Welcome back to another episode of The High Profit Event Show! This week, host Rudy Rodriguez sits down with Lady Jen Du Plessis, founder of Kinetic Spark Consulting, LLC, to dive into the evolution of event models and how event leaders can pivot towards high-ticket, transformational experiences.

Lady Jen brings a wealth of experience to the table, with a career spanning four decades in financial services, where she worked with top business owners and entrepreneurs to scale their companies. She has shared the stage with some of the most influential names in the industry, including Tony Robbins, Les Brown, Darren Hardy, and Kevin Harrington, solidifying her reputation as a leading authority in business growth and event strategy.

In this episode, Lady Jen walks us through her journey from leading large-scale, three-day events to curating boutique, high-ticket mastermind retreats. She shares how she recognized the need to shift from traditional, exhausting event models to intimate, high-value experiences that create greater transformation and profitability. She explains why smaller, experiential events offer deeper connections, higher engagement, and bigger financial wins for both hosts and attendees.

We also explore the strategic monetization of events, where Lady Jen breaks down why low-ticket events often result in high expenses and minimal returns. Instead of struggling to fill rooms with $297 attendees, she reveals how pricing events at $5,000+ has not only increased her revenue but also attracted the right audience—entrepreneurs and leaders who are serious about investing in transformation. She even shares her cost-saving tips, like traveling with her own event equipment to avoid excessive venue charges, proving that smart event planning can lead to higher profits without unnecessary overhead.

One of the most exciting parts of this conversation is Lady Jen’s elite networking strategy. She introduces the concept of mastermind dinners—small, curated gatherings of high-performance individuals that foster deep business relationships and client acquisition. Instead of waiting for opportunities to connect, Lady Jen creates her own inner circle, leading six to eight high-caliber guests for exclusive dinner discussions. This strategy has led to millions in business growth and partnerships, proving that the best connections are made in intimate settings, not crowded networking events.

If you’ve been leading large, overwhelming events that leave you exhausted and barely profitable, this episode is your wake-up call. Lady Jen’s insights will show you how to pivot towards high-ticket, experiential events that are profitable, powerful, and life-changing for both you and your attendees.

Want to connect with Lady Jen?

Text: JEN to 26786

Website: https://www.jenduplessis.com/

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JenDuPlessis22/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenduplessis/

Hello, and welcome to today's episode of the podcast today. We have a special guest with us, Miss Lady Jen. Welcome, Ma'am.

Thank you so much.

I'm so excited to be here. Excited to have you here and we're just chatting a little bit in the green room and I know we have a little connection on the background with her on skiing. You're on the East Coast I understand and you're getting ready to go on a ski trip after this. So I'm really really excited. We can connect with you before you hit off the road.

Yes, I'm excited too. I'm so glad that we have this opportunity and I'm happy to meet you. It was just fortuitous. I don't remember how we met but I'm just so excited to get to know you a little bit better. Down the road too. We have some opportunities there.

Absolutely. It was through the marketers cruise. Yes, actually it was a big networking opportunity and people that were being introduced to each other, but I'm glad that you and I were connected and I'm excited to get to really highlight you and your experience here on our show because you are quite an accomplished expert. I know you work with many business owners who are established and sometimes stuck and you've been doing events as part of your business model for many years before COVID and now post COVID. So you have a lot of really valuable items to share. For our audience, maybe that is meeting you for the first time, a couple points that I want to share so they know about you. One, you had a four decade career in financial services. So you have some real formal experience when it comes to business and growing companies and finance specifically and you share the stage with some pretty notable people like Tony Robbins, Darren Harding, sharing lectures just to name a few. I know you gave me like five or six, Les Brown.

Yes, I know Kevin Harrington. Oh my god. I love these people. Yes, we all should.

Yes, and you really, you're not a business coach per se. You really are different in the sense that you help build teams and you're a scaling architect. So again, really excited to have you on. So maybe start with a little background, share with us a little bit maybe about your business and how you got into doing events.

Yes. Well, thank you so much for asking that question. My goal is always to share as much as I can in the time that we have. So if I start talking too fast Rudy, you got to tell me, slow it down. If you're listening at one and a half, you might have to go all the way back to normal because I do get really excited about what I do and meeting people. I mean, I think I'm a people person. So that's why this is so important to me, but it really started for me, as we're talking in the context of having events, it started for me as a young loan officer in the mortgage business when I was in the mortgage business. I started when I was technically 17 working at doing half school and then half go to a job and I was doing the mortgage business but got into it as when I was 19 worked through college that way, graduated from college, but stayed in the mortgage business, didn't go into my line of work and I love the business. I love finance. I love markets and economies and real estate. I love all that stuff and I love the business of the business. But as I do with everything, I do things differently. I kind of swim downstream when everybody's going upstream and vice versa and I knew that I wouldn't, didn't want to be one of them 1 million loan officers out in the in the world and in fact I ended up being in the top 200 loan officers in the country out of a million and I did it because I took a Different approach. I wasn't just selling and I think this is what happens with events. It's just a sales pitch pitch pitch pitch pitch I wasn't selling products selling rates selling, just being I call them skunks in networking you know the person when they walk in everybody goes and pretend like we're having a call because you're like or a conversation because here they come.

And I didn't want to be that. I am very much led by knowledge and education. I'm a really smart intelligent woman and I wanted to lead with education. So I immediately began holding seminars and classes every single week for real estate agents because they in the mortgage business whether you know this or not loan officers rely on real estate agents to get their leads and yet real estate agents their average right now I think is they're making $25,000 a year. So why would I put my eggs into that basket? I'm going to create my own opportunities and I started teaching them on how to grow a business and have it, you know an elite business and that just kind of manifested and so it started my speaking career, it started my coaching, and my training presentations all of that that whole career and what I realized was that time is money and we hear this a lot but truly time is money. Elon Musk, if he saw $100 on the ground, he won't even take the time to pick it up because the time it takes to pick it up. He could have made a thousand dollars and so for us, we're doing pennies and nickels. But time is money so even reaching down to grab something that's on the ground that is that worth your time and I started realizing that that having these one-to-ones with everybody and trying to meet everybody here.

And there it just wasn't worth it, worth my effort. I thought okay, so I'm gonna do one too many, not one to one, but one too many. Then how do I get more one too many? I have partners who cross-promote and bring people in and I give them a stage time, opportunities to do content and that, just that grew this business to the fact that it went to the point that was a hundred million dollars of funding every year. A hundred million plus and ultimately funding a billion dollars, which is very, very rare in the industry. Less than 30 people have ever done it. But I didn't do it alone. I did it with others in that one too many so when I then converted into and retired from lending when I was 54, I had created all the financial freedom I need. I'm like, I don't really need to work but I really want to give back to people and have them do it the same way. So a lot of my coaching is very heavy on doing seminars and webinars and summits and your own events, retreats, masterminds which is where I spend most of my time now. So that's where it all kind of started and I always knew that putting on events and seminars and whatnot was the best way to get to a group of people and you have people edifying you in that room when you ask, why are you here? But we have to make sure we're doing those things.

Amazing, thank you. Thank you for sharing that and well quite the remarkable background you've had and so we were talking in the green room about before COVID, you were doing three-day, two and a half or three day type events and transition post COVID. Could you tell us a little bit more about the events that you were doing?

Yes, absolutely. It's funny because when I made that transition from lending into the speaking world in the event world, all the things that we do now podcasting, TV shows, authoring books, it was fairly new, a lot of this was new to me and I had a coach who was helping me build a funnel and I was like, oh, I don't know, that it's not my favorite thing in the world and he said, but he had another piece to it. He said, you could have these three day events and I was like, oh, well then I want to hear about that. So I said well, okay, I'm gonna hire someone to do the funnels. Can you just teach me this part and he said, yeah and so it's such a cute story because he said all right, you have two weeks to put an event together, a three-day event together. You can't spend more than $2,000 and you're gonna put this event together, watch these videos because I'm not having a training because he does a training for the three-day events. You're in the three-day event and he's training you about the three-day event and I didn't have that. I only had video. So I was on the phone with him and put this sucker together. I had eight people show up. I did $58,000 in my first first one out and there was a wedding reception going on during the last part of it. I mean, I was just horrible with all the planning. But I said, oh this is easy. If I could get a few more people in instead of 58, and my goal was, I got it, I want to do six figures every single event. So the next event was $128,000. Then I had one event. It was $280,000 and I said well gosh, if I just do this four times a year, then that's really all I need to do now. Of course, I was speaking.

I'm a paid speaker. So I was speaking and getting paid. But I thought if I could just do this. This is comfortable for me. I'm not trying to make a million dollars like I used to. I'm comfortable. It's got a half a million. So I started doing these three-day events and by the way, my events are actually three days. One of the things that I think the event planners make mistakes on is when they say it's a four-day event and it's really well, we're gonna have cocktails the night before if you want and then we'll have in a day that we do something, in another day we do something and then the third day we're just gonna show up and kind of regroup and let you go. Well, that's a two-day event. That's not a four-day event. So I'm really big on making sure that our marketing is, I mean, if you can't market it properly properly, then how can you deliver anything? How can anyone believe anything you're gonna deliver? So I did these three-day events and I did them all over the country and they were fantastic, and I loved them. Then COVID came and I thought oh god, what do I do? Well, my coach at that time said you just do it online. I said I can do that. It's the first one I did. I think we made 80 grand online doing it and that was during COVID. But then I started realizing, time is money. I don't want to have to go and set up this and set up that. So I switched how I did it. I now do mastermind retreats. It's the same three-day event. I'm not diving into a workshop as much. I'm saving that for people who want to work with me, but I'm highlighting things so it's not as deep into that because I combine it with the retreat aspect of going on a field trip and breaking through things and having a massage therapist come in and make sure but he gets some relief.

Now I'm just delivering it in a different way than I used to. I like going. I have these retreats where I want to go, where I want to have fun, and for me experiential. From my perspective, experiential was so much better than just going to a conference room. As we saw in the ship and I've seen for seven years on the ship, that experience is what draws me there.

Yes, amazing, beautiful. So I see your transition very quickly actually from you're speaking at other people's stages and being a paid speaker and doing really well there to like, hey now, I'm in an event learning how to do an event and then you did your first event right away. Generally figures and basically went to six figures every time you were doing that multiple six figures in a couple cases. But then COVID happened and you transition into virtual and then you were doing well with virtual but now you've moved more into the experiential model, which is the same, similar, same or similar content but creating a more immersive, less people and higher levels of engagement.

Yes, I say it's a little hybrid right now because I still do. I don't do three-day virtual events anymore. I think people have whatever, what do they call it, zoom webinar? Gee, thank you. The word I was thinking to say is fear but they have that fatigue. I mean, heck I was on one the last couple days and I was like, hey I'm in and out. I'm in and out. So I've gone to two half days for the content that I used to do in the three days before COVID. So the heavy-duty content of that I still do those for people that are just about business, business, business and maybe they aren't ready to be in a full program with me. But they're ready to dip their toe into a program to ignite their business. That's what I move them to is an ignite mastermind where we can ignite various parts of your business because the people that I mentor, they're tenured. They've already ignited their business, but now the fizzles are going out right at the flames, kind of going out. They're exhausted. They're tired and they need to find a way to grow. So I still do that, but I still do the four mastermind retreats a year because that's where you get in, be done, and then coach people. I still speak on stages and I'm still paid to speak on stages, but I just have made it much more boutique, much more informal, intimate. A lot of those things but I want to remind you to ask me about something called an elite connection circle here in a few minutes because I want to share what I do with that as well.

Absolutely, most definitely. Yes, so you move more towards the retreat intermittent model and I understand based on the green room that they're not paying $297 to attend your event. They're paying $5,000 to attend.

Yes. Okay, so it's a little bit of a different, yeah, gosh, at the $297 and those that are putting that together and then, oh It's $397 or $497 for the VIP, that type of thing. You have to have a lot of people in the room to cover your expenses at a hotel. Let's be real about it. Oh you want audio? Oh, you want a microphone? Oh, you want all these things and I got to the point and well now, I carry all my equipment with me. I bought two hard cases, such a little tip. I learned this from someone else. I bought two hard case golf bags. Hmm and all my banners and all my microphones and all my stands and all my lights and all my handouts and all those things. They all fit in there and it's so funny when I check into the airport. They're like, oh, where are you going golfing? I just pretend. I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm going to Tampa. I'm going to Colorado but I carry all that with me now so that I've reduced the expenses that are there. I think if you're frugal with $100, you'll be frugal with a million. So that's how I roll. I'm very frugal with a lot of my money. So you get panicked because you have to cover such high expenses. When you do a mastermind retreat in and by the way, I'm a certified mastermind leader, so I went to a mastermind and it was a three-day pitch fest. That's not a mastermind. So a mastermind retreat is quite different. We are going to make changes in your business. We're going to help accelerate your practice and all I have to do is get an Airbnb or do a high-end suite in a high-end hotel and everybody stays in their own rooms.

They come up into the suite and it's so much more affordable. I can bring my own food up there. I don't have to play that game of everybody else who's downstairs in the first floor and so it makes much more sense for me to do that. And again, it's very intimate. I'm really the kind of person that less is more. I can do, I can help more people if I don't have more people.

Yes, thank you for putting that piece in there about being a certified mastermind leader and running your events like a proper mastermind. Actually having a proper event, not just hey, let's just get together and hang out. Sometimes you call it a mastermind. You have the mentality of like, yeah I'm just gonna charge five or ten thousand dollars, get people in my house and hang out for two days. They have the privilege of hanging out with me. No, it's like you got to actually create value for them and facilitate it in a way that's meaningful.

Well, it includes accommodations and food and my expertise and other speakers. There's a lot of pieces that are involved in that. That's great you mentioned an inner circle something about that. So one of the ways that I do this locally, and this has been, it's kind of morphed over the years where I've changed the name. It really doesn't matter what the name is, but what I do is that every month I have a dinner with six to eight people. Sometimes I've had them come to my home for dinner. Sometimes, I've had a barbecue with them. Sometimes we go to a vineyard. I live in wine country. I go to hotels every now and then. Hotels, restaurants, we get the little back room. I invite six to eight people that are my target. They are tenured high-performance individuals and I bring them into this. I've called it a Connection Circle. I've called it an Elite Advisory Meet business meeting. You can call it whatever you want and we actually do a mastermind with a handful of these individuals because what I know for my target specifically is that being a high-performance person we tend to be a silo. We tend to be, unless we're in another mastermind, but we tend to be a silo of struggles and pains and whatnot. We don't really have anybody to go to and so this is an outlet for everyone to have an advisory board of equal people that have gone through your challenges, have seen your issues, have been there, done that and from that.

I pay for all of it. So we go to dinner. One cocktail that's it and no other cocktails allowed, period. You can't buy your own because it's a business meeting and we have dinner and we break bread and we help each other through the mastermind process. It's a little light-hearted version of the mastermind process, but we help one another. I hold people accountable to following up. I hold people accountable to committing to it because it's only six to eight people and from there I lead them into coaching or lead them into the mastermind retreat so they can get a little more, another taste or people come to me and say hey, this is great. How do I work with you? So it's another way for you to create another mini event rather than waiting for someone to call you and be on a summit and send three emails and we're gonna have a hundred people and 40 show up. They're not your client. So very strategic in everything that I do.

It's amazing. That's a great, really great value-add for people. Six to eight people, dinner and support each other and give them a taste of the value that they can experience at a retreat or working with you privately. Thank you for sharing.

Yes, of course. Thanks for remembering

Great, actually inspired me to want to organize. I have this thought that we're going to a dinner party here in Puerto Rico. That's reinforcing the benefit of doing that.

Oh, yes. I love it. I mean, I still love it and they cross-pollinate. Everybody cross promotes and helps each other but it's really meant to be there. All tides lift boats, whatever that phrase is. I shouldn't even say that phrase if I don't know, but it's all good. This is my personality, by the way. This is what happens. I try to be really cool with a quote and then can't remember the quote, but I think what's really important about that is that we're all in the same boat. That's so funny. We're all kind of in that same boat where we all have the same, similar challenges where you find if you have an event where there's too much of a casting of a net. Oh my gosh, I'm in a boat mode. But if you cast too big of a net you've got people that are brand new, they're not understanding what you're saying. You've got people that are tenured and they're saying why are you talking about this? This is so boring. So I really think niching down is so much more important. I found that it's very successful for me, might not be successful for everybody.

Absolutely. Lady Jen, for our audience here who would like to learn more about you and what you do, what would be the best way for them to connect with you and learn more about you?

Yes, well if you're watching you can see on my name here it says to text the word JEN, J-E-N, I'm a one N in Jen to two-six-seven-eight-six. Again, that's text JEN to two-six-seven-eight-six and you can schedule a strategy call with me, a complimentary strategy call to talk about where are the gaps? Where are the gaps in your business? What are the challenges? What is something that's broken and you want to look at? Should it be fixed? Maybe it's something else. It's broken. I'm very intuitive at mind mapping for people in their business and we were talking about this. To have programs from about $197 up to $60,000. So I like having conversations with people to find out where's the best place to be right now in a sequence as opposed to chasing after shiny objects, which is an SOS. It's just a yell and a cry for help and there was another boat innuendo right there. Wow, it's gonna be a boat day. It's perfect. I just love having these conversations to find out, how can I help? How can I work with you? How can we collaborate? How can we do something? How can I be on your stage, you be on my stage, you come to one of these retreats or masterminds? I'm open for all opportunities.

Beautiful. Awesome. Thank you for that and for our audience listening, we're gonna include all of the links here in the show notes to the chat. So it's text JEN to 26786. That's gonna be included down below along with her website and other resources that you can tap into. Highly recommend. Check Jen out. She is just a remarkable ball of energy, such a sweet human being as you can pick up here from this podcast. Highly recommend. I think, Jen, so as we wrap up here, any final words for our audience?

Yes, absolutely. I have a couple of quotes that I normally, I start off with this quote, but I'm gonna start, I'm gonna do this quote and I'm gonna give you another quote. So the first quote is the great Les Brown whom I've had the opportunity to be on his speaking faculty and travel with him. He says if you're casual about your business, your business will become a casualty. So you can't be casual about putting events together. You can't be casual about it. It's got to have a strategy behind it and the people that you're associating yourself with, they can't be casual either because that will pull you down. Oh my gosh. That's an anchor. That's an anchor for you and so make sure that you're only working with the best of the best. That's what elite is, the best of the best. The characters, they're distinguished people, is there the prestige, is there the commitment? They care more about people than they do about cash and then the cash comes. So if you're casual about your business, your business will become a casualty and then on the last that I'll leave with you, which I always quote, is a quote from my mother, which is we flatter those we scarcely know, we please the fleeting guests, but we deal many a thoughtless blow to those we love the best, Including ourselves. So if you will be as good to yourself as you are to your business, your business will flourish.

Beautiful. Thank you, be good to yourself as you are to your business. Your business will flourish. That's a good line to tie it all together with, thank you. Be intentional or your business will become a casualty. Casually and your business will become a casualty. Those are good.

Yes, if you're casual about your business, your business will become a casualty.

Absolutely. Awesome, Lady Jen. It's been a pleasure to have you on today. Thank you again for being a wonderful guest on our show and our audience, check out, go down the show notes. Send her text, schedule a discovery call if you feel that it'd be a good fit to learn more. Thank you again.

Thank you so much and thank you for sharing all that you're doing on your podcast to help others create wonderful and beautiful events so that they can succeed the way they want to as well. So thank you for what you're doing. Thank you.