Welcome to episode #59 of the High Profit Event Show with your host, Rudy Rodriguez. In this episode, we're excited to have Neil Twa, the founder of Voltage Digital Marketing, who brings a wealth of experience from his impressive background in driving over $100 million in sales and crafting extraordinary event experiences. Neil shares his entrepreneurial journey, highlighting the importance of creating memorable events that go beyond mere profit and instead focus on creating a top-notch experience.

Neil discusses the key to successful event planning, emphasizing the role of engaging the audience through interactive workshops. He recounts the success of his first major event in Fort Lauderdale and how effective email marketing and building a strong community led to selling out tickets. Neil also sheds light on the strategies he employs in virtual events to establish trust and foster long-term relationships with attendees, ensuring they remain engaged and continue to participate at high levels.

The conversation delves into the nitty-gritty of event execution, where Neil reveals his approach to providing value and leveraging joint venture opportunities. He shares insights into making irresistible offers and lifting the brand value for both parties involved. Moreover, Neil talks about translating his experience in the e-commerce space to other industries, such as real estate, thereby adding immense value and deepening business relationships.

This episode is packed with golden nuggets for anyone in the event space, whether you're focused on physical or virtual events. Neil's expertise in creating valuable content and engaging participants in a way that encourages high-level collaboration and results is something you won't want to miss.

So, tune in by clicking the link to watch the full episode and don't forget to subscribe for more insights. Join us in thanking Neil Twa for sharing his valuable strategies and be sure to follow us for more episodes that dive deep into making your events profitable and impactful.

Want to connect with Neil Twa?

You can download a free 3 part in depth training worth $997 at https://www.voltagedm.com/businessbuilders

Website: https://www.voltagedm.com/

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neiltwa/

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Think you'd be a great guest on the show? Apply HERE.

Want to learn more about Rudy's work at V.E.S.T. Your Virtual Event Sales Team? Check out his website at https://virtualeventsalesteam.com/.

Welcome to today's episode. We have a special guest with us, Mr. Neil Twa. Welcome, sir.

Hey, thanks for having me on, Rudy.

Absolutely. Really excited to have you on today because you're an extraordinary individual who's accomplished so much in your life, yet you have a very unique perspective and approach in business and life, which I really respect and align with, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about the experience. For our audience, a little background on Neil. He's been in the business since 2007. So almost 20 years. And since 2007, he's been involved in e-commerce, helping clients generate more than $100 million in sales via physical products, brand building, business development, even doing mergers, acquisitions, and exits. So Neil, you are a supreme expert, and you've also done events, three or four major events up to 600 people, and then over 50 virtual events with some of them a thousand or more. So you have a lot to share here. I know we talked about three golden nuggets, three or four golden nuggets that you want to share with our audience. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to you, sir. Give us a little bit about your background and give us those golden nuggets.

In the short term, because let's get to the part that's most interesting to people, really, at the end of the day. I've got experience in e-commerce. I've got experience in business. I've been in the highs and the lows of the entrepreneurial roller coaster ride. I have seen the top of the mountain and I've been to the bottom and had to start over again. So this is a breadth of hard knocks experience we're talking about here that leads to these golden nuggets that we're talking about today, which I think is most important to those who are listening and something maybe you could take away from today if you're in the event space, both physical and virtual. That's really what I want to help you with because I've been involved in multiple events on both of those sides of the house. I hope that something that I can give you today will help you in your business.

Awesome, man. I can tell just by the way you show up that you've had a lot of experience being at the top of the mountain and even at the bottom and you've worked your way back up. So please, by all means, share with us about your experience with events.

We got our first event in 2014, believe it or not. That was when we did a group Amazon event in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We had close to 200 people show up at that event. It was one of the first ones we did for the business quite a long time ago. It was received very well. Basically, we sold it via email. So we had an audience and a tribe we've built for a couple of years. We'd made successful case studies. We had a great group of people going with us. So we basically sent a few emails and sold the tickets out. Everybody came to Florida and went. It wasn't, at first, it thought that was kind of too easy, quite honestly. But recognize that when brand and tribe and outcome and results are part of the process, then people will wanna show up and they'll certainly wanna meet each other and they'll wanna meet members of the community. Of course, they wanna meet us. Ironically enough, I had worked with a business partner who is still with me to this day, over 10 plus years together, that I met for the first time at our first event. So we had done business for close to three years before I actually met him in person at our first live event. Pretty strange, right?

In these modern days with the internet, I've worked with people for several years on end and then met them at an event and I'm like, oh, it feels like I've known you. I can't believe that we met in person. It's just that.

I hear all kinds of, I didn't realize you were that tall or I didn't know you have blue eyes or it's like, oh, you're different. You're a slightly different person. This is the person I know, but you're a different person. It's always funny to meet people for the first time. But the first thing about it was we learned very quickly. This actually came from experience. My partner, Reed, had leveraged because he had done a lot of events in other businesses prior to him and I doing business together. He had actually helped Robert Kiyosaki with some of his events. So he had that experience with really large event platforms in the past. This was the first event I had done in a group or business setting on my own in my own company. So he leveraged, we leveraged that experience. Basically what helped me understand right from the very beginning was the first tip is not to make money on the event tickets. So I know that sounds opposite to your brain maybe because you're like, well, Taylor Swift just made all this money on her event tickets. It's like, well, no, actually she made all the money on the back end of the tickets. She made it on the music. She's gonna make it on the royalties. Yes, she charged some ridiculous fees for her tickets. So maybe it was profitable. I don't know after all the fees and cost and Taylor, I don't know, maybe it wasn't profitable, but she'd certainly made that thing a splash. But for ours, it was basically realizing that the experience of the event is most important. So try to break even if not make a little money off the event tickets to actually get the experience and make sure that people enjoy it, get the right speakers, get the format, get everything just top notch as professional as you can, especially if it's your first event. Even if it's your 50th event, keep that in mind. But the goal is not to make money off the tickets. The goal really at the end of the day is to use that money to create the value and the opportunity that allows you to sell the business services and experience that you have to offer from the coaching to the services, to the software, to business development, lead generation, marketing, or e-commerce, or even real estate.

Real estate events and those kinds have obviously been done for a long time. So you can leverage some knowledge from those, but really it's about the experience. That's golden nugget number one is to really make the experience top notch. Really blow them away, really make it memorable and use the event ticket pricing to ensure that that occurs. Just don't try to make it your profit center.

I'm curious about your experience though, what is maybe a range or what's working as far as pricing for tickets in a way that, anything you can share on that?

Well, on the physical product side, it's typically gonna be as low as $497 and up to $1997. So you can price those at the same entry level as courses if you're not a course person. If you're a course person, just try to balance the difference between the course cost and the ticket so that it doesn't feel like they're rebuying the course. Although when you do provide the experience in person and get it recorded and have them, you should treat it like a full and informational opportunity. There is a balance of course, between the knowledge you give at the event and the knowledge you want them to buy from you or the services or products or whatever the outcome is. So make sure there's a balance. That sort of leads to the second point we'll get to in a minute about making sure how you produce the value of this upfront is also the value you will get out of the business, the reciprocation of that, which is the money that can be made off of these events when done correctly.

Awesome, thank you for that. So talking about doing the events correctly, tell us a little bit more about the event experience itself and how to run it correctly. I know you and I talked about in the green room around how to make offers in a way that's inviting and not. I'd love for you to share more about your experience on how you engage the audience and create so much value in the event that they continue to work with you at a high level in a you yourself experience selling programs, $50,000 and higher quite consistently.

So we always, number one, show up at the event and really produce something that maybe hasn't been heard or something that is new in the experience of the activity, the coaching, the consulting, e-commerce, whatever it is. If you've been having some experiences, if you've been in your labs playing around and you've got some good stuff and you haven't shared it yet, bring that to the event, bring a little bit of wow factor. If you can't personally bring that or that's not the goal of your event, maybe your goal is to bring brand ambassadors or guest speakers or others to the event. I always would ask that you check their materials, product, marketing videos and everything ahead of that to just really make sure that in the details that you're getting an experience that's got that wow factor. With the format of that information ready and guest speakers or yourself showing up to really knock it home, I always found that in our events, the Friday to Sunday was the easiest way for people who work during the week to show up because then maybe they only have to take a half day on Friday, they can leave after Sunday afternoon to go home, fly home or go wherever. So you give an opportunity for both those who maybe are in the entrepreneurial field already or business owners or those who are earning a profession or whatever or have a job already. And maybe you wanna change that, can still show up and participate in your events and you get kind of the whitest opportunity. What does that look like Friday afternoon to evening? You may have a socialized event, you may have a kickoff event Friday evening, get to know each other, meet and greet, et cetera. Then the real training day starts early Saturday morning and goes through noon on Sunday. That's where you provide the real value, the content, the speakers, the sessions, the workshops, however you format that. I produce in our workshops in which we actually had people do tangible things. For example, they showed up and in one of our workshops, we paired up different teams and in that aspect, we had already pre-configured products that they could sell on accounts that they could actually use during the live training.

We did a lot of work up front to make that work. Then when they showed up, each team launched a product during the workshop on Amazon. Then at the end of the 24 hour period after the launch, the team that made the most sales is the one that won. The one that won got a big prize. So we actually had them work together as teams in workshops, launching a business together with both experienced and inexperienced sellers at that event. They helped each other, they came together and they actually sold products in the marketplace during the event and were able to see which team actually got the most. It was a really fun activity. It was really well experienced by everybody that was there. Of course, it took us a lot of effort to put that together, but just understand that experience was a bit unique for the event space and some of the people had never launched a product on Amazon before and they showed up at an event and they got to be a part of a team that launched a product and they saw the process at its high level, even down to sales work. So if you have that opportunity, if you are a lead gen person who could start an ad or have teams start ads under your framework and format of creating marketing and literally have them do that as a workshop activity as part of the event, and then find out the results on Sunday, whoever generated the lowest leads and made sales, you might win, just simple format that you can use to create a workshop and hands-on experience to give them the understanding of the process and methodology. They won't know it all, but then that's where you step in, which is the value of what we're talking about next.

What I'm hearing, if I were to summarize that is, help use your events to help people get results during the event. Because when they get results, if it's possible, because when they get results in the event, then it's real for them. They're really tangible, like belief and confidence. I do know that when people get that little win, they both will have a lot more belief and then they'll wanna move forward with you at a higher level. I'd love for you to share a little bit more about, you're at the event, you help people get a result, and you wanna now assist them in continuing their journey, working with you in one of your programs. I know you have a business builder program. $100,000 just to start. How do you bridge that gap between coming to an event, helping them get a result, and then inviting them to part of your high-level program?

Well, in actuality, and in not fake scarcity marketing and without any ploy, I can honestly say I only take on five to seven people a month that are qualified in our process. Some people use that as marketing or fake scarcity. I literally don't take on more than five to seven people who I feel are qualified every month, and that's the way the process works. I do that to allow their ability to come in and have a unique one-on-one experience through the process while getting access to my coaches and my team and not spreading them thin, but giving them the same opportunity to present and work through the playbook. This is, for us, in a consultative format. We don't do course selling, so we do consultative formats, coaching, and mentoring. So the way that I structured the business builders was a way to create an application and literally a more elite group of folks who want to learn what we're doing. There's an opportunity cost for that, of course. The opportunity could be a barrier of entry for the fee. It could be a barrier of entry for the time, the energy, or the attention. That is gonna be a balance that's worked out through the process. I also have a group that I work with who helped me a little bit understand the investor DNA component of the people we've been working with and kind of helped me dial in a little bit more, the type of people that make the most sense for the way we do business. That is translated through a process we do now and is our onboarding and qualification process. We even have them take what's called a DISC assessment to determine the aptitude of their business experience, both in the past and potential future, to give me an idea of their aptitude towards the business, the learning, and availability of the learning. Because I am really looking for those who are already on the process, already intent to go, and already wanting to work through this methodology and have decided to do it regardless if they do it with us or not.

So I'm not here to convince anybody to buy into what we're doing. I'm simply inviting them to come from Hell Island and get in my rowboat so that we can row together to Heaven Island. There Heaven Island could be more time with family, more time with friends, could be more money, could be generational opportunities to change something in three to five years. They're not looking for just short-term gains. They're really looking for a process and a real change, and they really want to stop everything they're in and out go. So when I bring these things to the table, and I explain that now that we've done this process together now that you've learned these things, and now that you've walked this process, if you simply want to go faster and easier than going alone, if you want me to save you half a million in dollars in the next three years doing it by yourself, if you want to walk a process with a playbook that's already been proven through the resources and millions of dollars we spent in the last 10 years learning how to do this the right way, then I'm going to help accelerate your results. I'm going to help accelerate your benefit. If that sounds interesting to you, would you be interested? I literally get a hand raise. If the hand raise goes up, the intent is already there. Do I need to sell them at that point? No, I just need to guide them. I just guide them. Okay, so the answer is go through this process, complete the disc, book a time with me, and we'll go over and see if you're a good fit. If you're not, then it's okay. If you are, I'm not going to disappoint you. But if you're not, I'm also not going to be disappointed because that's not how it works. Maybe the timing isn't right, et cetera. Maybe it doesn't work for you right now. That's okay. It's completely fine. You will decide if this is the right thing for you later on. All I do is invite. That's it, no sales, no pitch, simply an invite to take a look. Then when the time comes, they'll take a look. It may take them a month or two to do that, which is fine because they're in the decision-making process but really the type of qualifications and very succinctly wanting to know who qualifies and who does not qualify for that process isn't just a matter of money.

It can never just be a matter of money because that inverses the relationship and the true sales relationship of moving from a know-like-and-trust relationship into a position of supporting somebody and actually getting the results they would hope to expect to get in this relationship. At the same time, everybody needs to remember you can't lead a horse to water and make it drink. I think so many people are focused on the sales aspect that they just want to sell everyone realizing that not everything you do is for everyone. There's an opportunity cost for you too. It will backfire in reviews. It will backfire in bad studies. It will backfire in loss of business and it can backfire through processes of referral and networks and peer networks that you can't enter if you get those black marks on you. You cannot enter them. People will not want to do business with you at certain levels. So the point of all that is if you do it right from the very beginning, then it will look so much better later on. If you're not compromising profit over fun and people first because there's more than just financial profit in this relationship, if not selling from the stage but inviting and giving people an opportunity to move from their current action to another actionable state in the step, one action to another action. Once they leave the event, they know what the next action is that they could take. So it's up to them to take the action. Those who don't take the action will probably not be the people who are going to be successful anyways. So don't go try and skirt chase them. Don't ambulance chase people who are not willing to take their own effort. So am I formulating this correctly? I hope I'm not being too verbose in this but I'm trying to make sure that it's a succinct process of literally not inviting from this selling from the stage, but actually inviting.

So what that actually leads to is the other nugget that I wanted to go over here as we discuss this, which is kind of the third point. The development of these processes in the physical form can be translated into the virtual form. So as you are going out and following a similar type of process, my virtual events also do a similar type of process in which I bring them into a know, like, and trust relationship. I show them the process and get them into a workshop style format where they're gonna go through and find a product during the workshop, follow our first steps in the methodology step ideation, first one, to determine a product and profitability of a potential market that can sell. The next action item is actually to learn how to set it up for a test launch. That actually is done inside the business builders. So they know that the next step in actionable steps, which they probably have questions about because they get the idea of selling in our world, selling a physical product, and they understand you could do it on Amazon, but they don't actually understand how to do it, is then translated into the actual steps of working with us. So simply translate that same activity during the workshop. At the end of the workshop, offer them the invite just like you did or would have done in a physical stage environment, do the same thing in a virtual environment, and give that opportunity to basically translate that same know, like, and trust relationship through the process. We've closed anywhere between a $1,000 to $5,000 ticket or up using that exact same framework. But remember, it builds the tribe first, the relationship comes in, people need to know what you're about and where you're going, they need to be able to like, not just you, but the process enough to understand it.

Then that builds into a trust relationship. Depending upon the price and the ticket size, sometimes that can take two to three months for some people to come into the process. You just have to make business justifications and obviously be financially aware of that if you're gonna go out and develop that type of relationship, especially if you're on the client or service side of the business.

That makes a lot of sense, Neil. One of the things I'm taking away, big picture here, is that you don't overstep the qualification process in your business. You take great care to reframe and re-qualify people so that expectations are clear. In the end you're only working with people that are the best people to be working with.

Yes, you're attracting the right avatar and repelling the ones that know that it is not a good fit. The last part was leverage. We understand the word, but we don't always know how to apply it in the things that we just discussed. So if you don't have a tribe, if you are wanting to start a new line of business, if you're wanting to expand an existing line of a business and you're trying to figure out how to leverage larger audiences or more developed audiences that are in tune with the kind of product or service or business or e-commerce you're doing, consulting, lead generation, whatever it is, events. Then you look at other events in your area that you could leverage and you basically piggyback off of their email lists, their newsletters, their broadcast, their events. You look at ways that you can incorporate your value into their event, either by being a guest speaker, by being a sponsor, or by being a participant in the event to leverage opportunities for you to borrow their assets in a win-win relationship with them. What was known in the world of marketing as an irresistible offer. I can provide additional value to your clients. I'm not asking to take anything from you. I'm actually giving something. If they work with us in this process and we do this event together and I show up and provide this value, the reciprocation is I'm going to send you referral fees from anybody that comes from your event that does qualify for our process. At the same time, I'm gonna show up and provide great value. I'm gonna provide a great opportunity for your audience. I'm gonna have them learn something new and provide them with additional benefits and simply lift your brand up in the process of doing that. It can create a joint venture opportunity where if you don't have a list or wanna expand larger lists, you can get access to larger events that way and become a participant in those larger events and leverage their assets.

The time and energy and attention to money they spent building those audiences is something that can become an asset for you too.

I love it. Leverage, adding leverage to the event business, finding those joint venture partnerships and really just your mindset overall of thinking like a joint venture partner, whether event or another person's event, and how you can create those win-wins across the board. That's what I'm taking away from it.

Where can I create that value? So some of my podcast relationships have turned into joint ventures that led to events. In the events, I was able to show up and talk to the group, even if it was a real estate group of investors and talk about virtual real estate and physical inventory tying to cash over cash value in the same way they look at real estate and business and dealings and time and money. I can translate that conversation backwards. So I've shown up on many real estate podcasts to talk about e-commerce and added value to the client who gave them an opportunity to say, how do we translate the similar type of relationship and physical world of real estate into virtual real estate online with physical assets in the same mechanism and they understand it greatly and it added value. Some of those relationships have gone pretty deep over the years. Giving me an opportunity to open up conversations with people in the franchise world, real estate world, business development world, lead generation and multiple target opportunities to leverage their assets to get my message out there while providing value for their brand.

Sorry for that little reverb there on the audio. Neil, remarkable man. So one of the things I understand about your business and I want the audience to know more about you and how you can help them. At a very high level, someone's looking to have a very successful Amazon business. Of course, they have to go through a qualification process with you, maybe come to an event. But at a high level, you have a business builder program where you help build a brand with them. I understand that for someone who has at least $50,000 a month in revenue in their business, you can actually help them turn that active business into a passive income, which is remarkable. For people who have been in the business for a while and maybe they're looking to exit in some way, shape or form, you can even go as far as helping them broker or even potentially acquiring their own business to help them move on into retirement or some other business. So you're quite robust in the programs that you offer. Can you share anything else you wanna share about that and maybe how our audience can learn more about you and what you do if they feel like they might be qualified or might want to learn more?

So we do start on the Amazon channel. So let me clarify, we are business builders, okay, who happened upon e-commerce and then found the first e-commerce channel we launched on, which was Amazon. Using their Fulfilled by Amazon or FBA interface, it gave leverage to all of their infrastructure, what's called their last mile delivery when somebody adds the cart and shows up at your house, that prime, we can send our packages the same way without warehousing and employees, giving us the freedom of a business model that doesn't require employees and warehouses. So if you have those things and you don't want them anymore, but you're looking for another business model, this might be for you. It also has multiple channels or what's called omni-channel. So while we may start that brand as an incubator and test that brand on Amazon's channel, which has literally 7,800 sales a minute, 200 million prime users, it's a great place to go sell something to people who want to buy something. So once we validate the buying and the brand ability, we can take them to Shopify channel and start up ads and conversation over there. We can take them to retail or wholesale or omni-channel presence with that brand once it's incubated and validated on Amazon. By incubation, that could go all the way up to eight figures before you actually launch additional channels. From there, the opportunity to make that a nine or ten figure business is a reality through the other multiple channels that that brand can move. Just so we're clear, we start as on Amazon, then we move to multiple other channels when that brand gives opportunity, expand that, which is increasing the valuation of the company or the exit potential, meaning that the profitability of the company now grows more exponentially instead of just three times the profit at time of sale, you could see five to ten times the profit at sale by opening multiple channels. So we are a multiple channel e-commerce business development and that is a part of what we do at our business builders, just to be very clear.

So we are not into the courseware, we're not into that kind of stuff. When someone elevates their brand, either through our done with you mechanism and then wants to make it more passive, our team can take over operations and make it more passive once they get past $50,000 a month, which you said. Then when they get to an exit potential, if they wanna start another brand, exit the first one, if they wanna open multiple businesses, heck, they got the skills to pay the bills now so they could go out and buy a company that's already profitable and now run it to a more exponential scale, okay, putting gas on fire, we can do both of those things, provide them with companies that are potentially for sale or help them exit their companies in a broker format or to our investment group, who's are looking to buy these companies because Voltage manages them after they buy the company, that's one of the ways they do wealth without Wall Street, that's a little anti-Wall Street strategy. So that's kind of what, if you're in the business, if you're a hard pushing entrepreneur, if you're a construction owner who's done with the 50, 90 hours a week and you want something that you can do more online and something more family freedom friendly and get the financial benefits of doing it over the next three to five years, that's what we're doing at Voltage.

That's awesome, man. Speaking of the family friendly business, I know you're a walking, talking billboard of that. I believe you live on a beautiful piece of land, you have lots of space and you prioritize your family over everything, including business.

Very much do, family for me, family, faith, fun and then finances and freedom, the five Fs, if you will. So we live on 45 acres in the country, a little over 45 actually. My parents live up one part of the dirt road, her parents are finishing a house up the next part of the dirt road. We're looking at buying one of the houses on 12 acres that are attached to our property in the next year or so. Then we homeschool our daughters here, we live and breed the community, we horse ride, we do homeschool theater co-ops with our daughters who are doing their third homeschool co-op here in two weeks, where they're gonna be down at the local theater as their theater troupe does a really cool thing they've been working on for quite a long time. We are very much involved in the family and the life, I didn't have that in the past, man, I know it sounds really cool now to say that, but literally 15 years ago, I was flying the last year at IBM, it was 200 days in the air as a road warrior and decided between that and IBM basically saying your job's going to Argentina, do you wanna go or would you like early retirement? I'm like, nope, I'm done with that, I'm taking early retirement, I'm gonna go do my own thing. So I have experienced the corporate world in the past, I have experienced it on scale and I've been the guy who lived in a suitcase and didn't have the family experience and didn't have anything I talked to you about today, but I spent 15 years developing that, putting it as a primary focus of everything that I do, which is why I try to balance it all as much as possible.

Awesome, man, I'm glad you shared that with us. I'm sure our listeners will hear that and resonate with that value set and they'll know this is an opportunity worth checking out for them. By the way, on your website, you have a great podcast as well, can you just mention the podcast and website real quick?

I've been honored to host The High Voltage Business Builders podcast, we are now at 90 plus episodes, I've got some titans of industry, typically people making more than $5 million to $100 million a year in sales in their businesses, giving golden nuggets and expertise, opportunities from brand, e-commerce, real estate, business development, alternatives to wealth without Wall Street, and just creating some really cool and unique brands with some really high voltage business builders. They've been the guest on my podcast, I've been honored to have them on, and so you're welcome to go check that out on the website, look at any of the episodes, there's some really great stuff there from some really amazing people that I've been honored to interview.

Awesome, man, we'll be sure to include the link to the website as well as the podcast as part of the show notes for today. I appreciate you so much, Neil, for being with us today and sharing your wealth of knowledge from being the top of the mountain to the bottom and working your way back up, and all the lessons you learned along the way, this has been so insightful, so valuable, appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me on, Rudy, it's been an honor, I appreciate it.