In this episode of The High Profit Event Show, host Rudy Rodriguez sits down with Dannella Burnett, founder of Encore Elite Events and Speakers Need to Speak, to break down the exact framework for creating highly profitable events. With over 40 years of experience in the event industry, Dannella has worked with clients ranging from small entrepreneurs to eight-figure brands, helping them maximize impact and revenue through powerful, strategic events.

Dannella shares her Six-Step Framework to a Six-Figure Event, a step-by-step system designed to help event hosts eliminate overwhelm, increase profitability, and ensure a seamless experience for both the host and attendees. She emphasizes the importance of starting with the end in mind, defining the event’s purpose, and ensuring every aspect aligns with business objectives. By implementing a detailed budgeting plan, event leaders can avoid financial pitfalls and maximize revenue potential.

One of the most valuable takeaways from this episode is event monetization and ticket mapping. Dannella walks through 17 different ways to monetize an event, from sponsorships and partnerships to pre-event offers and upsells. She also shares her ticket map strategy, which includes 13 ways to fill an event strategically—whether through summits, masterclasses, affiliates, or speaking engagements. Rather than relying on last-minute marketing tactics, she explains how pre-planning and tracking attendance sources can remove stress and increase conversions.

Finally, Dannella dives into the power of leveraging events for business growth. She discusses the “Summit to Three-Day Event” strategy, which warms up an audience before leading them into a transformational, high-ticket experience. Events, when executed properly, serve as a repeatable, revenue-generating system that strengthens authority, builds deeper client relationships, and creates massive business opportunities. She also stresses the importance of debriefing after every event—identifying what worked, what needs improvement, and refining strategies for future events.

If you’re an event leader, speaker, or business owner looking to take your events to the next level, this episode is packed with insights that can change the way you plan, market, and monetize your events. Tune in now and learn from one of the best in the industry!

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Hello and welcome to today's episode of The High Profit Event Show. We have a special guest with us today, Ms. Dannella Burnett. Welcome, Ma'am.

I'm so glad to be here, Rudy.

Yes, glad to have you here and I know we've been going back and forth to pin down a time, and I think the wait is worth it for our audience who is just now getting to meet you for the first time. You are an industry icon. You've been in the event industry for over 40 years, and from a variety of experiences, from hospitality through running large events that do seven figures plus. In fact, you have a Rolodex of clients that you've worked with from four figures all the way up to eight figures over the years. Today you're gonna share with us your proven process to generate six figures in six steps. So I am so excited to have you here with us.

Well, I'm excited, and we're talking about my favorite topic in the world. So I know we don't have all day for this interview, so I'm looking to give just as much value as I can, as quickly as I can, to really get people excited about the possibility of growing their business through the world of speaking and events, because it's never been easier to do so. We have challenges today that were not our challenges even last year. It is a very quickly evolving industry, and I absolutely love it. So I've been doing it for a long time, and it's been an amazing evolution. It's pretty awesome.

Yes, I mean, you've impacted thousands of lives and millions of dollars of revenues generated from events and stages that you've created or put your clients on. So yes, very, very excited to learn from you today. Since we only have a short period of time, perhaps we can jump right into your framework, six steps to six figures. I am very excited to hear this from you.

Awesome, awesome. Well, when you're planning something, and I'll go back to my early days, I didn't start doing big six and seven figure events. I started catering and in hospitality, and some of my early planning was in the personal space, in the wedding space. When I would work with brides, they may have a vision for what they want their event to be like and what they want their wedding to be like. In fact, they may have dreamed about that event for decades, but it doesn't mean they know the decisions that have to be made in order to get that outcome. That's frequently what I also see in the business space. You may have a vision for the experience you want your audience to have, the vision for how this is going to impact your business. Very likely, if you're an entrepreneur or a coach, you have an offer that you would like to make at that event, and you want the event to lead to that audience saying, yes, I want more. I wanna continue the conversation. I wanna move further down the path with you. So you might have a vision for what that looks like at the end, but no idea about the decisions to get there. So one of the things that I put together, and I realized this was the way that we worked with our very high level clients, that we were doing everything side by side with them. It was also the way I talked about events. It was the way it made sense for events for me, whether it was personal or professional.

So I came up with this framework that is the super simple way to think about how do you make those decisions in the right order? How do you really have that end in mind and reverse engineer in the right order so that you make the right decisions and you get the outcome that you're looking for? So we have now used this framework to teach in boot camps. We've used this framework in a course. We've used this framework literally side by side with our high-end clients who are generating six and seven figures from their events. So I'm excited to share this with your audience and that number one is that vision. What is the end in mind? When you get in the car and you have a destination to go to, if you don't type in the right address in the GPS, you're not likely to get there. Same thing with the event. Like to really spend time and not only have kind of a vague idea of what you want the event to be, but we get really specific in this planning part. If it is an entrepreneurial event, which would be what many of your audience is interested in, who's sitting in the audience? Why are they there? What's the outcome they're looking for? What's the problem that they hope your event will solve? That leads to the offer you want to make to them. What is the experience you want them to have? Is it in person? Is it virtual? If it's in person, is this a luxury four seasons event?

Or is this kind of a budget red roof in experience? Very different. What is the timeframe that you want to spend with your audience? Is this a big ask that you're making at the end of the event and you want more time and attention with your audience? Or is this fairly simple? So really getting clear on what the event is, who should be there, the experience that you want them to have, the experience you want to have as a host, is critical. Because if we don't know what that destination is, we might make some decisions that take us off course. So that's number one, the end in mind and don't skip that brainstorming and really clarity that comes from spending some time there. Number two, it must make dollars and cents. This is probably the biggest area that's skipped. Many people will say, okay, I want to have an event and they think about what it should be like and they go right to, oh, now I need to market the event. Marketing is not step two. Step two is the event needs to make dollars and cents. Where are you going to spend money? What is it going to cost you to have that kind of experience? We have a thorough budget that covers about 200 different elements that may come up, whether it's in-person or virtual and we start with the expenses because it's much easier to start there, to get pricing for there, to make some decisions on, is this a nice to have or a need to have for your event?

So we look at what the event is going to cost us to produce, cost us to execute. Then we look at where are we going to make money in our event? Are we selling tickets? Do we have sponsors? Do we have speakers? There's actually 17 different ways that you might monetize your event from donations, partnerships, offers before the event, offers during the event, your affiliations, other merchandise, concessions. You're not going to monetize in all of those ways, but we make sure that you're not overlooking a way that you might monetize your event. Does your monetization make sense for what you're going to spend? Or are there more value that we need to put into the making money part of the event? Or how many people do we need at your event for this budget to make sense? And I will tell you, it's a lot easier if you need to make some adjustments when it's just using a pencil than when you've already started to go out there and make decisions. Some of these things you may not be able to change. So am I tracking with you, Rudy? I know I'm sharing a lot, but I want to dig in and I just want to make sure that this is content that you think is going to be super valuable for your audience.

No, this is great so far. I have step number one, starting with the end in mind, making sure we're clear on what's the result or the outcome that we're looking to accomplish and make sure that the alignment is there from the messaging all the way through the offering, which leads to number two, is making sure that it makes dollars and cents. I was really blown away by when you said, hey, we have a budget that covers 200 elements, whether it's virtual or in person, and really helping break down what are the need to have versus the nice to haves. Then looking at the 17 different possible ways you can monetize the event, all in advance of the marketing of the event, which I know we're going to get to shortly, but that I love how much thought you're putting into the preparation of the event and make sure that it's impactful and profitable. So thank you, please keep going. These are great points.

Awesome, awesome. The other reason we spend time here is the majority of the time when we're working with a client on an event, this is something that's meant to repeat. So by tracking certain things and making certain plans, it also gives us the tools that we need when we look back at this event on how we may improve it for the future. So all of this pre-preparation is important, not only for this event, but for the future. So now that we've gotten through step two and we have a budget, we have a plan that makes dollars and cents, then we move into step three, which is logical logistics and really this is bringing your event, your budget to life now. This is where you go to your individual vendors and you get contracts on those areas that you've decided to spend money. Maybe you get your vendor, your AV team, you get your outside speakers, you make decisions on swag or gifts for your attendees. You are moving forward with whether it's virtual, whether it's in person, all the different areas where you've decided you're gonna spend money. Now you start to execute the spending of that money and you put in place what you need to put in place in order to collect that money. A critical part of that logistics is what we call a ticket map. You decided in your budget that in order for this event to make sense, you needed a certain number of attendees at your event because you have a goal for how many of your offer you're gonna sell or what your revenue goals are for the event. So now we have a ticket map.

There's actually 13 different ways that you might fill your event with smaller events that fill your bigger event from webinars, masterclasses, summits, one-day events, challenges, workshops. Maybe you're doing smaller events that help you fill your larger event. Maybe you're using affiliates and you have others that are mailing or promoting on your behalf. Maybe you're using speaking. Obviously that's a big one that we think our clients should be doing. You're speaking in front of other people's audiences that would be attracted to your audience and you're inviting them. So what are the different ways that you are planning to fill your event? We wanna have all of those items listed. Every speaking opportunity, every opportunity that you have to share about your event, we look at what's possible, what's probable and then what's actual. So we have a plan, we're tracking it along the way. Maybe you are promoting your event or you're planning to use Facebook ads or Google ads or paid marketing. Maybe it's organic marketing. All of those different ways that you're looking to attract people to your event, we have a plan for, we track it and those things that are working well, you look to do more of. Those things that aren't working as well, maybe you do less of. That again, gives you some feedback for the next event. So part of that logical logistics is putting that plan into motion and getting all the parts and the pieces together that you need for your event.

Which now brings us to step four and you have marketing not mayhem. You've done the work. So as you're executing your ticket map and you're going along that journey of filling your event, the marketing just makes sense. You've already made decisions. You already know what the criteria is, what the goal is for each area of your marketing. You know who you're marketing to because you decided that in step one. So you're filling your event with the right people. You're taking the steps to fill your event. You're consistently filling your event and you know whether you're on target or not because you have that map to get your attendees filled. How's this tracking, Rudy?

So I'm hearing marketing, not mayhem. Step number four, you've done the work. Now execute on the ticket mapping that you created. Wonderful. And did you already cover step five? I think, I'm not sure.

I'm about to give you step five and step six but I wanted to make sure that we were on the same page and you thought that was some good, complete information for your attendees.

I wanna go so much deeper, but yes, yes, this is great. I especially like the, I think earlier you were mentioning the 13 different ways to fill your event right there on the ticket map. I think we can do a whole interview on that. In fact, I'm gonna circle back and have you talk more about the ticket map and the 13 ways to fill your events. Let's do that.

Awesome, awesome. So as I shared, smaller events, affiliations, are you filling your event? Are others helping you fill the event? These are the decisions that you wanna make before you move into marketing. If you're using paid marketing, that budget needs to be part of your budget. So that's why all of that needs to be planned out before you start executing it. I see far too many people and I'm sure you've seen this, Rudy, that are really just throwing spaghetti against the wall and not really sure what's working because they didn't have a plan and they weren't tracking it and you don't know how many people are gonna be at your event. Well, that's stressful and that's not super effective. By making the plan and having the way to track it, you can see maybe you've got some amazing affiliates and they're filling the event really nicely. Well, maybe you can cut back on some of your advertising or maybe you lean in, but now you plan for an event that's bigger. Or maybe you see that a particular speaking event that you thought was gonna be filled with your ideal audience, maybe your ideal audience wasn't there and that wasn't a great opportunity. Well, now you know you can look for more speaking opportunities or make the adjustments in your budget and your ticket map along the way. What we try to avoid are those last minute surprises and hail Marys to fill your event.

Rarely do they work and it's super, super stressful. So some of our clients, one of my favorite ways to fill an event today when we're talking about filling a three-day high ticket offer event is to run a summit or to run masterclasses and work with affiliates. I like a lot of opportunities that are not, I'm not a huge fan of ads. Ads can work and they can be super expensive. If you are gonna use paid advertising, it's often more effective and more economical if you're inviting people into a free smaller event where you then invite them to spend two or three days with you. So if you're gonna use paid advertising, you wanna host a masterclass or a webinar or a summit or a challenge, something that you can invite people into that's either free or low cost where you then sell them a ticket, essentially upsell them to a VIP experience or another way that will help offset some of those ad costs. But having that plan and sticking to that plan and tracking that plan is super, super important. If you are filling your event and the timing is a little bit distant from your event, you may also want to have some smaller events that keep your audience warm and engaged and ready to spend more time with you. So that's all a real critical part of the planning.

Then step five, execute your event with excellence. You've done great work to this point. Make sure you have a team and technology that's really gonna support you as the event host. This is another area that we've sometimes seen event hosts shortchange themselves by not having a team and technology around them that really allows them to do what they need to do at that time, which is to be present for your audience. Be there for your attending and make sure you've got other people that are taking care of things that happen in the background, whether it's helping people get logged on or helping people with their money, or if it's onsite helping the person who has a gluten allergy. I mean, you don't wanna get caught up in that minutia. You wanna take care of what you need to from the stage. So make sure you've set yourself up for success to really execute that event well, whether it's virtual, whether it's in person, having the right team and the right technology around you so that you can really execute your event and go back to that vision and be super pleased with the event that you have. Then step six, we've all heard the fortunes in the follow-up. So obviously in the sales, you wanna follow up, but also follow up by doing a debrief on your event. What went incredibly well? What needs a little bit more work? What looked good on paper, but might need to be rethought? We like to call those the do-overs, the do-agains and the do-nevers.

Maybe you had an outside speaker that you thought would be a great fit for your event, and it wasn't a great fit. Maybe some of that marketing, maybe some of your pre-preparation, you need to give a little more time or attention to. So we wanna make sure that each event you do is both your best event and your worst event. Best because you put the bright planning into it, and we know there's always room for improvement. So we like to make sure that we put that button on an event so that the next time we do that event, it can be even bigger and better.

Wow, okay. Yes, step number five, execute your event with excellence with team and technology and six, debrief your event. What worked well or needs more work? The do-overs, do-agains or do-nevers. Wow, this is phenomenal. Six steps to six-figure plus event. I think this is probably one of the most value-packed 20-minute segments we've ever had on our shows here. Thank you, Dannella. This has been excellent, excellent, excellent. Goodness, I have many questions to ask you on this. Maybe we need to do a part two to today's interview.

One of the things that I skipped that really could be its own part two is we have a 5P framework for how you put your content into that executing with excellence so that your buyer is ready to say yes. That's its own topic. So I can share the 5Ps, but I don't know how much time we have to go deeply into it. But yeah, I could talk about this for hours, Rudy.

Yes, that I know. Well, I do also know that you have some resources available for our audience that wanna go deeper. In fact, I think you have an event coming up in the near future, depending on when they hear this recording. But how about we talk about that? Because I wanna give people an opportunity to learn more from you and go deeper with you if possible. So can you tell us about what the event is that you're hosting?

Yes, so March 5th through the 7th of 2025. So if you hear this broadcast before then, I would love to invite you to The Six Figure Event Mastery Bootcamp. Three days talking about what Rudy and I really just scratched the surface of. I'm actually doing this event with another co-host with Steve Erickson of EventRaptor. If you're not familiar with that, EventRaptor is a platform that allows you to do summits quite easily. As I mentioned here, doing an event that's gonna broaden your reach, bring new people into your world so that you can invite them into your enrollment event is one great way to execute your ticket map. So I call a summit to a three-day, a one-two punch. A well-executed summit that attracts the audience that you want to have at your three-day event that you really pour into, that you really give exceptional value and you give them that opportunity to work with you, to get accountability, to get services, to get coaching, to get more done, to get to those promises of your high-ticket offer. I love a summit and a three-day event. So we actually have three days where we're gonna go deeply into the do's and don'ts of summits and the do's and don'ts of three-day events. It is on This Six Steps To Six Figure Event framework, but we're obviously gonna have the time to go much, much deeper on the things that we've touched on today.

So that's coming up and for Rudy's audience here, I'd love to offer you a complimentary ticket, Sixfigureeventmastery.com forward slash stage, and you will get a complimentary ticket. If you don't hear this before March 5th through the 7th, there's also another resource, Six Steps Six Figure Events with the number six as the number, the number, Sixstepsixfigureevents.com and you can get a resource that goes along with this teaching.

All right, thank you so much, Dannelle. That's perfect. We're gonna include those links here in our show notes as well. So just somewhere near this video recording, you should be able to find the link to the event or the resource Six Steps Six Figure Events as well. And Dannelle, I believe you have also a visual, like a PDF of some sort. Do they get access to that as well when they go to the link?

If you come to the event, we have a ton of resources that we're gonna share during the event, including that budget that I talked about with all of those different things, down to postage stamps that you have to just be aware of. Doesn't mean you're gonna spend your money 200 ways, but I want you to know that each of those 200 ways might have an impact on your event. We want you to be able to make good decisions. So the event is gonna be filled with resources, tools, templates, teaching, and just cannot wait to help you map out that plan for how you can easily add six figures to your year with events and with the right three-day event, you can add six to seven figures in three days.

Excellent. Love it. What a great resource. Thank you so much. Go check it out. Click the link here by the video recording. Download the resources if you are able to attend that virtual event. Thank you, Dannella. It has been wonderful to be with you here today. Any final comments for our audience as we wrap up?

Well, I will say this. You may have some folks in your audience who might be asking, am I ready for this? Okay, now I see the plan, but am I ready to step into that plan? I will tell you, if you are an expert, you have been through some things and you wanna help others get through the same. If you have gotten your expertise through education, you've gotten your expertise through experience, or you've gotten your expertise through engineering, which is a combination of the two, and you wanna take that out into the world, there is no better way to do it than speaking at events. Speaking is standing on someone else's stage and attracting them to you, continuing the conversation. An event is speaking on your own stage, inviting them to continue the conversation. So you are ready. The tools, the technology, the templates, they're just waiting for you to pick them up and get these results. The world is waiting for you. There are folks staring at the ceiling with serious problems that you have the ability to overcome. So step onto the stage, help get an impact, make an impact for those around the world that you're meant to serve, and make a ton of money doing it.

Awesome. Perfect. Who wants that? I do. Let's go. Awesome. Thank you so much, Dannelle. It's been wonderful having you on today.

Thank you.