In this episode of the High Profit Event Show, host Rudy Rodriguez welcomed special guest Elliot Roe, recognized by Yahoo Business as a top 10 performance coach. This episode delved deep into the transformative experiences shared between Rudy and Elliot, especially during a challenging period in Rudy's life. Rudy candidly shared the significant positive changes he observed in his business after his hypnotherapy sessions with Elliot, who boasts over 10,000 hours in the field.

Elliot's collaborations with eminent event leaders such as Eric Worre, Ray Higdon, and Scott deMoulin were highlighted, along with his unique approach that moves beyond just teaching strategies. He focuses on ensuring that these strategies can be implemented without the hindrances of anxiety. The discussion then shifted to the prevalent fears event leaders face. Rooted often in early life experiences and childhood memories, the fear of failure, especially when putting oneself up for judgment, was examined.

The importance of mindset in such situations was underscored, referencing insights from Carol Dweck's book, "Mindset." The book promotes the idea of viewing setbacks as learning experiences rather than failures. The conversation evolved into the necessity of risk-taking in event organization and the deeper fears many face, such as the potential of disappointing attendees or damaging one's reputation.

A significant portion of the episode was dedicated to navigating the intricacies of sales fears. From the daunting task of selling at the end of events to the deep-seated fear of rejection, the intertwined relationship between these aspects was dissected. Elliot shed light on the power of backend sales and emphasized the preparation required for a successful sales process.

Drawing from his vast experience, Elliot elaborated on the benefits of hypnotherapy in addressing sales reluctance, helping individuals identify past traumas influencing their present apprehensions. The discussion touched upon the power of practice and the value of partnering with sales specialists when necessary. The episode concluded with insights into the psychology behind successful event leadership, emphasizing the pivotal role of an event leader's belief in sales and their product's genuine value.

Listeners were introduced to Elliot’s "Primed Mind" app, a valuable resource with a plethora of hypnotherapy audio sessions tailored for boosting confidence in sales and public speaking. The diverse team of coaches available through Elliot's platform was also highlighted.

This episode served as a reminder that our fears and beliefs, such as feelings of inadequacy in sales or public speaking, are learned behaviors. But with the right guidance, they can be reshaped or unlearned. For more insights and resources, listeners were directed to Carol Dweck's "Mindset" and Elliot Roe’s website at elliotroe.com. Don't forget to subscribe for more insightful episodes.

Want to connect with Elliot?

Website: https://elliotroe.com/

Primed Mind app: https://primedmind.com/

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

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

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

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Hi, Rudy Rodriguez here and welcome to The High Profit Event Show. On today's episode, we have a very special guest, Mr. Elliot Roe. Welcome, sir. It is an honor and a pleasure to have you on our show today, especially because you and I go back a couple of years.

It's been a while now.

One of the things I really appreciate about you is that you came into my life at a time where I was having kind of a tough time. I was in a little bit of a slump, per se, in business and in life. And I met you at a mastermind. In a few short moments, you did a little hypnotherapy with me and I noticed an improvement right away. So I was like, I have to work with Elliot.

That's one of the things that's so great about this, this sort of subject, this modality is you can create those state changes so quickly, and it just can really impact people.

Most definitely, man. I'm a student of personal growth and personal development. I've done quite a few different modalities over the years. But I mean it when I say it, that working with you and through hypnotherapy has been the most powerful modality I've ever experienced in my growth.

I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Definitely, in fact, I'll tell my audience, the quick story is that I went from what was my worst month. I think it was in February and 30 days later, I was having the best month I've had in the last 12 months. So that's how quick and fast it could be. Elliot, I prefer our audience for the people that don't quite know you yet are getting to know you, I wanted to highlight a couple things about you and how your expertise relates to the event space. One, I know as a top performer, you've been listed as top performance coach top 10 by Yahoo Business. You have over 10,000 hours as a hypnotherapist. You've worked with some of the great event leaders like Eric Worre, Ray Higdon, Scott deMoulin, who was a guest on our show recently. You've worked with me to prepare almost before every single major event that we've done in the last couple of years. So you've really have navigated some of those really big common fears and mindset that people have.

It's one of those areas that sometimes shows up for me in terms of clients. So I work with clients, professional sports, CEOs of companies, business, a lot of traders and event leaders is sort of another niche where people come to me. The ones that you mentioned are giving me testimonials and there's others as well who could come to me over the years, specifically because events can generate quite a lot of fear and anxiety. Sometimes people reach out. They start to realize that perhaps if I didn't feel this way, I would be able to show up differently for my attendees, make the most of the event, really change my profitability of the event because I know I'm holding myself back. That's the sort of work I do is try and find the areas where I'm not teaching strategy. What I'm helping someone do is allow them to follow the strategy that they believe is best without the brakes on because they've got some anxiety showing up for them.

It's the rational approach. So you talked about some of the three biggest fears that event leaders face and you and I were talking about the fear of hosting an event and showing up and either no one being there or the wrong people being there and just the fear of filling the event. Can you kind of speak to that and how to overcome that type of fear?

So whenever we're looking at these types of fears, what we're looking for is what the fear really is. We're going to cover this a bit with all of the fears that we're discussing today. But when we say, hey, I'm feeling very uncomfortable putting on this event. What if nobody turns up? What if I can't sell the tickets? What if I get an audience but the audience is incorrect? Really what we're looking at here is a fear of failure. So the overarching fear is if I put myself out there to be judged, because in reality, when you're putting an event on, you are going to be judged. It's a reality of the situation. You're bringing people to something you're telling them is good and they're going to have a decision one way or the other. Are you going to say, yes, I loved that event and are they going to show up or not show up? I loved it or I didn't love the event. So I believe that's why it triggers these sorts of emotions for people as they put on those events, because they start to think, hey, you know, what if I fail? What does that mean for my brand? What does that mean for myself? And then looking deeper at that, we want to really look at and through hypnotherapy, a lot of it's regression based. We're bringing up memories from the past. Why is that fear of failure so painful? Is this the only area they're seeing in their life? Where did it come from in their childhood? Because typically these fears are learned in childhood and for some people, they're very amplified and for some people, not quite so much. Then we sort of work through, understand the fear where it came from, work through, reframe those memories, start to change them, drain the emotion so the triggers aren't as extreme. But the sorts of ways this could impact somebody when it comes to events, a classic one would be you have an event, your best case scenario is you're filling 200 seats.

Fear of failure starts to kick in. Instead, you get yourself a smaller location, which is cheaper, and the success case is 50 seats. So instead of looking to knock the ball out of the park, they're setting themselves up, say, well, I filled the 50 because they really thought they might be able to fill 250, but it's going to be a full room if they get a smaller venue. It's these sorts of self-sabotages where if you can work through that, if you can start to understand where that's coming from, why these fears are there, obviously that dramatically changes the potential for that individual. A lot of it comes down to a fixed mindset as well. A book that I recommend in almost every podcast I'm on because it's such an impressive book for me is Mindset by Carol Dewick. It's the breakdown between the fixed and the growth mindset. When it comes to fear of failure, that's a really useful book because instead of seeing a failure or things not going quite as well as they could have done as a failure, you're looking to see it as an opportunity to grow and learn. If you can start dropping the level of emotion that comes up when things don't go your way and start to say, hey, well, we went for 250 attendees, marketing didn't go to plan, we only got 100. Instead of that being, I can never run another event again. What has this done for my reputation? This is terrible. Turning that into what did I learn from this? How can I make sure I get more than 100 attendees last time? What was going on in my strategy that meant I believe 250 people were coming or I believe the right type of people were coming for my event? What was going on in my strategy that was incorrect because something was wrong if I didn't get the result I was looking for?

And where can I refine this and grow for the next one? If you start changing to that more growth mindset, it reduces the pressure, it reduces the emotion, it reduces the amount of effectively the self-flagellation in those situations and allows you to with a clear mind, see it as you're just on a journey in the event space, gradually looking to improve and improve as you move forward with the events, rather than having this expectation of this has to be the one. Otherwise, that's the end of everything.

It's like you're reading my mind.

It sounds like you've had a few conversations with people, one or two when it comes to events and filling the event. It's a bit like having your childhood birthday party and the kids at school not showing up. There's a little bit of the sort of old memories of am I cool enough to people really like me? I have this email list, but is anyone going to respond? Part of this is, are you willing to reach out to the affiliates to market your event with you? Are you brave enough to face the rejection of, hey, I'm running this event in Florida. I believe that your list might be interested in coming to the event. Would you like to partner with me? And facing the fact that some percentage of the people that you ask and say, I'm sorry, I don't want to. The thing is, it's the asking that's so important. So when I'm working with clients on these things, we're not expecting perfection. We can't set up a situation where everyone is going to say yes, but we can set up a situation where the client can at least ask the affiliates that they know if they're willing to help. If we can get rid of the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, start learning the lessons, then as I say, we'll see how it starts to move forward.

Excellent. It's interesting because we talk about the fear of failing the event, but then here we go. You get over those fears and then you have an event and you have hundreds of people who are buying tickets and saying they're coming, booking flights and booking hotels. But then there's the next fear, the fear of they show up and you let them down. Then you have the speakers and it's like your reputation with the speakers. So can you speak to that fear? I know that's a common one as well. I've heard that many times on this show.

Again, all these fears are so closely entwined because it does come down to this. Am I enough? Am I good enough? And am I liked or likable? What happens if things go wrong and focusing in on that worst case scenario? So a lot of it with this will be making sure all of the things are being done that the client believes should be done. So as I say, I'm not a strategy coach. I'm not a technical coach when it comes down to what should be done for an event. What I like to do is ask the client what they believe the best case scenario would be. So what do you believe is the best case scenario for this situation? How should this be run? What should be happening? And then hold an accountability to, well, this is what you said you needed for your attendees to have the best experience they possibly could. How are we ensuring that that's going to happen? And then keeping out of the way any of the self -sabotage that can happen, which gives the excuse to the ego of, hey, some people didn't like it, but of course they didn't because I didn't get around to booking the X or booking the Y or I didn't do this properly. Therefore I'm safe because I chose not to do those things. It meant we didn't have quite the result we wanted. So it's just sort of working through the different emotions that are coming up and the different ways that the ego, the subconscious can be there. Believing it's protecting us, believing it's helping us, but in reality, self-sabotaging.

Like you said, these fears are intertwined, they're connected to each other, and it goes to a deeper, lower root in the subconscious, maybe as far back as that six year old birthday party like you.

Exactly. Nearly all of us have some version of that, whether it's the birthday party that no one attended or being told you're not cool at school or feeling uncomfortable asking out the girl. Nearly all of the things that we're talking about here are really some level of fear of rejection. So fear of failure, fear of rejection, and then what that means to you and your business and your reputation. Usually when it comes to this subconscious stuff, your own view of yourself, so your own ego and how you view yourself afterwards. Obviously a lot of us, if we're running events, we want it to be the best event anyone's ever gone to. That's just the case. And not all of your events are going to be, can possibly be, the best event that everyone's ever gone to. It's just not the way that it works. But our subconscious will try and, as I say, ensure that we're feeling safe, that our ego feels safe. It'll put up these strange roadblocks that get in the way. It's my job to talk to these leaders about what potentially those roadblocks could be and then how to work through those different roadblocks.

Absolutely. You've done that with me multiple times, just talking me through a very rational approach, and it's been incredible coming out of these hypnotherapy sessions. Oftentimes I like already knew what there is to do. But all of a sudden when I came out of the session, I found myself just free to act on it like it just came more naturally. I wasn't avoiding or resisting self-sabotaging as much as I might have. So there's a third major fear that we kind of touched on before the show. I think this is probably the bigger fear for many people, especially the first time around. The fear of being on stage there at the end of the second day or the third day. It comes time to ask people to join the program, ask for a sale. The fear of the price not being right or the audience rejecting them. Can you kind of speak to that fear? Because I'm sure you hear that a lot.

This is something that, obviously in a lot of events, the back end sales are the key to whether it was a successful event or not. 'm sure a lot of people listening to this, they've been running events. They understand this. But just selling the tickets typically isn't enough to make the event successful. We have the back end sales. We have the pitch that needs to be made. This can be really uncomfortable, especially, like you said, for your first event when you've got all of these people in the room and you don't want it to feel like you're pressurizing them a lot of the time. You don't want to feel that fear of, again, the fear of rejection. So I've brought these people to the room. I've put on this wonderful event. I've shown them everything that I've got and now nobody's bought from me. So this is where we see different versions of self-sabotage where they won't do the full sales training. So, they don't speak to someone like yourself to set up a professional sales team. So that's one version of self-sabotage. So they can say, oh, well, we didn't sell as many as we expected, but we didn't really do the training. So, this is the sort of thing we're looking for, where there's an obvious strategy to be followed and the choice is not to follow the strategy. They don't price the offering at the price it should be set. So last minute, people sometimes, they're saying they're going to have a $50,000 offer. Then on the day of the event, it becomes a $30,000 offer. Because in their mind, this suddenly is a much safer thing to do. And hey, well, I'm going to sell more. This is going to make me feel much more comfortable if I reduce the price of my offer last minute.

Then not following through effectively with the whole sales process as well. Again, with this sort of, not following people up, again, it gives you an excuse as to why the sales weren't made. So what we're really looking for is all of these potential little areas where money could be made, where sales could be made, where we're holding ourselves back. But it's not through lack of understanding. Like if the individual, if the leader of the event was sitting down with us beforehand, they would tell us exactly what to do. They'd be able to list all of these things. But then as it gets closer and closer, they start to drop off and they end up with a much safer but much less successful sale on the stage. As I say, these are hard things for people because they're dealing with rejection, which no human being likes. There's a reason it's hard to ask out the girl in the bar. It's because she might reject you. There's a reason it's hard to ask for a sale. There's a reason why sales is such a specialized industry. It's as simple as asking for the sale. Oh, really, is it? This is a very technical industry. As much of it is asking them for the sale, a lot of it is the confidence to be able to ask for that is something that needs to be trained and understood. And when the rejection happens, being able to then overcome that. Overcome those objections and continue helping someone understand where the value is. So I would say this is certainly one of the bigger areas that I've seen over the years.

As I say, I've spoken to a lot of people about events over the years. When it comes to the sale, it can be one of the most uncomfortable parts, especially in those early events. What's interesting is as people do more and more events, this does tend to resolve to some extent. So they gain confidence knowing that they've sold at previous events and that really helps. So getting the first one out of the way, seeing that people will buy is a really big deal. Obviously, practice is very important. Then the survivorship bias, the truth of it is if you invest $100,000 in an event and then you don't sell properly, probably you're not going to put on another. A lot of people, that will be the last event they ever do. If someone's done 50 events, there's a decent chance they're very profitable for them because they wouldn't be putting on 50 events otherwise.

Great insight. I'm curious, Elliot, what would you say to a client who comes to you and says, Elliot, I don't think I'm good at sales or I don't like sales or any kind of that like stinking thinking going into an event. Like if somebody has that belief, how would you coach them to do that?

So, if we're working through the hypnotherapy type sessions, we'd be looking at where the fear comes from. Why do you believe that you're not good at sales? Why is this uncomfortable for you? What does it feel like in your body when you think of picking up a call to make a sale? Typically they're going to say, I feel a sickness in my stomach. I feel my throat, my voice start to crack. I feel a tension, whatever it might be. Then through the hypnotherapy process, which isn't like stage hypnosis, it's sort of more like guided meditation, these physical responses tend to lead to memories in their past that they start describing, they understand where their confidence has been damaged. So, like I say, the rejections, feeling they weren't good enough for their parents, these things in early childhood that have set up how they feel about themselves. We then work through those memories, try and reframe them, see them from a different direction, reduce the emotion, the stress. Then as we work through all of those memories, often there's sort of an emotional response, lots of tears in my sessions, typically it's quite normal. They come out of the session, they feel lightness, sort of a weight has come off them. Where these memories were triggering these fears when they thought about picking up the phone, that same trigger isn't there. Another thing I would say, though, to somebody who's saying, hey, I know I'm not good at sales, just for whatever reason, I feel innately that I'm not skilled in this area. They should be hiring a sales team, they should be hiring a specific sales trainer. It's a bit like saying, hey, I'm not good at public speaking. Ok, but part of your job is public speaking. If you're running an event, you're going to be on the stage.

You need to either hire someone else to be taking that role, or you need to be hiring a public speaking coach. You need to do the reps until you are good at it. With all of these types of skills, what I tend to notice is people who really dislike public speaking find any way of getting out of public speaking that they possibly can. That means they haven't had the same level of practice as other people who don't find it as difficult. Sales is the same thing. The person who absolutely hates sales, probably in every instance that they've been called to do sales, has found an excuse not to make the first sales call, not to be the person on the stage, not to be in the meeting. Again, everything that we do is effectively reps. The more that you do it, the better you're going to become at anything. So it's a combination of training, making sure you get the reps in. Then if you need to, sometimes accept that maybe there's someone else who has a better natural skill set for this job than me. Where do I find that person? How can we possibly team up that makes this work for everybody?

Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. That's actually really helpful. I get that as a common belief that when I speak with people who are looking to hire a sales team, it's because they believe they're not good at sales. But then I actually coach them to counter that belief because it's important for the overall event to be successful because the psychology of the leader, of the owner, is the chokehold of the business. So they have to have a strong sales belief in order for the sales team to be able to be effective as well. So it has to go from the top down.

Everyone has to believe that. I do also believe it's really important that you genuinely believe you're helping people with what they're buying. If you have a product, you don't have confidence in it. It's very difficult to sell because maybe you shouldn't be selling the product. I would say that's another key part of all of this. When someone's talking about, hey, I'm worried about selling my products. Well, do you think it's going to improve the life of the buyer? Yes, I do. Typically, they will believe it's going to help. If that's the case, you're helping them by selling them the product. You're improving their life and start to change it from this. I'm taking something for you to turn into like this is a fair trade. The consumer is getting something just as valuable as the thing that you're passing to them, the money you're receiving.

Agreed 100 percent, Elliot. Elliot, this interview has been super valuable. Appreciate you taking us through these very common fears that I hear on the show from event leaders. I just love the way you talk to us through this for people listening to the show. If they want to learn more about hypnotherapy, what's a good way to work with you? What are a couple of good resources where people can go to learn more?

Head over to elliotroe.com. There's an application there and I coach, obviously, but I also have a whole team of coaches at different price points. You fill out an application form and we can put you with the right coach for where you currently are in your business. As you said, I typically work with top performers looking to reach the very top. So it doesn't make sense for everyone to work with me. But I do have a team of coaches who there is somebody that we can find who will be a great fit for you if some of these things are mentioned, the tightening in your stomach when you're thinking about sales, those sorts of things. If they're resonating with you, then reaching out for hypnotherapy could make sense. So that's elliotroe.com. And then I have an app if you're interested about hypnotherapy and just how it feels. I have an app called Primed Mind, which is on iPhone and Android. You can find that in the different app stores. A lot of the content on there is free and we have things in there for sales and for public speaking. So for event leaders, it's a really useful product. You just listen to a 15 minute audio hypnotherapy audio before you step on the stage to improve your confidence and the performance that you're going to have. So, for anyone listening, it's free to try and always interested in hearing how people feel about it as well. So always let us know the feedback on that as well.

Awesome. Thanks for sharing that research with the audience. I used the Primed Mind app almost two or three times a day when I first got it and I found it to be quite helpful. It was an amazing bargain for whatever I paid for it. It was really, really good, really helpful. So I recommend that resource to everyone listening and also working with Elliot. If you're in a place to work with Elliot, I highly recommend I'll just leave it at that. And even if you're not quite ready for Elliot, I've had members of my team work with members of Elliot's team and all of them have come back saying it's been an incredible experience and it's unlocked major shifts within them that ultimately impacted their improvement in their sales performance as well. So, super valuable resource. Highly recommend it. Check out elliotroe.com and apply to work with this team.

Really look out for any of those places where you feel the physical sensation of the emotion coming up and understand that that's not who you are. This is something that you've learned and you can unlearn. So, have that faith that this is a learned behavior. All of these fears, I'm not good at sales, I can't public speak, whatever it might be. You've learned to believe that. There are ways of changing things with your mindset where that belief will no longer be true.

Awesome. Thank you, Elliot, for the final comments. Appreciate you, sir. That being said, we'll call it a wrap.