In this week’s episode of The High Profit Event Show, host Rudy Rodriguez welcomes Callan Rush, founder of Lucrative Luminary Training. With over 25 years of experience in the event industry, Callan has assisted thousands of workshop leaders transform their marketing and business strategies. Her book, Wealth Through Workshops, has been downloaded over 600,000 times, and her company has generated more than $50 million in revenue. Combining her academic background in psychology and education with practical expertise, Callan shares how event leaders can simplify their marketing efforts to create greater impact and consistent success.

Callan begins by addressing a common challenge faced by event leaders: most of them didn’t enter the industry to become marketers. Their true passion lies in delivering transformative events and serving their audiences. However, she emphasizes that having a basic understanding of marketing is essential for success. Whether event leaders manage their marketing personally or delegate it to others, foundational knowledge allows them to evaluate strategies, provide guidance, and ensure their marketing efforts align with their goals.

Throughout the episode, Callan dives into three key topics that are vital for event leaders. First, she simplifies marketing by categorizing strategies into three types: Linked, Lagging, and Leading Client Enrollment Strategies. Linked strategies, such as speaking engagements or discovery sessions, provide immediate results but often lead to inconsistent revenue. Lagging strategies, like social media posting and content creation, build long-term brand awareness but require patience and persistence. Callan’s favorite, Leading Client Enrollment Strategies, combines effort now with ongoing revenue, making it ideal for creating stability and scalability.

Next, Callan highlights the power of optimized webinars, a strategy that transformed her own business. She shares how this approach took her from burnout—running 52 events a year—to achieving $7 million in annual revenue. By creating, testing, automating, and optimizing a high-converting webinar, Callan built a system that provides consistent income while allowing her to focus on her passion for delivering value to her audience.

Finally, Callan offers an inspiring message to luminary leaders navigating challenging times. She encourages listeners to find mentors who teach in a way that resonates with them and reminds them that their work as educators and changemakers is more important than ever. Her advice is simple but powerful: “If you don’t understand something, it’s not your fault—it just means you need the right teacher.”

Listeners can access Callan’s free guide, which provides detailed steps for simplifying marketing and implementing an optimized webinar sequence, at callanrush.com/mms. This episode is a treasure trove of insights and practical advice for event leaders seeking to grow their impact and streamline their strategies. Don’t miss the chance to learn from one of the best in the business. Tune in now and start transforming your marketing approach today!

Want to connect with Callan Rush?

Marketing Made Simple Guide: http://callanrush.com/MME

Website: https://www.callanrush.com/

Lucrative Luminary Training Website: http://lucrativeluminary.com/

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

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

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

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CallanRush

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/.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Welcome to today's episode of The High Profit Event Show. We have a special guest today with us, Ms. Callan Rush. Welcome, Ma'am.

Welcome, sir. Great to be here.

It's great to see you, Callan, and wonderful to reconnect after so many years apart. I know you've had a little bit of, I wouldn't call it retirement, but you've been - Sabbatical. Sabbatical, yes. Behind the scenes for several years, but you're back, and this is your debut.

Yes.

And so excited because you are literally a wealth of knowledge in the event industry. Your book, Wealth Through Workshop, has been downloaded by over 600,000 people, which is cool and you've been in the industry for over 25 years, and your company, Lucrative Luminary, who you ran with your partner, Justin, for 10 years, generate over $50 million of revenue, and you travel the world serving tens of thousands of workshop leaders in so many different various industries and walks of life. Here's what's cool about you specifically is not only do you have the results to prove it, but you have the academic background. You have a bachelor's in not only psychology, but also in education. You formally learned how to create curriculum and to teach in a way that people learned. So excited to have you here today.

Wow, thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Last time I saw you, I think you were attending my surprise birthday party with my team. That was awesome, but I'm so happy to be here, and also just really happy to be back in touch with workshop leaders, the educators of the planet that are in the streets, doing that good work and bringing their missions out there to change the world for a positive, to make a positive difference. So I'm happy to be here.

Absolutely. Callan, you are a wealth of knowledge. I know that one of the common problems that people face when it comes to events is how do I fill my events? How do I get people to my events? You have so much to share on that point.

Okay, well, just put your hand up if you want me to stop talking, because I am excited to get going. So the first thing that I wanna do is just set the premise that I know that most of the people listening are not born. Their mission on the planet is not to become a marketer. They're here to serve other people with whatever their gifts are, whatever their product, program, or services. That's why they're here. That's what they wanna do is to change lives and yet they will never get to do that unless they really get some at least basic literacy and basic chops down when it comes to marketing and promotions and getting the word out to as many people as possible that can be served by their particular product, program, or service. So you gotta do it. You have to kind of go through it and even if you don't wanna be the marketer in your business, you still have to have some basic literacy because if you go and outsource it or hire someone else, you need to know that what they're bringing back is worth the paper it's written on. You need to be able to scan it and be like, okay, this is way off and give some direction. So no matter what level a business owner is at, basic literacy in marketing and sales is absolutely paramount so they can get to the really good stuff, the real reason why they're here, which is to transform lives. So what I've noticed in the past 25 years is that the basics, the fundamentals of marketing have not changed that much, which is kind of cool. However, the promotional channels, the ways that you can get your message out have absolutely exploded. When we started, it was like emails and Facebook ads, that was it, or speaking engagements and Facebook ads, you used to be able to like put down a dollar and get 10 back.

So I remember there was a time when we couldn't spend fast enough with Facebook ads because we were just, it was a money machine for us. Of course, sadly, those days are over. So now I think what I'm noticing as I'm interviewing workshop leaders that are in the trenches today, they're all very overwhelmed with all the different strategies. Should I do Instagram? Should I do funny dances on TikTok? Should I keep with Facebook? Should I send an email? Should I get on speaking engagements? There's just so many different options. So today, my goal is to take the whole milieu of options out there to fill your events and get clients or fill your practice, whatever it is that you're working to do and simplify it. Simplify everything into three separate marketing channels and then I'm gonna, I have a bias as to which one I would love to support. If you had to pick one category, I'm gonna talk about that one last because I think it's the best one. However, we do need to kind of make sense of this huge mishmash of all these different strategies and I'm gonna categorize them. So how does that sound?

That sounds awesome..

All right, so the first category of marketing strategy is promotional channels that you can get the word out about your event or your program or what it is that you offer. We call those linked client enrollment strategies. So they're linked. So let me give you some, I'll give you an operational definition and then I'll tell you, give you some examples and then I'll show you what it does for your business. So a linked strategy is when you put out effort now and you get a result now. So if I got invited to a speaking engagement and I did a 90-minute talk and I made an offer at the end and a bunch of people bought it, that would be a linked strategy. I would put effort out now and immediately I would get a cash result, which is awesome. Except that when you stop efforting, you got no cash. Okay, so here's some other examples. A strategy session or discovery sessions that a lot of people are doing. They put out effort now for 60 minutes, they make an offer at the end, the person either buys or they don't. If they buy, that's great. They get cash and away you go. So linked strategies, there's a whole bunch of different linked strategies and they're good if you're cashflow poor and you need money in the door right away because you could be broke on Monday, do a speaking engagement on Wednesday and be flush with cash on Friday. So they're really great for a lot of reasons. However, they also have their cons and the con is that they tend to generate what we call rollercoaster cashflow in your business. So I'm gonna draw this for your viewers and I'm not a PowerPoint girl, I can do them, but I prefer being a grade six teacher and bringing my flip chart. You remember me from flip charts. So I'm gonna show you what it looks like to your cash. So you put out effort. This is, we've got money up here, time over here, okay?

You put out effort, you make some money, Woohoo! You stop efforting, you don't have any money. So you're like, oh my God, I gotta get another linked strategy in place. You put out effort and you get some money. You stop efforting and you don't have any money and on we go up and down, up and down, up and down. So the main con with linked strategies is that it gives you rollercoaster revenue, okay? So when you're efforting, you got money, when you're not, you don't got any. So not my favorite strategy, but it's definitely has its place, I would say. Here's some examples of linked strategies. Speaking engagement, perfect one. A strategy session where you're getting on one-on-one with people you're efforting and you might make a sale at the end, that's a linked strategy. Self-hosted intro events when you're maybe booking at the local Y or something like that and you're gathering people and you're teaching them something and making an offer, that's a linked strategy. Sometimes even flash sales, promotional periods where you're really pushing hard to promote one particular product and then when the promo period's over, that's it. Okay, pop-up events, that's another example of a linked strategy. So that's the first category, linked strategies, all right? Let's talk about number two. Did you have any questions about that, Rudy, or is that fairly clear?

No questions on that. One thing I wanna illustrate for those who are only listening and can't see, so you had a nice little XY axis, arrow up, arrow to the right, and it's like effort and cash.

Well, it's time and money, really. How much money you're making over a period of time and with the, I forgot about the visuals, people who can't see. So yes, when you're efforting, your money goes up and then when you're not, it goes down. So over time, what you'll get is feast and famine, cashflow, up and down, up and down, okay?

So let's talk about this. I can relate to that for sure.

Yes, me too. All right, and actually, if it weren't for the feast and famine cashflow cycle earlier on in our business, we wouldn't have got to the number one category I'm gonna talk about in a minute because it was the pain of being feast and famine that actually helped us start to do things differently I'm gonna share that in a minute. So the second path is what I call lagging client enrollment. This is my least favorite, but it's also, I mean, eventually you wanna get all three in place, but this one's my least favorite for transformation leaders because it's really what it means is it's a lot of effort out, it's a lot of effort for a long period of time hoping and praying that down the road you're gonna get a result. So for example, posting every single day on social media or on Instagram, putting out Youtube after Youtube, doing even podcasts like this are wonderful, but they're a lagging strategy. We're hoping that we put something together that's highly valuable, but over time, it takes time for people to start listening and to click again and then to follow through and then perhaps down the road, they'll become a client. So I'm not saying that they're not useful, they are, but especially when you're early on in your business, lagging client enrollment strategies can be a little bit dangerous because it's too long to hash, it's too long to get your clients. So I'm gonna give you some examples here. So I said, Youtube's putting up blogs, blog and blog and blog and blog, and hopefully one day someone's gonna click a link and buy something. Posting every single day on Instagram. As I'm coming back out of sabbatical, I'm getting literate with what's really current and what's now, and so I took a program with an Instagram guy

And he's like, oh, you wanna get your business going? You need to post on Instagram for a year and then after a year, you can make an offer. I was like, oh my god, that's way too long. But that's a lagging strategy. I think what's happening is a lot of people are getting caught up in the, oh, I've gotta post daily, I gotta post daily, and they're getting really frustrated because they're not getting that result and they won't get an immediate result. They might get a like or comment, but unless they're doing it over time, they're not gonna get that client for a while. So let's talk about what it looks like, and I'll try and be verbal as well as visual for this one. Let's talk about what lagging client enrollment is gonna do to your revenue in terms of money over time. So what it looks like is a little different. So it's gonna look more like this, where you're gonna start here and then slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. By the end over time, you're gonna start to get some money in the door and clients. So that's what that one looks like and for those of you listening, it's just no money, no money, no money, no money, money, and then it starts to get a little bit in, a little bit in, and then it starts to kind of peak over time. So again, lagging client enrollment, not my favorite, especially if you're early in the game. Once you're established like Rudy is, it's great. It's a great way to build buzz and build your ecosystem of audience. But that's gonna lead me to number one. This is the one that I wanna spend the rest of my time on, because it's so powerful. It's the one, because of that feast and famine cashflow for us, this is why we came up with this last category. It's called leading client enrollment.

So, to review, because I wanted you to see the difference. We have linked, effort now, cash now. We have lagging, effort now, cash way down the road, and then this last one is effort now, cash now, and ongoing forever. So you put some effort out now, and you get it up and running, and then it just keeps returning every single day for the rest of your business. Not to say you can't tweak things, but this is my absolute favorite, leading client enrollment. So it allows you to get clients now and ongoing based on a little bit of effort that you put out once in the past. So let me give you some examples of these, because some of these you'll be familiar with. A tripwire sequence. So someone buys a little hook product from you. You set it up, it's all automated. They buy that hook product. It leads down a funnel where they get something, they have an opportunity to buy a higher ticket product, program, or service, and away you go. Quiz funnels can be an example of a leading client enrollment strategy. Paid challenges, where as long as they're automated, so this is the point. If you do a challenge and you're live every day, it's linked. If you do a challenge and the whole thing is pretty much automated except for the driving of traffic to it, then it's a leading strategy. Some people I know have automated challenges that just run on autopilot pretty much and all they do is drive traffic. That would be a leading version of it. But the one that I love the most is what I call an optimized webinar sequence. An optimized webinar sequence.

So what that is, is there's really four phases to it. First phase is you create a highly converting presentation. Okay, generally speaking, they call it a webinar, although that's now becoming kind of old school. But you create a presentation that gives value and positions a purchase. So you're not just giving value, giving value. That value has to be strategically arranged to have someone desire to take a next paid step with you. That's step one of this. You create it. Step two then is once it's converting, even if you just make one sale, yahoo, now you automate it. You automate it. So now we have an automated webinar and the only thing we're doing is driving traffic to it. It's playing every single day all year long. Once you get it automated and it's working and it's converting, then the next step is, first, pardon me, first we create it, then we test it. Once it's converting, then we automate it. Once it's automated, then we optimize it. So optimizing is taking a look at all the different places, all the different conversion points, registering for the webinar, showing up for the webinar, staying through for the webinar, buying on the webinar or buying after the webinar. We take a look at all those conversion points and we grease the wheels. We take a look, oh, how can we make our registrations better? How can we make our show ups better? How can we make the content better so people are staying through to the end? How can we make that offer better so more people are buying and saying yes to what you have to offer? And why are we giving up? If people don't buy in the webinar, isn't there a way that we can serve them after the webinar, give them a second chance to reconsider the decision and buy later? So we create it, we test it, we automate it, then we optimize it.

Once that happens, the only thing you do after that is just drive traffic to that optimized webinar sequence. Now, I'm gonna tell you the other reason why I really, really love this and why this took us from under a million in revenue to I think at our peak, we were at 7 million in revenue and we were making sales every single day on autopilot. So obviously that is great. But for me, one of the things that it did is it saved my life. Because when we started, I was in feast and famine. I was leading 52 events a year, small, medium and large events a year. Every single week I was leading an event until I burnt out. I said to Justin, I can't do this anymore. I just can't lead another event. I just, my health won't do it. So he came, he went away for a couple of weeks while I rested and came back with this blueprint for this leading client enrollment strategy. It's allowed us, he called it the world's most passive aggressive marketing system. That's what he called it. I was like, okay, nerd, we need to rename this. He's like, okay, how about optimized webinar sequence? Which I think is also a little bit nerdy. So I've called it the maximize your impact process. The reason I call it maximize your impact is because it allows you as the leader to do what you were born to do. Your client enrollment is happening automatically which means you get to focus most of your time on the delivery of what that is that the people, the service that people are buying from you. You get to put most of your attention on that. Your expenses are taken care of with the client enrollment. You don't have to become a professional marketer in addition to what you do as a transformation leader.

And it really provides you with safety, security, cashflow stability. So I know we only have a limited amount of time and I'm talking really fast, but maybe I'll just break for a minute to see if you've got questions or comments or anything you want me to explore more.

I love it. Appreciate you bringing it all to this idea of a leading client enrollment strategy. Cash, effort now, cash now and ongoing forever. It's kind of like the best of several worlds that you described. Then what I heard specifically is a couple of examples like a tripwire sequence, a quiz funnel, paid challenges. The one that you love most is the optimized webinar sequence and how you, when Justin, you were facing total burnout, doing over 50 events a year, one a week, and your health was failing and you had to take some rest. Justin came back with this idea of a webinar sequence that basically took you guys from just under a million in annual revenue to consistently 7 million in annual revenue and making sales every day on autopilot.

Yes, thank you. I'll tell you the first time when we set it up, the first time we automated it, we were at the beach and we were throwing sticks for Justin's dog and he had his phone out and he goes, hey, we just made a sale. I was like, oh my gosh, like it was really a turning point for me as a transformation leader that I was relaxing and enjoying my life and we were still enrolling clients and the first person we enrolled with our very first optimized webinar sequence, her name was Amrita Grace, which means the grace of God. She was a woman from Hawaii and I was like, this is such a good omen. So for years and years, we've been teaching this process to people and yes, that's just something that I love to share because I see the relief that it brings for these transformation leaders who just don't love marketing. They just want to do their thing.

Wow, that's amazing. What a cool name for the first person that came into the sequence.

I know, right? I've since met her, we're still in touch actually. That was many, many years ago, but we're still in close touch because she was kind of the grace of God. She was our first kind of passive, almost mostly passive enrollment for clients. So listen, I talked really, really fast because I know we have a limited amount of time and we wanted to give value upfront, but Everything I've said, I've really fleshed out being the teacher I am in an awesome guide that people can download for free and that will show them everything, including the visuals if they were just listening and not watching today. So I'd love to give that to your listeners and your viewers.

Absolutely. How can our listeners and viewers get access to that guide?

So all they need to do is go to callanrush.com, C -A -L -L -A -N -R -U -S -H .com forward slash M -M -S, marketing made simple M -M -S. So callanrush.com forward slash M -M -S and the whole guide is available there. At the very end of the guide, if someone wants me to help them map out their maximize sequence, their optimized webinar sequence, that's something that I'm really still so passionate about helping people do. So there's details about that on there as well.

What a beautiful gift. Thank you. I look forward to going through that because I know the way you teach, the way you simplify things, it makes it so much easier. I love the saying, I don't know if it was Albert Einstein said it, but like if you really know something, then the ability to simply simplify it and describe it in a simple manner actually is the true form of intelligence.

Well, I know Einstein gets credit for most quotes. So let's give it to him. But I'm in agreement. Like if you can't teach it to someone who's in grade six, my daughter's in grade four, she's my nine-year-old, then you don't really know it yourself. That's something that I really take pride in is trying to simplify this complexity of running a business and marketing and sales and all the different components and really make it simple for people so they can understand because ultimately I'm here to encourage people. That's really why I'm on the planet.

100%, luminary leader. For audience listening right now, I highly encourage you to go down to the show notes or find the link somewhere near this audio or video and download her guide right away and also check her out on our website, callanrush.com and check out the other social links that we have posted around here. I personally actually attended one of your workshops back in 2015, I think it was, 2014 or 2015. It was so neat to see how well you put that workshop together and now get to connect with you here 10 years later and reconnect with you on this interview. It's been so cool to watch the journey unfold.

Thank you so much. You and I have always had a really special connection so I'm very honored to be here and to support you and your listeners and viewers as well.

Thank you. Any final words of advice or encouragement to our viewers as we wrap up this interview?

Yes, you can do it. You can totally do it. If you're not understanding something, it's not your fault. It means you don't have the right teacher yet. So, don't be like, oh my god, I don't get this, I'm confused, I'm not sure. It's just, no, you just haven't found the right teacher yet. If you don't understand, blame the teacher, find a new one and find a teacher that can share what you need to know in a way that really has you feel smart because you are smart. Then I guess the final thing I'll say is that, as you know, our world right now, economically, socially, politically is in more need than ever of luminaries, educators, people out there wanting to make a positive difference in a shift. So whatever you do, keep at it. And yes, so that's it.

Thank you, Callan, for the message of hope and light as well.

Hope, exactly. There is always hope.

All right, listeners, check out Callan, download her guide and check her out on her website. It's been great having you on here, Callan. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. Bye. Bye.