In this episode of The High Profit Event Show, host Rudy Rodriguez welcomes Norbert Orlewicz, a figure in the digital marketing and virtual event space. With a career spanning over a decade, Norbert has trained some of today's most successful online marketers and co-created Digital Mentors, an industry-leading attraction marketing system. His work extends to empowering entrepreneurs through digital courses, workshops, and mentorship programs.

This episode delves into three core topics, showcasing Norbert's journey from a theater school dropout to a marketing master, the transformative power of virtual events, and practical strategies for building a loyal, raving fans community online. Listeners will gain insights into leveraging digital platforms for audience growth, the importance of engaging content, and tips for creating memorable virtual events. Norbert's unique background in theater and his transition to online events shares the creative and technical skills necessary for engaging virtual audiences and creating community engagement.

Rudy and Norbert also discuss the importance of simplifying content to improve learner outcomes, the impact of personal and interactive learning experiences, and the effectiveness of focusing on actionable results. Through Norbert's expertise, the episode provides valuable lessons for anyone looking to enhance their virtual event strategy and build a passionate following.

Want to connect with Norbert?

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Website: https://norbertonline.com/

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/norbertorlewicz?lang=en

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/norbertjorlewicz

Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO5M34k3IqhbpbCBIar2kKw/playlists

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Hi, I'm Rudy Rodriguez and welcome to today's episode of The High Profit Event Show and on today's episode, we have a very special guest with us, Mr. Norbert Orlewicz. Welcome, sir. We're excited to have you on the show as our guest today. You have a really interesting show topic, you being someone who's done many events in your life as a consumer, as well as a leader and a facilitator, played together in dozens of virtual events here over the last couple of years. You have a wealth of knowledge to share. But before we jump in, I actually want to highlight a couple of bio points because I want listeners to know like, hey, we need to tune in and lean in and pay attention to what Norbert has to say. So Norbert's been an internet marketer and educator and trainer for well over a decade. He's actually trained some of the most successful online marketers today. He's a co-creator of MyLeadSystemPro, which is the industry's top online traction marketing system for the direct selling industry and he and his partners actually grew that business to well over seven figures in less than 12 months. Through his communities, his companies and digital courses, workshops and mentorship programs, he's also worked with and trained thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs and over the last 14 years, helped them scale their businesses. So Norbert, there's so many awesome things I can say about you, man, and I do have to say for our audience, another cool thing that you surprised me with is that you actually went to school for theater as well, and you're actually very talented on the stage.

I'm actually a theater school dropout, which is quite a unique thing to talk about. I did a lot of theater in high school and then into college. Then I made a life change and it led me down this path, but definitely the skills that I developed there have served me very well.

That's a very interesting and unique thing about your background. Theater school dropout. That ended up being the best thing that could have happened to you, right?

Yes, absolutely.

So, today's show topic is how to build loyal raving fans through virtual events. I'd love to just jump right in and have you just share with us, based on your experience over the last couple of years doing virtual events, what you've learned on the topic.

Absolutely. I'm excited to share this information with your audience. Like you said, we've got a ton of experience now. It's funny to think about it. We've been doing events with our company since 2009, I think that was the first Live the Dream event that you attended. We've done countless large events, small events, workshops, both live and now in the last couple of years, really pushed into the virtual space, which was a really exciting transition. It far exceeded our expectations. I got to tell you, it's going to be hard to get us to go back to live events at this stage. But, obviously the camaraderie in the community is an important part that we do want that we are excited to have again.

So very cool and I think you mean back to in-person events, because the events are still very much live and very much engaging, just as the in-person ones were. Yes. So over a decade of experience doing events, and I've been to many of your events and you've had events with upwards of I mean, hundreds and hundreds of people. You've had mentorship clients that have joined your programs as a result of your events. I mean, you've gone through the whole gambit of experiences with sales and marketing around events.

They say and I mean, I'm a big proponent of it, too, is that experience is the best teacher, I mean, you can attend webinars, you can listen to podcasts like this, you can read books about running events, but it's when you get into the trenches and you actually deal with the issues, the challenges and the excitement of actually putting together and running an event, you got to get into it and start doing it right away, because experience is the best teacher.

Most definitely has actually been a theme we've heard here on the show is people are like, just go and do it right away. It's not going to be what you think it's going to be right away, but you just keep going and you keep learning and you keep getting better. Awesome, man. So you recently made the pivot to online events that you do to necessity out of events that recently happened. Can you tell us a little bit about that pivot you made online, just kind of where you were before and where you were after and just kind of that journey when you made that pivot online and kind of some of the lessons that you learned from transitioning into virtual events?

That's a huge topic. But yeah, let's try to summarize this. So this was specifically with smaller workshops that we were doing in person, mostly in Austin, Texas, although we did play around with different cities. But these were workshops where we had a small, intimate group between 20 to like 45 max at these workshops. There were very intensive, practical three day workshops that were very much focused on our members, our attendees actually executing on the things that we taught. So it was very much a workshop, not a seminar where we just stood at the front of the room and talked their heads off for three days. It was really engaging and we really engaged with each one of the attendees. We would walk around the desks and literally hang out with them over their shoulders and direct them through some of the activities and answer their questions. It was very personal and very interactive. So when we had to take this workshop online virtually, we had a major concern about how do we bring that interactive, very personal, engaging aspect of this workshop into the digital online space? We had an amazing success rate. Every single one of the goals of the workshop was to teach our members how to generate leads. So it was focused around lead generation. We had an incredible 100 percent success rate, meaning that nobody left the workshop without at least generating one lead by themselves. Some of these individuals were brand new to online marketing. So limited skill sets, limited marketing knowledge.

Our goal was 100 percent of those attendees would generate a lead, at least one lead. We had incredible success in a room of 20 to 30 people. We could generate literally in the hundreds and even above a thousand leads during the workshop just with the people in the room. So really incredible results. So when we had to take this virtually, I mean, you remember this, Rudy, our biggest stress was how do we keep that level of engagement and interactivity and not sacrifice on the success rate? So it took several months of discussions amongst our team, learning from others who had been doing live workshops and events and also from yourself as well, Rudy, because you had started to venture into the virtual space as well and just taking the best of everything that we could and creating a layout, a workshop model where we could have as much engagement as possible with our attendees. I can't remember that first virtual workshop, how many attendees there were, but I believe we had broken, we were right around about 100 attendees. So immediately we increased our attendance, tripled our attendance from our regular attendance. What was so incredible for us was the reaction and the experience that the attendees had in that virtual space. We utilized breakout rooms, which was really important for us to take those 100 attendees, break them up into groups of, let's say, 10, 12 people and then be able to give them that sort of one-on-one attention.

We were also really lucky because we have an incredible leadership team and so we were able to recruit some of those leaders and coaches to assist us in those breakout rooms to give that kind of one-on-one attention in that virtual space. Honestly, we were so blown away with that first experience and not only were we able to serve more people, but we were able to maintain the high level of quality that we wanted, that high level of engagement. We were able to maintain a very good success rate. I don't think we can say 100% success rate, but we were still way above 90% success rate with the attendees. The feedback we got from the attendees was incredible. Then above that, we doubled or tripled our revenue generation as well. So for us, I want to say we were lucky, but we were lucky our first experience with that transition to virtual. Obviously there was a lot of work involved to prepare for it and look at all the different options. I think we had an incredible success. That just kind of paved the way for the next couple of years now as we've just optimized the processes.

Awesome, man. You say luck is when your preparation meets your opportunity, right?

Well, I guess that it's the preparation of 10 years before that of experience serving customers in the online space and then also in person and then really working with qualified advisors, people like yourself and others that we were able to communicate with and speak to and learn from their experiences. I really love the collaborative approach. That's one of the philosophies that we've taken in our business. We really value everybody's input. That collaborative approach has served us tremendously well. Especially when you're trying something different, you want to get all perspectives, all ideas to make sure that you're looking at it from all different angles so that you can create the best product possible.

Most definitely. Collaborative support, very important. So you made the transition into the virtual environment quite successfully with that first event and it was a challenge, like how do we create engagement in the virtual environment? Just as good, if not better than we were in person. I know the show's topic is building that loyal raving fan culture. How did you go about it? How did you maintain and improve even the experience for the attendees in the virtual environment?

Well, I think the first thing is really getting clear on your outcomes. This is something that I've learned from a couple of mentors of mine is folks always focusing on outcomes. So again, in getting very clear and very specific. So one of the clear outcomes that we've had with this workshop is to assist people in lead generation. Now that can be a really broad topic. This goes back to a lot of the work that we did in getting to this place. The first workshops that we held were one day workshops after our big event. One of the big mistakes that we made was that we tried to teach far too many things in that workshop. This is an issue that I see with so many content creators, influencers, and educators mostly is that we have so much to teach and we want to teach everything. We want to deliver value. We want to teach everything that we possibly can. We just want to fill our attendees, our customers, our clients with as much information as we possibly can. That is probably one of the biggest mistakes that we make as educators. I'm much more an educator than I am a salesperson or, well, I was going to say marketer, but that's not true, but I'm definitely an educator. So I've made the same mistake myself for many years. One of the best things that we did in our workshop, and this actually took many iterations of the workshop where we started, we continue to just eliminate unnecessary things that we were teaching. We started asking the question, is this really necessary? Do we really need to teach this at this workshop?

Is this really going to serve our outcomes? When you get very clear on your outcome, then you can start to really refine the content that you deliver at the workshop. One of our clear outcomes was that we needed to keep this simple for beginners. So what is the least amount of information that they need to be able to generate a lead? Now, again, when we talk about lead generation, you can get into complicated sales funnels. You can get into paid advertising. You can get into lead magnets and eBooks and webinars and all sorts of things. But do you really need that at a beginner level to generate a lead? We discovered that you don't. So we came up with a process, a social media marketing process where we actually eliminate the need for all the technical stuff. We show our prospects, sorry, our attendees, how to generate qualified leads, people that are interested in what you have to offer without the need for a website, without the need for even an email autoresponder service, without the need for all of this tech that hangs people up. So by simplifying the process and staying clear to our outcome, we want them to have people to talk to. We were able to simplify the education that we delivered at the workshop. Again, it didn't happen right away. It came through experience. That's why the advice that you're going to get from so many of the experts here is just do it because you're going to learn from your experience and you're going to be able to then iterate and change and modify and improve your process. I would say that it literally took us two years of doing workshops every few months to come to this place where we perfected the process.

We perfected the system and then the transition online was much simpler because we already had an ideal process. We now just had to adapt it to the virtual space.

That's perfect. One of the things I'm taking away from what you're sharing here is how you guys made it as simple as possible for your attendee to get a result. I see that as a common mistake people make in their events, especially someone who's an influence, maybe someone who's had a high level of success. They go into the event, wanting to teach everything they know. Maybe it's out of service. Maybe it's out of ego, maybe a little bit of both. But at the end of the day, if the attendee isn't getting the result, isn't making progress, if it isn't simple for them to follow them, they get discouraged and they stop or they don't show up or what have you.

Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that we saw where we knew we were making a mistake right away in our early days of doing these workshops, we would teach so much in one day and people are so excited because you're always excited at the end of a workshop or a live event, but then they would get home and their biggest concern was what do I do again? Because we'd give them far too much information without actual actionable steps that they could take.

So valuable to see people getting those wins through the workshop, the way you structure the workshop, the simplest, easiest way to get leads without burdens of learning new technologies. Then people get leads, not just one, they get 10, they get 20, some get over a 100 and the belief level that I see in themselves goes through the roof. They're excited too, it's been reinforced. They'll continue to do the things that you're asking them to do because they're getting rewarded.

And you know what, what you just said is those actionable steps during the workshop. I think that's a really critical element. One of the reasons why our workshops are so successful is because we're focused on results and we're focused on actionable tasks, we're actually giving them actionable tasks throughout the workshop that they can do. They can implement and they can feel like they've accomplished something. So that literally within a couple of hours of the workshop, after doing a simple task, they feel like, oh, wow, I didn't know that. Or, oh, wow, I just completed that. I just did something. Even if it's the simplest thing ever, it's one step that they now have an affirmative. You've built up a little bit of their confidence. You've built up a little bit of their trust in what you're doing in the processes that you have in place. Oh, okay. These guys do know what they're doing. Oh, these guys are moving me forward. When we talk about that all the time, like how can we continue to move our clients forward so that they continue to feel like they're making progress? One of our taglines, our slogans that we say all the time throughout the workshop and inside of our community is getting better and better. Instead of this premise that we have to accomplish this big thing. So we all have big dreams and goals. A lot of the clients that we work with have big dreams, big visions, and big goals. They want to help millions of people in the world with whatever mission or purpose that they're passionate about. But we got to start in step one. We got to start right where we are, right here. We got to take small baby steps towards that vision, which might happen five or six years down the road. So what are the small steps that we can take right now, where we can build that sense of accomplishment?

Because later on, when we start talking about actually selling things at your workshop, selling mentorship programs or whatever it is that you're ascending your client through, the easiest way to do that is when your client is already getting results before they have that conversation.

A hundred percent. That's actually a perfect transition onto the topic. Here you are, you've delivered so much value just by the end of the first day of your event, but here you are at the end of the second day or some point in the third day and it's time for the opportunity to invite people to play with you at a higher level. I think you started to touch on it, like the fact that you already helped them get a result before you even asked for anything in exchange, that speaks volumes. Can you kind of talk a little bit about that? Like how you think about the offer, like how you're positioning an offer and asking for the sale and having them join your mentorship program.

So let's see, where are you stuck? Cause that's quite a process. So the first thing that you want to make sure that you create for your prospect is some type of what I call an aha moment or an epiphany moment. Russell Brunson talks a lot about this as well. So that's a great resource for you. Read some of his work or some of his books, especially in his webinar model, his webinar script. He talks about the epiphany model and shifting perceptions. And this is that, that difference between education and shifting perceptions, creating that epiphany or that aha moment. So that's the first thing that we're always looking at doing is how can we shift our client's perception so that they have an aha moment as quickly as possible, usually within the first day, within the first few hours, they have an emotional experience of, wow, I didn't know that. I didn't know that about this topic. I didn't know that about me. I didn't know that I was capable of that. Some type of epiphany, some type of a small transformation that occurs in the client during the workshop. So that actually happens for our clients. I can think of one specific thing, is the meditation journey that Brian takes our clients through on the first day in our shorter evening session. That's a very emotional experience for our attendees and it creates an emotional transformation for people. That right there hooks them into the experience of the workshop. If they participate in that experience, in that meditation, and they go on the journey that he leads them through, there is an emotional reaction and an emotional transformation that they've just had.

So that's success number one, we've created that aha moment, that epiphany, they've had a new realization. They're a brand new person now, in a sense. The next thing that we want to do is we want to create some type of tangible result where they feel like they've accomplished something. So we look at a specific, we just talked about it, some type of a specific actionable item that they can do maybe after that first day or after those first sessions, we give them some time to implement a specific activity that they can then go out and do and feel a sense of accomplishment. One of the next things I do is before we actually pitch our offer, we always want to make sure that we paint the picture of what's possible. So this is that future pacing concept, painting the picture of the future potential for what's possible for them. I do this in what we call our MLSP journey presentation, which is essentially outlining the fact that they have now embarked on a journey with us. Our MLSP journey. What is this MLSP journey? Well, we share with them the different individuals, many of them who they know by name in our industry who have gone through this MLSP journey before them, they've embarked on this journey before them and now you as a client, you're now embarking on this journey. Well, let's show you what this journey looks like because people want to know where they're headed. So we have them create a clear picture of their long-term goals of what the journey is going to look like and have them paint a clear destination of where they're going to.

Now that they're clear as to where they're going, they have a destination in mind. They know that MLSP can take them and is now capable of taking them along that journey. Now we can get to the details of, okay, here's the program to take you on the next steps of this journey. It's not necessarily going to get you to your destination because we're only focused on getting better and better hashtag getting better and better. We're not focused on the ultimate destination. That's a picture you've painted for yourself. That's a vision that you hold for yourself. But it's a vision that you're responsible for. We're not responsible for taking you all the way to your vision. We're just the guides that are going to take you along the next steps of the journey. Hope that makes sense.

Brilliant, man. That's brilliant. What I heard you say is you open up with an aha moment, that emotional stuff that gets them hooked early on to wanting to be there for the whole event and play full out. Then also, once they're clear on their destination, you actually can show where they're at, you position your program as the journey that gets them from where they're at to where they want to be and all the steps along the way. I love the social proof aspect as well. You show other people who've gone on that journey, who they recognize as well, and they see themselves in their shoes. So it's not like you're selling them on you per se. They're actually just showing them, hey, this is the proven path that others have gone before you, that have gotten the results that you want to get. It's pretty cool.

That's probably one of the most important things you just pointed out there and that's huge. This is where it comes down to your framework, that proven path. So, a lot of newer coaches and content creators and educators, they might still have a little bit of self-doubt. If you have a little bit of self-doubt on your ability to be able to take your client to their ultimate goal and I know with working with coaches over the last decade, we all have that self doubt, like, am I going to be able to do this? Am I going to be able to help this person? Cause there's a lot of responsibility that you take on your shoulders. When you take on a new client, this is their life. This is their future. This is their business. This is their purpose and their meaning, their passion. They're going to invest potentially thousands of dollars with you. Tens of thousands of dollars with you. I hope that's a responsibility that you do not take lightly because you shouldn't. So that is an element of pressure and responsibility that's naturally going to get us into a state of anxiety, potentially self-doubt and worry about whether or not I'm going to be able to fulfill. If you're doing the sales process yourself, if you don't have a sales team on your side, that's going to come out in your conversations. That's very dangerous. That's going to hamper your sales opportunities. So the secret to that is to pass that over to your framework, to your process. Do you have a proven solid process that you can depend on? If you don't, that's where your work needs to be. You need to craft that framework. If you're struggling with that, get some mentorship, get some help on that, because that is the most important part of your coaching or mentorship business is your framework.

That's what you depend on because then you don't have to be a genius. You're just guiding them through the process, the framework that's been proven to work that you already have in place. You can literally give them a piece of paper and say, this is our framework. Here's our process. These are the steps I'm going to guide you through and you'll never be lost. It'll just make your entire process of coaching that much easier. I think that that really alleviates so much of the stress and anxiety that sometimes coaches have nine times out of 10, it's because you don't have a proven solid framework in place.

That's brilliant Norb, I mean, that really is gold. It's not even pointing at you, but pointing to your framework. I did a recent interview with a brilliant marketer, Eben Pagan, and he talked about a similar concept, but what he also did is he actually reviewed a lot of testimonials the few days before the event. When he watched all of these testimonials of people saying the difference his framework made for them, he was a hundred percent certain and confident in his ability to invite people to join him because he just knew that it was the best thing for them. So it communicated that way. I was like, that's brilliant. I have to tell everyone to do that.

That's powerful and that gets you into that state of gratitude and confidence. Beautiful.

So Norbert, this has been brilliant, man. I, and I know you can probably talk on the subject for hours, but for the sake of the time we have, I want to do a quick little lightning round with you here. I'm going to throw a few questions that you can just kind of give me top of mind. What comes up for you in like 60 seconds or less, maybe even faster, what comes up for you? What would you say is the most common mistake that you've made or a common mistake you made along the way when doing virtual events?

Well, the big one I've already mentioned is trying to teach too much, not having a clear focus, not focusing on outcomes. We used to do that as well. That was never a thing and not being clear on who you serve your ideal client.

Those are big ones. All three of those. Solid. What's a book or resource you would recommend to someone on the topic?

Well, I mentioned Russell Brunson's name and I would definitely recommend his Expert Secrets book. Secrets for you experts out there, coaches and stuff and event organizers. That would be more important, read his stuff about webinar presentations, the whole thing about the epiphany sequence and things like that, just to get that hole under, make that shift for yourself between education and shifting your client's mindset, creating those shifts. That's really, what's going to serve your clients is creating those shifts, not giving them more information. They don't need more information in education. They need you to help them create those mental and emotional shifts. The other one I would say, I guess, is really getting clear on your purpose and meaning. Like who are you? What is the value that you bring to the market? There's a lot of different resources that I can send for that. What's it called? Oh my God. I can't believe I just forgot it. Different personality tests, the Fascinate Personality Course, How to Fascinate Wealth Dynamics. That's the one I was thinking of, the Wealth Dynamics Profile, just really understanding who you are, what value you bring to the market and really just honing in and focusing on that and delivering your best value.

That Wealth Dynamics Profile. That's a winner right there. I took that one a few years ago, actually on your recommendation and it made a huge difference for me. So that's a good one. Norbert, what's the number one way listeners can reach you or learn more about what you do?

I am all over the place right now. I'm in between and working on multiple projects, but the best way to subscribe to my email list would be through renegadeconversation.com. It's a new media channel, a new podcast that I'm going to be launching, and all of my newest latest updates are going to be on that email list.

Awesome. Renegadeconversation.com. We'll be sure to include a link in our show notes as well so our listeners can quickly reference it and jump on and follow you as well. Thanks for sharing that. What would you say is like the next summit or big goal that you have in your life that you're moving towards?

Well, probably one of the next big projects. I there's a, oh man, without getting too political in this sense, I think it's pretty clear to see some of the trends in our society and kind of the directions that we're going to, there's kind of this battle between the centralization of power and the decentralization of power and freedom. I'm very much a proponent of decentralization and more freedoms to the individual. So that's really where the majority of my work is now focused. I'm looking at creating an educational platform and community around that. So bringing in experts and influencers, content creators and educators that are in the realm of decentralization when it comes to everything from our food supply to monetary policy, cryptocurrencies, governance, how can we decentralize power and give more power and rights and freedoms to the individual? That's the next big summit and it's a massive project.

That sounds like an awesome project, man. Thanks for sharing that with our audience and, last question here before we wrap up, what legacy do you want to leave?

Well, it would have to be right around that same topic. Something that's been passionate to me as somebody that immigrated from a communist country, the number one value that I've always been a big proponent for, it's what led me into entrepreneurship and into what I've been doing for the last 15 years, is the concept of freedom, individual freedom and liberty. I want to be known as a proponent and a fighter for freedom and liberty for the individual.

Awesome, man. Freedom and liberty for the individual. Love it. Thank you, brother. Thanks for being on the show today and really providing a wealth of knowledge with your over 14 years of experience and over 10 years doing events. I love the framework idea, pointing to the framework. I think that's definitely going to make a huge difference for our listeners here. If you're on this, if you're still listening at this point and you found value, be sure to subscribe if you haven't already, share this episode with someone who you think might find value from this message and definitely check out Norbert at renegadeconversations.com. Jump on his email list and follow him if his message resonated with you. Be sure to stay tuned because he's up to some really awesome, life changing things. So thank you Norbert for being on the show.