Firing The Man

How to Turn Your Message Into a Movement with Steve Werner

• Firing The Man • Episode 271

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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

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Speaker 1:

Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts, serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.

Speaker 2:

Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, where we dive deep with today's top entrepreneurs, creators and business leaders to uncover the real stories behind their success. Today, we've got a powerhouse of a guest joining us Steve Werner. Steve is a master at helping coaches, consultants and course creators grow their impact, income and influence by turning their message into a movement. With over a decade of experience, he's built a thriving business, helping entrepreneurs craft powerful signature talks, high converting offers and content that connects on a deep emotional level and content that connects on a deep emotional level. He's hosted more than 65 live events, spoken on over 250 stages, and his podcast Grow your Impact, income and Influence has become a go-to resource for heart-centered entrepreneurs looking to scale with authenticity. Whether you're trying to land more clients, sell out your next offer or become unforgettable on stage or online, steve brings the heat, so grab a notebook. You're going to want to take notes on this one. Steve, super excited to have you on the show. Welcome.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much, David. I'm excited to be here. I know we've got a lot of topics to dive into. I know you're a great host, so I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 2:

a lot of topics to dive into. I know you're a great host, so I'm excited to be here Outstanding. So, to start things off, can you tell us a little bit?

Speaker 3:

about your path in the entrepreneurial world. Sure, I'll make it brief. Like most people, I got this huge 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 worked seven days a week. So when you work in a ski town, most times you have two or three jobs and you fit in an hour or two of skiing where you can in between jobs and usually work out of 130 day season. You're probably going to work like stretches of 30, 40 days straight, maybe a day or two off here and there, but it's. It's a grind. You tell yourself that it's worth it.

Speaker 3:

I ended up going to a Tony Robbins event, got super inspired and had this vision of you know, I'm going to live this laptop lifestyle and I'm going to go all in. So I did. I'm a guy that is not scared to take 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 last year and I went forward. I quit my job.

Speaker 3:

I thought I was going to hold live events. That's what I wanted to do. So I booked the largest venue in Las Vegas that I could find, which at the time was a 2,500 person ballroom at Treasure Island Proceeded to spend all the money that I had all the money that was in my retirement accounts, pretty much everything trying to hold this event and failed miserably. We sold two tickets. I had to cancel the event. It was a complete mess, but from that I learned a lot of lessons and we, like, grinded forward.

Speaker 3:

We'll probably get into this a little bit later, but I had some friends that were entrepreneurs and they sat me down the day that I had to cancel that event and they ask you know, why did you fail? What do you need to learn to be successful? Like, where were your errors in this? And they they helped me nicely pull back the curtain and see what I did wrong. And then they said what are you willing to do to learn this? And then they said what are you willing to do to learn this? Who do you? And it goes back to Tony Robbins quote of who do you need to become to be the life that you want to have. And it's not about making the life fit me, it's about who do who do we need to become? We always need to grow, we always need to change and, being honest with that, that then led to me holding the next event. The next event was much, much smaller 80 people but I was able to sell that out in 90 days and we started to make a little bit of money.

Speaker 3:

And then, baby steps and what do I need to learn? Same questions, and just moving forward by 2015, we crossed, I think. 2015, we crossed 300 K and then 2016, we crossed a million dollar mark and then just kept growing. Um, before long, people were coming to me asking for help with events, asking for help with their offers, asking for help filling their events. And here we are today.

Speaker 2:

That's outstanding. That is outstanding. I love the, the grinding in a ski town, working crazy hours, crazy schedule. And because of the title of the show, I want to dive into your firing the man moment, the moment that you've realized I'm doing this, I'm going in to put six months notice, which is more than generous, and can you talk about that, that particular day?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, um, I actually have two uh that we'll come to. I'll do the the ski town one first, and then I want to go back to college, cause I had this actually happened um 12 years earlier, 10 years earlier, um, so what happened? I went to the Tony Robbins event and I made this decision right. If you've gone to Tony, have you gone to a Tony event?

Speaker 2:

No, I have not, but I've heard enough stories to know the power and influence that he has.

Speaker 3:

It totally, totally worth going. So I went to UPW and he does this immersion experience. It's called the Dickens process. You can look it up on YouTube if you want to learn more. But he basically it's named the Dickens process because it's after the Christmas Carol. You're visited by three ghosts of your life in the future your life If you paint the version that you want and he does this really powerful, like probably 90 minute group hypnosis, basically, where you you've spent the morning drawing out what your dream life would look like. What does that mean to you? To like?

Speaker 3:

A lot of people say they want a lot of money or they want more free time. But what? What does money really get us? 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.

Speaker 3:

Travel and freedom is the biggest thing for me. I want to go have a lot of experiences. I want to eat at nice restaurants. I want to go to nice cities. That doesn't mean that everything has to be first class. I enjoy walking off the beaten path. If you saw me backpacking Europe, I'm in a dirty T-shirt because I only packed five T-shirts. I'm in a pair of Costco hiking pants and some Costco hiking pants and some beat up tennis shoes with a 30 liter backpack. But I love that stuff. I also love going, you know, on nice vacations. I love staying on on cruise ships. I love going to great restaurants. But I painted all of this.

Speaker 3:

And then he goes into the Dickens process, which is what does your life look like three years from now? What does your life look like 10 years from now? What does it look like 25 years from now? What does your life look like 10 years from now? What does it look like 25 years from now? Then he does the exact opposite. If you stay making the decisions that you are making right now and if you're honest with yourself and you take responsibility, you are the reason that you are where you are right now. You made the decisions, ultimately, to get you here we can talk about. Well, there's outside forces. Somebody told me I need to do something. The end of the day, you are responsible for your decisions. So if I made the decisions that got me here now and I continue making those decisions, what does my life look like three years from now? What does my life look like five years, 10 years, 25 years? Well, so the time that I went to Tony Robbins I was I think I was 34.

Speaker 3:

I went to Tony Robbins I was I think I was 34. And I looked at it and I said you know, if I keep on this path, yeah, I'll live in Vail, colorado. I'll live here for as long as I possibly can. I'm going to have a bunch of roommates. I'm going to work a bunch of jobs waiting tables. I might get to do some cool travel, I'll get to ski some, but I'm not going to have a solid retirement. I'm not going to actually live in a house by myself. Chances of getting married maybe slim to none. Like it's a ski down. It's a one girl to about 20 guys and they're not thinking long-term. Um, that's not nothing wrong with any of that right. But I started asking those questions and I was like three years, five years, ten years.

Speaker 3:

And he does this rubber band process where you've just spent 90 minutes looking at what your life could be and then 90 minutes looking at where your life is most likely headed, and the amount of people that break down in tears and have strong emotional response to that is huge. And the reason I'm going through all of this is because you anchor a decision. We make decisions emotionally. You anchor decisions on emotion and he has a way of maximizing your emotion to the point. I mean you obviously had a moment when you quit your job and you were like I can't do this anymore and you had looked at a future. But imagine, and you were strong enough to leave. So my hat is off to you. A lot of people have this moment like they have moments where they're like I don't want my I don't want to work at my job anymore, I want to do something else. My sister had that for 20 years probably working, before she finally went out and opened her own business. The fastest way to get yourself to go do something is to have a strong emotional anchor. So Tony gets you in a strong emotional anchor.

Speaker 3:

Then, from there, I went back to Vail and I looked at it. So the reason that I gave six months notice I had already signed in for a winter lease. I had a great job for a ski town and I said you know what? I'll stay through the season and I'll use this as a runway. So what did that change in my life? I stopped going out to the bar after work. I went home so I could get up early and I started spending one hour a day studying, whether that was reading a book, listening to a podcast, watching YouTube videos.

Speaker 3:

This was 2013,. So it was a different landscape back then, but I started spending an hour on personal development. I started listening when I was out skiing. Instead of listening to music all the time, I started listening to personal development stuff, whether it was Tony Robbins or Zig Ziglar or a book on tape like audible was around back then. So I started listening to stuff. But that that was like the moment.

Speaker 3:

So then I went into my boss and I gave my boss the notice and my boss was both supportive and not supportive at the same time. Oh, that's great. I want you to live your dreams. That sounds really cool. And well, we have this nice career path laid out for you here.

Speaker 3:

If you stay here a little bit longer, you're going to make a little bit more money. You'll probably eventually be able to get a house, you know, 30 miles away, and you'll be able 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. And I said Nope. The the thing that rang really true for me, in that my friends asked me this when the event went sideways as well. There will always be jobs bartending. There will always be jobs in a restaurant. I can always go back to that. But what happens if I lean in and take a chance? That's the only way that you're going to find out if it works, and the secret is that it will work as hard as you work. That sounds very you know belongs on a T-shirt or something, but it's very true. If you start working at something and you say I will work on this till it is successful, chances are you're going to be successful.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. I could not agree with that more. And continuing on with your story, one of the things that I think is really awesome about your story is your first entrepreneurial venture did not go well and a lot of people retreat. They go back to the bartending job. They say this isn't for me, I'm not cut out for this, I didn't go to an Ivy League school, I have an average IQ. And they justify their next step. And so walk me through that From a mindset standpoint and I'm sure that's not the only failure you've had throughout your career, and I can say that as an entrepreneur that has a laundry list of failures. But what mindset do you need to have to appropriately handle failure like you did in your first venture?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So I'll give a couple cheats first. I guess Cheats or shortcuts. There's a book by Carol Dweck that is called Mindset and I would recommend that to anybody listening to the Audible. Tom Bilyeu does a great podcast on this as well.

Speaker 3:

I didn't have that mindset at the time. I had the mindset of I'm going to go all in, I'm going to give this a shot and if I fail I'll come back to bartending. Well, fast forward to what happened with the event. If you don't know the event space, when you sign the contract, you sign up for a food and beverage minimum for the event space and you sign up for what's called a room block, which is a guaranteed number of hotel rooms that you will be responsible for. Well, because I went as big as I possibly could, I had 250 hotel rooms that I was responsible for and about I think it was $50,000 or $60,000 in food and beverage minimum. We're six weeks from the event.

Speaker 3:

I think I'd had maybe three calls with the head of events at 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.

Speaker 3:

I was burning money. I had about. I think I had about 40 or 50 K in my 401k and then I had about 20 grand saved up in cash and that I thought that was going to be enough to last me for two years. That lasted me about four months. My burn rate was way too high. I didn't know anything, though. I was just taking action, which I still recommend to people. Take action, because you will learn very quickly.

Speaker 3:

Um, but all of this to say, uh, we're now four or four or five weeks from the event and the event host calls me up and she says, hey, uh, we noticed that you have not had one single hotel room of your hotel block filled. 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 my friends to their credit, they were new friends to me, but they went with me. I told them what was going on. They were entrepreneurs. They kind of know that it has ups and downs they went with me. We sat down at a place called the frog bar it's in treasure Island after this and they had this discussion with me of, like, what are you going to do? And I said well, right now I've got ski job offers, I can go back to Vail, I can go to these other ski resorts One of them was up here in Tahoe, where I now live, I think I could go back and they said, okay, you could.

Speaker 3:

Or what about learning from what you did? How do you learn and iterate? And this was a lesson that I am still learning and I'm getting better at every day, and I think it is the core of entrepreneurship and that is take action, learn without emotion. Did this work? Did this not work? I'm not going to be emotionally attached 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 the faster you can remove emotion and take that process, so that first, that first time.

Speaker 3:

If we look at it, it took I think it was probably six months from when I left my job till the event failed. The next event took me a 90 days and we got that done and I made about 10 grand. The next event after that took 45 days and then the next event after that took about the same, but we made more money because I changed things around. It's, how fast can you iterate?

Speaker 3:

And you ask about the mindset. The mindset is I am not, my failures, the the challenge that all of us grow up with, especially in Western world. Um, I don't know about your upbringing. I have friends, um, I have friends that are like I've. I've a lot of multicultural friends, um, that have it even worse than I did. But I was raised that you, you should be a straight, A student, you should be doing these things correctly, and if you're not doing it correctly, shame on you, and that is a personal failure. Our parents didn't say that, but those are things that we learned. It is not a personal failure unless you own it as a personal failure. And it's not a failure also till you stop, If you learn from it and you iterate and you do it again. Let's just go back to high school or I don't know, even like fifth or sixth grade.

Speaker 3:

If you look at a spelling test, you spelled the word wrong.

Speaker 3:

Okay, let me try again. Let me try to sound it out. Let me think about it Instead of being right and wrong. Okay, I spelled it wrong. How should that be spelled? Okay, I'm going to practice it Now, I'm spelling it correctly. And Okay, I'm going to practice it 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. You have to take personal responsibility. I am responsible for doing this thing, for learning from this and for the actions. And the second thing is that I will 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 it out on people around me and I'm not going to be emotional. Okay, did it work? Did it not work? What did work? How do I learn that and how do we do it again as fast as possible and have no the balance?

Speaker 3:

I've had this conversation with some entrepreneurs. Sometimes you go down a road, you start climbing a mountain. I'm going to start a YouTube channel. How far do you have to go down before you learn? Is YouTube something I want to do? Because it takes. You're going to be at it for probably 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 the beginning, but that's advice that I give people. Now I'm going to put a timeframe on it. Between now and the end of that timeframe. I'm going to be unemotional and I'm going to iterate as fast as I possibly can.

Speaker 2:

I like it.

Speaker 2:

I like it.

Speaker 2:

One of your comments about the Western world and the success, failure and how school systems are set up as I raise my own kids, it's something that I have tried to instill in them is failing is okay as long as you're learning from it, and I don't think the first 18 years of your life, just like the traditional upbringing in the US, really sets you up for that mindset.

Speaker 2:

It is something that you need to develop after the fact or after hours, after school type of situation, and so one of the things that I want to kind of turn the page and discuss is the role of emotion, and, as you're answering some of those first questions, you were talking about removing emotion when you are analyzing the outcome. I also, as I was prepping for this, listened to a couple of your podcasts, and you talk about crafting a message that appeals to people's emotions, and so you know we are all the CEOs of our own emotions. We may not think of it that way, but we are, and so you know, for entrepreneurs, they're sitting in the seat consciously thinking I'm the CEO of my emotion. How do they best navigate or manage that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that is a great question. So there are a couple of different ways I can talk about that. So the first thing that I will say is, when you start off as an entrepreneur Alex Ramosi has this piece where he talks about he broke down. It was him and the guy from Modern Wisdom. They broke down traits that they had seen in successful entrepreneurs, and two of them are in direct contrast. One is that I am better than everybody else. I have a secret sauce that nobody else has else. I have a secret sauce that nobody else has. And the second one is that is in direct opposition but I think drives people.

Speaker 3:

A lot is a crippling flaw of I'm not good enough. I have to prove myself, and I think when we start in business, we have those two going on. I have the secret sauce I'm really good at or I really like doing, and then we have this other piece that like drives us. It's, it's the stick, and I think that works, maybe up until a couple million dollars Most people it's, I would say, like one to $2 million, and then you have to switch. I've seen people that keep going in that and they eventually reach a point where they burn out. And it's, it's burnout because you're. You will always not be good enough if you're looking for reasons to not be good enough and as the stage gets bigger that I'm not good enough, weight gets heavier and heavier. What I think you need to switch to and I mean Tony Robbins said it in the beginning I remember hearing people talk about it and being like, yeah, yeah, that's nice, simon Sinek talks about it.

Speaker 3:

Your why, right? Why are you doing this? What drives you? What's your positive? It's really hard to have that in the beginning. I think a lot for people I know.

Speaker 3:

The first, probably two years I was in business I didn't have a solid why, other than I did not want 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 quit and you started growing your e-com businesses, you started being able to have more time with your family, you started being able to teach your kids different lessons, you started being able to take them different places and ultimately you started to show them a different world which you felt deeply in your core was worthwhile. Not only that, but then your whole worldview kind of changes, and the more you can lean into that, and it's Alex Ramosi has done this.

Speaker 3:

I point to him because I think he's a really interesting case study that is on view for most people to see. When he started one of his core stories, he built a business up to a couple million dollars. Then he got into a DUI head-on collision that he was lucky to walk away from. Why was he drinking? He was like I was drinking a fifth of Jack a day because I hated my life. I built up money but I hated what I was doing. I didn't know how to break out of that. The key is you have to build, and this is if we go all the way back to Tony Robbins, where I started, I had this life dream and that dream is allowed to change, and it did for me as I got better at business.

Speaker 3:

But from the CEO standpoint to bring it full circle, back to your question, the CEO we are ultimately in charge of our own emotions and if we choose to live in a negative emotion state, that is our choice. We have to, and it is difficult. There are some tactics I can give you, but we have to change it to a positive. I am serving people. These are the outcomes that I'm getting for people. This is what I'm going to focus on, and as you slowly start to do that, it will actually allow you to iterate faster, because you're when you're iterating slow, it's because you're emotionally attached to negative emotions. What are people going to think if I do this wrong? What if I try this and I fail on a big stage? What, oh my goodness, if I fail and I go bankrupt? What happens? Throw all that out the window and go to the positive side, but it takes a lot to focus on the positive side and go to the positive side, but it takes a lot to focus on the positive side Absolutely, and that shifting why.

Speaker 2:

I definitely experienced that myself.

Speaker 2:

First it was I don't want to work in corporate America, and then it was I have a team, I want to be a great leader and provide a prosperous life for them, and then I had kids and I was married, and that shifting why is critical, and so I really liked that perspective of what you're saying about how entrepreneurs need to manage that manage the emotions.

Speaker 2:

And so let's talk about emotions on the other side of things, and this is to entrepreneurs that are selling things, and one of the things that I and a lot of people that are tuning in are in e-commerce, and that is sometimes a nameless, faceless exchange. Sometimes a nameless, faceless exchange, I would say, especially on Amazon, where you have pictures and a video to communicate with that customer, but you're limited. And so I'd like to talk about the appealing to the emotions. And one thing I'll mention and I experienced this too if I was selling, say, prosthetic legs for children, boy, do you have a great story there. But a lot of people don't have that type of company. They're selling practical products that are useful, but not necessarily things that are life-changing, and I know this is something that I've struggled with is creating a compelling message that appeals to people's emotions on, say, a product like a dog collar, or you know what I mean, and so can you speak to that.

Speaker 3:

I mean, I can give you my best. I'm not an e-com, but I can give you the two things that I would say. The first thing is your brand. What comes to mind for me is there's two. One is like Tom's If you give a portion to something that you care about and you make that known in your messaging, people like that. People also like there are some people on Amazon that I've seen do this Well. They sell based on a personal brand. They put a little bit of personality. Um, there were t-shirts that I've seen do this well. They sell based on a personal brand. They put a little bit of personality. There were t-shirts that I was looking at. Actually, this is great.

Speaker 3:

If you travel a lot, you're going to want to buy. It's a specific kind of wool that does not need washed very often. It's very light. It breathes really well. I can't remember the name of it. It starts with an M Marina Searching. Yeah, there we go, thank you, um. So I was searching it. There's a brand on there and it's a.

Speaker 3:

It's two brothers talking about why they built the, the company. They're putting a personal story to something that is not. You could just sell a t-shirt, right. So that's the first thing, put a little bit of your story in there, and everybody I hear this with people that I build speeches for all the time I don't have a story. Everybody's got a story. You have kids. You have a story. You have a reason of why it's important. You know this, I know you know this. But people out there listening to this are like I'm just a normal guy, I'm trying to launch some products on Amazon.

Speaker 3:

Well, talk about the journey. What will you do? Because your brand is successful? Put something to it. So that's the first one, and so the second one. The first one is the Tom's piece. Give away a small fraction to a cause that you really care about. Don't just pick a cause because it's something social that looks good. Pick a cause that you care about. I was adopted. I'm adopted from birth. I give to adoption clinics. That is something that is very meaningful to me. It's part of my story. It's not necessarily part of my entrepreneurial story, but it's part of my story and people know that about me, so I talk about that. Those are two that you can add that will give you some emotional resonance.

Speaker 3:

There's a one other piece that I'll talk to here. It's your own personal. Why so I if I don't think I could do e-commerce? I can't work in front of a computer forever. Like doing all that stuff seems very hard, but if I needed to, what I would do is the reason that I am doing X thing. There are things that I don't love doing in my business, but the reason that I'm doing X thing is because it will impact people this way, it will impact my team this way and it will impact people this way, it will impact my team this way and it will impact me this way. So I start with what's the impact that's going to have on my customers, on my audience, on people who see me.

Speaker 3:

I don't love posting on social media. I left social media for years. I'm back on social media because somebody at an event told me I wish I would have found you six months ago why aren't you on Facebook? And like that was a moment I wasn't real happy with myself. I was like crap, he's right, I don't want to be on Facebook. I don't like taking the time, I don't like all the energy there. One of the things I came up with for myself was if I'm going to post on Facebook, I'm going to make sure that they're meaningful and that they impact people. They'll either make people laugh, they'll inspire people, or they will share meaningful content, and that's what I've tried to do. But see how that emotion is different than I'm going to post on social media to blow up my business.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, and that's something that I run into. I'm a very private person and I struggle with that push and pull of creating a personal brand and sharing with people but also keeping that privacy. And it's a delicate push and pull that I think a lot of people go through. But you're back. You're back on social media and you've laid out some rules for yourself.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think it's about having clear boundaries. I want to talk, because you said private person. I want to share one other story that I think is really meaningful. Around that there's a guy named Law Payne. He's got the number one selling click funnels funnel of all time.

Speaker 3:

Um, he's one of the biggest people in the fitness space but he has a faceless brand. He does not put himself or his wife 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 my brand will do better without my face on it because I can market to a wider group of people. But then from there, in order to really grow, he had to go to a faceless brand. But where I'm going with this is he still has brand of values that are front and center for his brand and he makes sure that people know what his brand stands for, even if they don't know he's the person behind his brand. You know where I'm going to go. Back to Tom's. You know what Tom's stands for. You don't necessarily know the owner 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-brand company that maybe has a different value than you. That's definitely possible.

Speaker 2:

I really like that, and those are two really good examples. To take a look at Tom's in particular I'm very familiar with that. I have no idea who the CEO is. However, just the word Tom's, I can you resonate? Yes, absolutely Absolutely, and so I think that is a really good message, especially for people that are a little bit more private and are hesitant on posting or promoting, and so no, that's great advice. I want to spend a little bit of time on live events and specifically post-COVID live events. What is and you've been around, you saw the pre-COVID and post-COVID, so what? To start things off, what's kind of the status of post-COVID live events? Are they back?

Speaker 3:

Great question. Yes and no. People, definitely following COVID, wanted to get back out and meet people. I think that was. I mean, we saw like travel go through the roof. Now we've kind of come to a plateau like spike, and now we're back down to level. What we've seen in the event space is actually there's. There's a lot of interesting things. The first thing is virtual events have gone through the roof because so many people got comfortable with zoom that they they say that to event event hosts. If you look at pre-event surveys, if you look at general consensus, people say you know, I really want the outcome of the event, can you do it virtually? So people have done virtual events.

Speaker 3:

From the host standpoint, it is much cheaper to hold a virtual event. You're going to have some advertising costs, for sure, but you're not spending $100,000 on a venue. You don't have the room blocks, you don't have the food and beverage. Now the challenge that we see is show up rates for virtual events are abysmal. You're even with a paid ticket like a $200 paid ticket to a virtual event you're going to see 50 to 60% show up rates on average. You're going to see a large amount of drop off from day one to day two, you're probably going to lose 25% of your audience. The people who are attending are driving, they're on Facebook, they're at work on their phone, like that is that's virtual events, live events, what you're seeing. It's really interesting.

Speaker 3:

People do like live events, but you're having a different way of selling the ticket to get people to live events. You used to be able to run ads. You used to be able to email your list and sell the ticket to a live event. You'd have a 90% 95% show up rate. That is not the case. So you're seeing event sales fall off because some people just won't commit. They've been to a lot of events too, like the reason if they've gone to a couple of virtual events, usually the layout is very similar. They kind of know what they're getting.

Speaker 3:

So you're seeing sales fall off on live events because of that and because people don't want to travel like they did pre COVIDCOVID not for events anyway. So what we're seeing is, instead of selling directly to a live event ticket, it works much better to sell something, whether it's a mini course, whether it's a one-day VIP, something that comes with the live event ticket as implementation. The second thing is you have to warm people up to get them to show up. What that means is you have to have somebody on your team. Call them. You have to do a pre-event. Where it's a networking event, you get to know everybody. You have to give them a reason to show up to the event we have. Inside of my business we do seven different steps to maximize show up rates, whether it's a virtual event or a live event. But you have to do that. The other big change that we're seeing are you familiar with traffic and conversion?

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 3:

Yep, they canceled their event. Right, they canceled their event and they put out a public statement. I'm really I my hat is off to them Like a lot of respect for putting out a public statement that 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's a successful event. They're used to having 3,000 to 5,000. Click Funnels I love Russell to death. I love the Click Funnels community. I think it's a good community. Their goal I believe I heard that 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. Show up rates are down because one it costs money, it costs energy, it costs time. You're getting on a plane.

Speaker 3:

People also though the big change, the reason that I think both of those and other events are starting to pull back. People want specific solves to specific pain points. You used to see general events. Fhl, funnel Hacking Live is a general event. We're going to show you the world of funnels. That does not solve a specific burning problem for me. Traffic and conversion same thing. We're going to show you traffic. We're going to show you some conversion.

Speaker 3:

General event. You want your event to solve, I would say, three to five ultra-specific pain points of your audience. This might mean you have a smaller event, which is actually a win in two different ways. If ClickFunnels would have done this and they are moving to this model Russell kind of announced it from stage If you solve three to five specific pain points, you are going to have a smaller overall audience, but your audience is going to be red hot for the solution. Your sales are going to go up and your event cost. Russell said Russell also said this from Sage their event budget for FHL this year was $9 million. You think about outlying $9 million. I don't think. I don't know their sales numbers, but I don't think he sold nine million at the event. I think it was a loss leader the old school events. You look at events pre-COVID.

Speaker 3:

Russell spent three million dollars to put on an event and he sold 12 million at the event because 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? I went to the event in 2017. How do you build a? We're going to show you three different lead gen funnels that will turn cold traffic into warm traffic, into a low ticket buyer into a high ticket buyer. We're going to show you the exact funnels and the value ladder to do that at the event. That solves a lot of specific pain points Right there. That got people in. And then his offer at the event. It was the first year that he offered uh to ccx. It was a 20k offer and he did 12 million in sales wow okay that he did not do that this year at fhl.

Speaker 3:

This year at fhl he had seven different offers that were kind of all over the place. They didn't really solve anything specific. They kind of all over the place. They didn't really solve anything specific. They kind of did, but not like that offer did, and the event was hey, it's FHL. That's why you're seeing those events start to dry up and go away. I can give more examples, but that's.

Speaker 2:

No, those are the trends that you're talking about. It's interesting because on the consumer side of things I have, if I think of some of the virtual events that I've attended this year, they have been very specific. Uh, problems in problem solution and I this is probably one of the first I go to prosper in las vegas every year. This is the first of the first I go to Prosper in Las Vegas every year. This is the first year I've chosen not to and it wasn't like a conscious decision, it was just I got the email, I got the reminder email. I didn't book the flight and all of a sudden it's coming past and I'm okay with that, I'm at peace with that.

Speaker 2:

And that one was very generally Amazon. But had it been lower your advertising costs and increased conversions on Amazon or increase your average cart value on Amazon, I can kind of justify the cost of that. I'm like, okay, $2,000 to go out to Vegas and I'll definitely make that up in my business, whereas some of the more general topics are hard to like. Immediately make that connection on value. And so you know, for I think a lot of service driven agencies use live events to drum up business and for any of those people listening. What do you think the move is? Is it a virtual event? Is it a live event? What would you say?

Speaker 3:

Great question and I'll give you a couple different answers. So I love that you just laid out you just literally laid out the buying process that goes on in somebody's head. You see the email come in and you're like, even if you've gone to the event before, yeah, it was a good time, but is it worth three or four grand in ticket, travel costs, food, hotel, a burning need right now, whereas if you solve something specific, it is. So there's a couple. I see if you want to hold a big generalized event, you're either going to have to bring the cost of the ticket and travel down or have an individual. That something that you can add. If Russell would have done this for FHL, I think it would have been really powerful. He made seven different offers, each one of those offers aligned with a different avatar, different place where somebody was in that realm. If he would have built the marketing to specifically address that and he would have done a breakout session dealing with one specific thing. Because then think about the email marketing I'm dealing. There's somebody that I've had a couple phone calls with. They have an event coming up in San Diego they're dealing with.

Speaker 3:

I want to point out one other mistake and trend that I think is happening right now. They're dealing with very bad sales rate. This is their fourth year holding the event. Last year was their biggest. Second biggest year, three years ago, was their biggest. Last year came down a little bit. This year's fallen off.

Speaker 3:

And the guy said to me on the call we have more speakers than we have ever had. He thought that was a plus and then I had the kind of discussion that we just had. People do not want topical discussions. I know if I go to an event that has 20 speakers, I'm going to hear 20 different points of view that are all surface level. We are not going deep on anything and I'm probably going to hear contradictory information. What I want is a deep dive on how to do two or three specific things, solve these specific pain points for me. And when I told him that, he was like he said some four letter words and he was like I spent $400,000 on speakers and I was like, yeah, and it's actually hurting your event Bringing in outside people.

Speaker 3:

Event hosts think that because I brought in these big names, 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, one or two days with that person, it's not worth it. But this is what worked in the past and event hosts God love them, like a lot of people hold events 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.

Speaker 3:

You've really got to think through the strategy. That's what I do with my clients and I can tell you the number of people I've dealt with that have multimillion dollar budgets and have not thought through the customer journey of going back to the emails of we solve this specific pain point, here's 10 emails that show how we do that. We show customer journey. We show case studies of that. We show how the speaker is going to do that. We show how the event's going to do that that gets people to buy tickets. Absolutely, that's missing.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely and tell me if you agree with this. But I would say if masterminds were a publicly traded stock and you bought them a decade ago, you would be rolling in money right now. And I could personally say one of the things I like about masterminds is I'm talking to other business owners who I'm not in competition with and I lay out very specific problems that I'm having in my business and oftentimes they'll say, oh, I had that too. Here's specifically how I solved 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 it's an open form to share very specific things and get very specific instructions on solutions to problems. And so would you agree with that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely. I also love masterminds. I've spent more than $700,000 on masterminds over the last 10 years. I think it is the best way to grow because you get specific advice from people that are at the same level or higher than you. What's interesting is, events are usually what is used to sell masterminds and because the events are now going away and becoming too broad, you've actually seen masterminds fall off or they're being sold differently. It's such an interesting. There's a lot of. There's probably a lot. I do love masterminds. I think masterminds are the probably the best vehicle to take you from I would say, like a hundred thousand dollars a year to a couple million, because you can find I can name just when you said that like I can think of specific challenges I had in my business over the last 10 years. I can tell you the person that solved it for me Because we were in a mastermind. I can also say I helped a lot of people. That is the best possible place to go to change actions and get actions to what you're doing.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, absolutely Well, if people are thinking about hosting a live event and want some help, can you talk about what type of clients you work with?

Speaker 3:

Sure, I've helped people all the way from. This is my first event. We don't get involved too many times with those people anymore. First events I would recommend holding 10 to 20 people Small event. Don't blow everything on trying to hold a massive event. Get 20 people in a room and learn from that. From that, um, I would say our average avatar right now is somewhere between, I would say, 50 to 75 people in the room up to our largest event now has been about 8 000 people. Um, virtually we've done anywhere from, I would say, 50 to 75 to, yeah, a couple thousand. Um, I love taking people if they just need help. I'm seeing the m MC is your secret weapon in the room and I love I'm seeing events.

Speaker 3:

A good MC does not read off note cards. I take the time I go through their 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 well from stage in sales is because they're expecting a pitch from the 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 speak for 45 minutes. If you ask everybody in the audience what did they share with you, you're going to get 50 different answers at least. Right. I can summarize give them the main point that we want them to have, tie that to the next piece and then tie that to the offer. If I do that over and over, it does drive buying decisions. So I will emcee anybody's event that I, as long as I feel their integrity I love. Emcee anybody's event as long as I feel their integrity I love emceeing.

Speaker 3:

If we do strategy, we usually like to start three to six months out and we build out the things that we've been talking about. How do you solve specific pain points? How do you sell something at a low ticket price that includes the ticket? What is the right thing to sell? We do all of that with our customers. We help them get the event really dialed in. We've been able to increase first off ticket sales and then, more importantly, show up rates. We've been able to move a lot of our show up rates to 90, 95% through. We have seven steps that we take people through how to fill that event, how to activate people, how to get them in the room, and then, if you do all that correctly, you have a much hotter audience in the room. You'll get higher sales numbers.

Speaker 2:

Very nice, very nice. And to all the listeners, we'll post links to Steve's website and how to book a call with him in the show notes.

Speaker 3:

Really quick, really quick. I'll just throw out If you want to book a call with me, if you want to learn more about what we do, uh, you can go to stevecoffee. S, t, e, v, e, dot, c, o, f, f, e. Uh, that will take you to basically my link tree. You can book a call with me. Uh, we have some free resources there as well. We have a full website, uh, you can go to as well. It's the one uh link down below in the description. It's stephenphiliphornercom, but we have case studies on there, plus the entire buffet of what we do.

Speaker 2:

Outstanding. Now, before we wrap up the show, we have something called the fire round. This is four questions we ask every guest at the end of the interview. Are you ready?

Speaker 3:

Let's do it.

Speaker 2:

All right, what is your favorite book?

Speaker 3:

Ooh right now I would say 10X is easier than 2X.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to add that to my reading list. What are your hobbies?

Speaker 3:

I like skiing, skiing, snowboarding, I like hiking, I like international travel and I play poker.

Speaker 2:

Very nice. What is one thing you do not miss about working for the man?

Speaker 3:

Gosh, just one, I would say a schedule. I like freedom and autonomy. I like to build my own schedule and work on my own terms.

Speaker 2:

I definitely agree with that. And final question what do you think sets apart successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started?

Speaker 3:

Mindset. You just have to have the mindset that, yes, I can do this and I am not going to stop. I'm going to keep going, I'm going to keep iterating and I'm going to keep growing. If you have that mindset, you will 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 I think I led with somewhere in early on, which is who do I need to become to have the life that I want?

Speaker 2:

Very nice, very nice. Well, steve, this has been an outstanding interview. I think we could have gone on for hours today, but I want to thank you for your time and look forward to staying in touch.

Speaker 3:

Awesome, david, thanks for having me on.

People on this episode

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David Schomer

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Ken Wilson

Co-host