have to create. create a feeling of missing out from those who didn't come. Yeah, absolutely. Plus, it leverages all that social aspect. Plus, the people who are the podcasters are like,

they're getting 20 interviews done at once, basically, so they can get ahead in their calendars. And you said something there that made me think of a big point, back to the Emmys and the Oscars and stuff. And I've never been to any of those things, but I've read all these articles about how even the actors and actresses are really excited for the goodie bags that they get, because so many companies,

put together these amazing spreads in these goody bags. They're getting free this, that, and the other thing. It's ironic because these people, these celebrities, could afford all of this stuff, but they're really excited about the free bag of stuff they get. So as the leader of the live event, you wanna try and get as much stuff in your goody bag so that your attendees, they're like,

oh man, this is like Christmas opening up the goody bag. And it's not just a protein shaker and like one crappy bar. No, it needs to be like cool stuff that, It's almost like one of those monthly boxes that people show up at people's houses so that you are just, again, delivering an experience and entertaining experience above and beyond a seminar where you get a workbook and you sit there and you kind of doze off and tune up for two days. You know, it's great that you mentioned this too because, you know, we just got back from the Inc. 5,000. Right. And as we showed up the Thursday morning and we're registering, they give you this amazing bag, right? This giant bag with, you know, nice handle on.

on it and I took it back up to my room and I started opening it and there's this what I thought it was a bottle of wine but it wasn't it was light but it was this black button I saw a seam on it I opened it was this plastic thing and it had a corkscrew like a you know corkscrew on there a wine what do you call it the stopper so once you remove the cork you can use a stopper had so many wine stuff in there right yeah and so I'm like oh my gosh this is such a cool thing I can't wait to take this home and set it I'm sure they sell it on Amazon or I probably see it in some wine store, but it's such a neat thing. And there's all these cool trinkets. And then as I'm going through,

I realize, oh, this is sponsored by one of their sponsors. This is given by one of their sponsors. That's from one of their sponsors. And that's what we do, Fitness Business Summit. See, if you try and use your money to fill up a goody bag, it's going to end up being with very limited, trivial stuff. Sure. On the flip side, what our sponsors are doing, we have three levels of sponsors. We have platinum sponsors, gold sponsors, silver sponsors. Our platinum sponsor, who pays $30,000 to sponsor Fitness Business Summit, they are setting up their booth in the actual ballroom, number one, and they have one in the Expo Hall, right? And number two, they're also sponsoring our dance party that we're having Friday night.

And we make sure that everyone knows that, hey, the dance party is sponsored by Fit Aid, right? Our friend Aaron's company. And then, of course, our gold sponsors, they get to have preferred, preferred vending areas in the sponsor hall. And then, of course, our silver sponsors are kind of in the more of the outskirts. And one thing we've done to make sure our sponsors want to come back to next year, and you've got to make sure you do this. Because, look, you sell them once. You don't want to go find new sponsors for next year. Right.

So we started creating little passports about two years ago, and this has really helped three years. We're on the third year now. A little passport that when you go to every single sponsor and have them put their little stamp in the passport, on Sunday, you can turn in your passport. And your passport's in the drawing for one of three MacBook air. Okay. Right? And so we kind of force our audience to go to every sponsor to be a potential prospect for them. And the fourth and final thing we do is during the breaks, we're going to put out snacks anyway.

The hotel wants you to get what's known as a banquet order. You're going to pay for it, coffee, water, snacks, et cetera. We used to put it out in the foyer, and people would take their breaks there and whatever. Now we put that stuff in the sponsor hall. Why? Well, if you want snacks, we're going to have to go and get it from the sponsor hall. And when you do, something just might catch your attention, and you walk up to one of our Expo exhibitors and start doing business with them. But you have to start thinking about, all right, I sold my sponsors.

How do I get them back next year? So how do I add value to their lives this year? Yeah. And do you do emails before and after the event about the sponsors or just after? Yeah, after the event. And after the event, I do a big thank you email, and I give the link to every sponsor in that thank you email. And then our gold and platinum sponsors also get a promoted post on my Facebook fan page. Awesome.

So there's really so many ways that you can get creative in helping that sponsor out and therefore having them pay you more. Right. And so, you know, I'm just doing the math in my head and you're probably getting about, what, 50, 50 between ticket sales and sponsors? Yeah. Okay. So that's the revenue that then covers that, allows you to break even, bring the people in, and then sell them into high price coaching, which is essentially how your system works. Now, if we back up all the way to the start before we even have an event, that's the thinking that we have to do. like what's the end goal of the event. We're not just going to have an event for the sake of having an event because it's going to cost a lot of money. It's going to cost a ton of time and opportunity cost.

So what big ideas does somebody have to have in their mind before they start moving ahead with an event? Well, some of the big ideas are what exactly can I do with the content? Remember, you're creating content. You get to decide who's speaking. And if it's your event, you're probably speaking multiple times. So just with your talks alone, like at Fitness Business Summit, I usually end up speaking five times.

and I used to just go up there and just have topics, but there weren't any cohesive, there's nothing cohesive about them. Right. These days, if you look at my five topics from Friday morning all the way to Saturday, end of day, or Sunday end of day at 5 p.m., you realize that I'm making an info,

I'm making an info, I'm teaching you influence, I'm teaching you the industry, I'm teaching you marketing, then I teach you sales, then I teach you retention referral generation, then I teach you multiple location, how to open up multiple locations.

So I'm always teaching you something and they can, if you put all my talks together, congratulations, you got yourself an info product. That info product will probably make hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of its existence. Same with the content that you're producing. You know who's speaking. You have a choice in having them speak on a certain topic.

Make sure one topic complements the next guy or gal's topic so that when you sell the footage of the event, it makes sense and makes people want to come to the event next year. For example, when we sell the footage after the event, one of the upsells is, do you want to buy tickets to fitness business summit next year? Got it. It might as well be because they're excited about it. And so you always have to think of the end outcome.

In fact, when we talk about outcome and Drew and Ed here, two of our visual media guys, and I think you were there when on Saturday afternoon at Fitness Business Summit, I was like, all right, guys, audience, you're going to help me promote next year's Fitness Business Summit. And at my event, I took about 10 minutes. I think we did one or two takes. Hey, this is Pedro Coolean, and this is Fitness Business Summit. And if you miss this event, then you're probably not going to have a successful personal training business or you're struggling with your boot camp or whatever.

But next year, you're going to, right, and then we show the audience. I mean, you've got the audience. You've got the stage. You've got the lighting. You might as well do a pitch video for next year. And then the third and final thing, actually, there's two more things, a third and a fourth. The third thing is, this is my belief system, don't have your presenters pitch. because if most events will be a pitch fest after pitch fest after pitch fest

and that is the fastest way to erode a relationship and trust with your audience. Instead, I just pay my speakers to fly out. I'll pay for their hotel. I'll pay for their flight. And if there's a speaking fee, I'll pay for that. Or I'll say, look, what can I do? Can I speak of your event? Or buy books or whatever, right?

Like Lewis House. We bought something like 600 copies of his books. But find a way to get them to not pitch so that it's all content. And when you take the stage and it's time for you to pitch your high level coaching program, you're probably closing a million and a half, $2 million in sales from that stage in that moment. Yeah, otherwise you make 40 grand or something from somebody else's pitch. So one thing that you taught me to do, going back to make sure that your content is cohesive is that, you know, for my perfect life retreat, is that you told me, Craig, take them on a journey, take them on a journey over the two days.

And so that's how I built my content, much like I take them on a journey through the workshop so that by the end of it, they're going to see like, oh my goodness, if this is what he can do for me in 12 hours, imagine what he can do for me in 12 months, which is how I'm putting together my event. But you just gave me some great ideas there for the next year event as well, you know, doing something the end of the day on the second day. And, you know, it's funny, and here we are filming, but, and I know as I'm coaching you through this life, and I totally forgot to tell you that, dude, make sure that you do a little promo pitch for next step. You've got to do that promo pitch for next year.

Because you got the audience, you've got the energy, you're in your suit. Bam, that's where he delivered the thunder, man. Absolutely. Right? And so, again, going back to using every part of that pig. Yeah, that's brilliant. And so, all right, so we've got a big idea. We've got an end goal for the event.

We're going to put together a nice cohesive thing. We figured out how to really make the numbers work. What else is there that you need to do leading up to when you make your sale? So the big profit is made with selling something big, whether you're selling locations for FitBody or whether you're selling a master. or whether you're selling a mastermind or whatever somebody is selling, how do they work that up properly, the right combination of entertainment and education and goodwill so that people are like, you know what, I don't mind sitting here through this and I'm really interested and I'm going to

take action on this. What's the right formula? That's a really good question. So first of all, you never want to pitch on day one. So if you're having a live event, whether it's a two-day event or a three-day event, you're never going to pitch on day one. Day one is all about you. and your speakers, your presenters coming with a giving hand and delivering value to your audience, that has to be primary goal number one. Now, if you're going to have a three-day event or a two-day event, right before lunch on day two is when you're going to make your offer, your big pitch for your high-end coaching program or whatever your thing is. Now, you're usually going to have two pitches. In your case, you're not. In my case, I do. For me, I always pitch my seven-figure formula mastermind

first. People like, but yeah, don't you want to, these are all fitness professionals. Don't you want to sell FitBody Boot Camp? No, because you probably came there with your own brand in business. You didn't come there to sign up for FitBody Boot Camp and be a franchisee. You came there, how do I grow my own brand in business? So I'd rather sell you my high-end coaching program to help you grow your brand and business. Later, we have a booth in the back and I remind them. So there's like a subtle pitch that I do like on Saturday in the evening and Sunday in the morning. By the way, many of you have asked me about fitness or a Fit Body Boot Camp and what it takes to be a franchisee and if is it possible to be a franchisee if I have my own brand right now or

do what do I do uh look we have a booth right back there go talk to our franchise reps and if it makes sense to fill out the application and we'll take you through that process but the primary thing is always selling the high-end coaching program and so you're going to have a second offer and the second offer is going to be usually some kind of a downsell because not everyone's going to be able to afford a $2,500 a month coaching program sure for 12 months right okay and so you might sell them on a maybe a half-day meeting with you. Okay. Right?

And you might have eight or ten people that sign up on that. So just because, you know, you sold, let's say, a million point two of high-end coaching program doesn't mean you can't get another $300,000, $400,000 of a lower-level, lesser commitment coaching program or course, a $2,000 one-time purchase course, right? You might have another 20 people who buy a $2,000 course from you. And listen, you know, 20 people buying that. That's like 40 Gs right there in your pocket. that's going to make a nice little dent in your personal income.

So those things are pretty important. So one thing to look out for when running an event. Yeah. And I've run into this many a times over, which is to make sure to tell your presenters to stay on topic and respect. Stay on time. The time. Exactly. Topic and time.

At the end of the day, the audience gets a schedule. Who's speaking when on what topic and when their breaks and lunches are. And remember, they are held captive for three days or two days at your event. And if you can't respect the topic and the time, then you are going to have a hard time selling whatever you're trying to sell from the stage later that afternoon. Right. And so we always let our presenters know after we had a couple of debacles. We let our presenters know, look, you don't have to get on the stage and take, you know, 25 minutes of your 60-minute time slot positioning yourself. They already know you're a badass.

They know what you're an expert at. They know your credibility and they know you're an authority in the topic because you're on stage here. We've already positioned you via video on social media, on the sales page of the website. via emails. And so all you have to do is get up there and teach, give them their marching orders, take the standing ovation or the applause, and walk off the stage. And by doing that, and we always tell them, respect the time, now the presenter after them doesn't feel rushed. They don't feel like, you know, that's like, gee, man, what do I do I do my presentation short? Do I get more time? And that's really important to do the most professional thing you can to make sure that you respect

the audience. Yeah. So we have just delivered a complete blueprint for a having a big event or starting with a small event and making it profitable, making sure that you have sponsors, ticket sales, upsells, coaching sales, all of these great things, and even a second offer. So is there anything else that we need to share with our Empire Podcast listeners about building an empire building event? Yeah, yeah. Actually, I think you say that. There's two more things that I can think of right off the bat. Thing number one would be, I was going to ask, hey man I want to have an event, how soon should I start out? Am I 60 days before? Am I good?

You want to start your first event needs to be at least five months before. You want to start five months before, meaning like selling tickets. That means fitness business summit is March 16, 17, 18. Yeah, middle March, and you've been selling since about middle of October. Yeah, yeah. And we're already starting to work on. Now, our event is big. We're already getting speakers and working on topics for 2019, right?

And so you do want to start at least seven months out planning the event. Yep. And five months out selling the event. Sure. Because you want to build these triggers within the selling process, meaning when you buy your tickets by this date, you get 50% off plus free VIP upgrade. And then the price goes up. And when you buy tickets by this date, now you have 30% discount.

And then you get whatever. Like what I do now is you get last year's footage for free if you buy this date. You want to have these milestones so that you can create buying frenzies throughout your promotional period. Otherwise, you are going to be stressing out, wondering why no one's buying seats until the very last week of the event. So create milestones where the price goes up, a discount goes away, a bonus is added, a bonus is taken away, so that people can buy incrementally and you can fill that thing up well before you're supposed to launch it. Yeah, because obviously you want to have butts and seats when you get to having the event because that's necessary for the energy and the experience, but also the sales, obviously. So what's the second thing that you wanted to have in there?

The second thing I want to really stress here is that no one likes to eat at an empty restaurant. Right. And so you are going to have, you're going to have at least 15 to 20 percent of your audience not show up. Okay. So let's say you're sold a thousand tickets. You have a thousand chairs in front of tables, right? But knowing that 15 to 20 percent aren't going to show up, they paid but aren't going to show up, that just happens. Life gets in the way.

They get sick. Airplane doesn't make it because it had a mechanical error, whatever. Make sure that one, he's. you oversell by at least 20% and two, if you have a lot of empty seats, pull those seats out. Have your team pull those seats out so there's not a whole bunch of big pockets of empty seats.

Because it really gives a very bad impression. We've heard people say that before. And so you don't wanna create that scene of, man, it's an empty restaurant, I don't know if it's good. Everybody wants to wait in line for a busy restaurant. You see an empty restaurant and you're hungry, you're like, I don't know, let's go over there. They're full, right?

So you gotta create that environment by one, selling and two pulling out the seats that are going to get used. Awesome. Awesome. I love it. That's how you build an empire. You just build it through those personal relationships, through the events, through the selling, through the choreography and energy of having an amazing event. So, Bezos, what can we look forward to at Fitness Business Summit, 2018, besides me? Yeah, well, besides you, we do have some other decent presenters. Actually, man, I got to tell you, every year I rack my brain on how am I going to one-up the year before and fitness business summit that takes place March 16, 17, 18 and beautiful San

Diego, California of 2018. So not only do we have you, we've got Randall Pitch, the founder of Lift Fit brand, like the guy went from being a personal trainer to taking $300 and leveraging it and making a lifestyle brand of clothing, right? And have sunglasses and boxing gloves and gear. We have Lori Harder. Like she is an online social media. queen who's got a massive following but what's so unique about her is she actually knows how to monetize her following by taking her social media following and converting them to paying clients great which to me at the end of the day that's all that matters your likes and followers and comments

and loves and all that crap doesn't impress me what impresses me is how much money do you have in the bank and what kind of impact are you making with that money Lori is doing exactly that she takes her thousands of followers and converts them into paying client is doing a lot of good her and her husband Chris are doing a lot of good with their money Of course, in addition to that, we have, I think Lewis House is going to stop by. Oh, great. Yeah, yeah, Fitness Business Summit.

And then you got five or six presentations that you're already working on. Yeah, yeah, I've got five presentations of my own. But some of the best thought leaders, the top earners in the fitness industry, are going to be a fitness business summit. And it's going to be the best event that I've ever put on. And I'm just super excited to have it. Awesome. So we are going to see you there, building your empire as we build ours at Fitness Business Summit, 2018. listening to the Empire Podcast Show. Remember to subscribe on iTunes, share it with your friends,

and give us a rating. We'd really appreciate that. And make sure to go to Empirepodcastshow.com to watch the videos as they come out.