In this episode of The High Profit Event Show, host Rudy Rodriguez welcomes Jason Guille, founder of Sunset Labs, a cutting-edge virtual and hybrid event production studio based on Vancouver Island. With over two decades of experience and a track record of producing over a thousand live events, Jason has honed a unique approach to making events not only successful but deeply impactful. Sunset Labs has become a top destination for those looking to engage global audiences through innovative virtual and hybrid models. Jason’s commitment to accessibility, engagement, and accountability in event production shines throughout the conversation, providing valuable insights for today’s event leaders.

A highlight of the episode is Jason’s introduction of the concept of "Value Leveling," a fresh approach to ticket pricing that addresses attendance and engagement challenges. Jason explains how attendees are encouraged to commit to an event by purchasing a ticket upfront, with the option to adjust the price post-event based on the value they feel they received. This strategy helps ensure that attendees feel invested, reducing no-shows and creating accountability on both sides. It’s a powerful way to balance access and commitment, offering insights for event leaders eager to increase participation and enhance audience satisfaction.

Another key topic covered is the importance of adapting engagement strategies to the audience’s specific needs. Jason highlights how different groups, from high school students to seniors, require tailored approaches to stay engaged. He emphasizes the role of learning styles—visual, auditory, and kinetic—in shaping the event experience, noting how crucial it is for event producers to cater content and delivery to these diverse preferences. By adopting these practices, event leaders can significantly increase audience retention, reduce distractions, and create a memorable experience that resonates with attendees long after the event concludes.

Jason also shares insights on his transition from running a physical venue to building a virtual and hybrid studio. Sunset Labs is now equipped with advanced technology, including multi-screen stages and remote production capabilities, making it possible to reach global audiences while providing a high-quality experience. With a deep focus on virtual production and an eye on emerging AI translation technologies, Jason envisions a future where events are accessible in multiple languages and cultures, enabling wider participation. For event leaders looking to scale their impact, Jason’s story is a testament to the power of adaptability and vision in the ever-evolving event industry.

Want to connect with Jason?

Tech Guide for Speakers: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RNT92GwmwJcumD9Fm7Wh2p2HTvFODnc0/view?usp=sharing

In person or remote discovery call and studio orientation: https://calendly.com/streamocon/vis

Website: https://sunsetlabs.ca/

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

Jason Guille Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jason.guille

Sunset Labs Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sunsetlabs

Stream of Consciousness Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/streamocon

Jason Guille Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonguille/

Sunset Labs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sunsetlabs/

All right, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to today's episode. Special guest with us, Mr. Jason Guille. Welcome, sir.

Thank you, Rudy.

Excited to have you here, sir. We were introduced by another one of our guests, Richard Miller, who runs a virtual event studio in Arizona. He connected us because you also have a virtual event studio up in Vancouver, British Columbia, called Sunset Labs. A little background for our audience, you've been producing events for over 20 years and produced over 1,000 live events, including 25 seminars of the sort. So you're very, very experienced in the world of live events.

Yes, 25 conferences and some of the big ones. I've been in the field quite a long time. I'm in Victoria on Vancouver Island. So like a little bit out of Vancouver, but we're in the right quadrant in The Pacific Northwest here.

Thanks for clarifying. Yes, Victoria Island off the coast of British Columbia. I've never made it to the island.

It's so funny. It's Vancouver Island. Like it should be Victoria Island because Victoria is the big city here, but it's Victoria on Vancouver Island. That's not in Vancouver. We would love to host you. If you can make it up here, Rudy, I will host you proper.

I would love that. I've heard so many great things about Victoria, specifically one of the most beautiful, well-kept secrets in the world is what I hear from other Canadians. Well, I'm excited to have you on today as our guest to speak on the subject of value leveling amongst other things. I know you've been a mad scientist in your studio, helping your clients who are also event leaders to sort and tweak and run profitable live events. The top of mind question for most people when it comes to running an event, the first question is typically, what do I do an event about? The second question is, how do I promote it? How do I fill the event and how to get people to show up? In the green room, you and I were talking about this kind of cool thing that you've been testing and getting some results about value leveling. So I want to turn it over to you to fill us in on what you learned and what's working when it comes to promoting live events with value leveling.

Thanks, Rudy. Well, I think that my relationship to commerce and events may be a little bit untraditional. I'm really committed that people have access to the information. So a lot of my work is about breaking down barriers to access. Sometimes money is a real barrier to access and my world is a little bit more about getting the content out to the world. So one of the troubles that all of us event producers deal with is getting people to come, getting them to commit, especially when you're doing a hybrid event or an in-person live event, bums in seats is a very fixed mathematical ratio. There's this many seats, I need this many of them to be full in order to pay the bill. Then we get into potential conversions into other products and offerings and so on. We often struggle with, especially for inexpensive events or free events in particular, people will commit, they'll register, but at the last minute, if it's snowing or they're bored or their friend invites them out to play tennis, they don't come. So you end up with an empty seat, sometimes no money from that, or sometimes they'll buy some inexpensive ticket and they just won't come. So we created a model that we ended up calling value leveling. I wanted to find a way to have people's butts on the line a little bit more when they make that commitment. So they're on the hook a little bit differently so that they probably will come.

The best hook of course is that they're invested. They have money on the line. If your content isn't quite enough, if they're not dying to be there, then sometimes a curve ball will come and they'll make other choices. So value leveling at a simple level is, we declare an amount that we say the event is worth. Let's say it's a hundred dollars. We say, we think this event is worth a hundred dollars. We will charge you a hundred dollars. You have to pay a hundred dollars to buy your ticket to come to the event. At the end of the event, you get to decide how much value you received and whether or not it was consistent with the hundred dollar level that we asserted. So every single person at the event gets an envelope with a little piece of paper in it and it says, I think I received this much value from the event and they pick a number and maybe it's a hundred dollars, in which case nothing happens. We've already received a hundred dollars, thank you. But maybe they say it's $80. So we refund them 20 bucks before they walk out the door of the event that day. Maybe they say this was worth zero dollars and having attended, we give them that right. We will pass them a hundred dollars and they can leave with a hundred dollars from the event because they're asserting that we really missed the mark or we did not deliver on what we said we would deliver. It's amazing information to see what people think about your event and whether you fulfilled on your promises. It takes some guts to do it. We prime people, we prime people in advance. We remind them at the beginning of the event. They know that that's how it works. We've slowly started to educate our community that value leveling is a mechanism that we use here as often as possible to ensure that we stay true to our promises and you get to decide the value of the event.

So for example, at a recent conference, we gave hundreds of people the envelope at the end of the event. It was a $300 ticket that they'd committed to. We refunded about a thousand dollars. So some people would ask for 20 bucks back. Some people asked for $300 back. Some people asked for 50. Then the other column on the piece of paper is I received more value than what you asked of me. I feel I owe you more money. Here's what I think it's worth. Here's my money. So people might put in an extra 20 bucks or they might put in extra a hundred dollars. So in this recent event, we refunded $900 and we received back $3,600 in incremental payments from people saying it was worth more than you asked of me. We've never, we've used this probably 15, 18 times now. We've never refunded more than we've gotten back from people. It's amazing information. It really puts us on the line to ensure that we're delivering value. We're deeply accountable. So I've been introducing value leveling to event producers every time I get the opportunity because I think it's a really great mechanism to first of all, ensure that the bum is in the seat. If they don't come, they don't get an envelope and they don't get the opportunity to ask for their money back. So at that point it was, if you don't come to the $300 event, yes, your seat is empty, but the $300 is paid for. So as an event producer, my budgets are secured. I knew exactly how many people were coming and what money that represents. Over time I get to know, actually it represents that much money plus probably 15% or whatever the number is over time.

Our community gives us a lot of love for having a model that lets people not only choose, the conversation is value leveling. It's not about their capacity to pay money. As you might know, there's a lot of pay what you can or pay what you can afford models. This is a little bit different. It's not about how much money you have. It's about how much value we delivered. So we ensure that that's communicated frequently in the priming and at the beginning of the event and the beginning of each day. Then again, when we pass the envelopes out, did we deliver the value we said we would? And for people who don't have the resources and need to take back 50 bucks, I support that. I want them to have that if they need that. I just find it's working out. So there's value leveling in a nutshell.

That's fascinating. The fact that you've done it 15 times and you've always actually been paid more than you paid back. The fact that it gives you that data, that's like the ultimate feedback form right there.

Yes, it is. The core-accountability that creates, I'm really fond of. They need to come. We're asserting that. We're taking your money in advance and if you need it back, you can have it.

Which addresses a couple of the problems that event leaders often have to face is, how do I get someone to buy a ticket? So when you have a risk reversal like that, that helps. It's like, I'm gonna get my value or I'm gonna get my money back. Then also they paid, so if they don't show up, they don't get their money back. So it's double the kind of, yeah, you said. So I can see how that solves multiple problems for event leaders. It was coming through really clearly for me. I didn't mention this in your bio, but you are very much an impact-oriented person. Your company Stream of Consciousness is around bringing content to the world and your studio as well with Sunset Labs. I really get that that's your commitment. It's figuring out how do you get people to engage with the content and change their lives effectively, which is the struggle for event leaders is because if we're doing an event, it's because we believe that we have something that can change somebody's life. It's our moral responsibility to get people there and to facilitate engagement and an experience that helps them make that change. When it comes to events, one of the struggles that event leaders face is also keeping people engaged throughout the event. I'd be curious to hear from you, given someone that is running a hybrid virtual event studio, what do you find has been working to maintain engagement throughout the event so people are in the room, off their phone, participating and getting the value, that they're there to get?

Isn't that a fun minefield of experimentation and learning? So we produce virtual events where there's no audience in the room and we produce hybrid events and we do that both here in the studio at Sunset Labs and then we also produce out in the world. So we've produced hybrid events in France and New York and Toronto and Costa Rica and different places with a small team and a bunch of mobile gear. So I've gotten to see sort of how different cultures engage differently and I've been schooled a few times because the mechanisms that work in The Pacific Northwest don't fly when you're in a jungle in Costa Rica with a thousand people. It's not just a different scenario. Oh, I wasn't trying to insulate against all these gorgeous humans. I was trying to protect against cell phone usage. It's like a different equation. So the first part of my answer to you is that it's situational and specific and that you have to approach each event uniquely and with a slightly different view. So let me begin with the indoor conferences and summits, which I think is like a mainstay of a lot of our community and in a hybrid format. One thing I think that people really underestimate is the impact of learning styles and how different people need to engage the content differently in order to learn and retain information. I think that often what happens is event producers would get into the silo of producing the content in the same way, regardless of who the audience is.

We produce events for, we've done events for The Green Party Of Canada where the whole audience is comprised primarily of 65 year old women. That audience needs something very different than an event that we would produce with IMAX where we have seven theaters full of grade nine students learning about the ocean. Very different way that you need to publish your content and mix that show and handle the event, everything from registration through to welcoming through to like, what are the engagement mechanisms for an average 65 year old woman who's there to learn about democracy versus the mechanisms that are there for a grade nine student who's reluctantly on some field trip to learn about the ocean maybe. So I think that one thing that really needs to be brought into the conversation is that the way that we're producing engagement mechanisms, the way that we're trying to get people to participate and pay attention is unique to that audience and it needs to be different. For the average event producer, if they're producing 20 events, I guarantee you there's some real nuance in the audience that they're hosting. I doubt that their event production is dramatically shifting based on that audience. I think we get into habits and we just try to do the same thing all the time. So that's one layer. Then also inside of the conversation of learning styles is that you have to have ways for each person to engage inside of their natural learning style. So for an auditory learner, sound quality is everything.

That sound quality in the room, in your venue, that sound quality coming out of the phone if they're mobile and watching it that way. So audio quality is the thing. For a visual learner, it's the mix, the show, the diversity of the show, the quality of the color, the quality of the shot. Are there enough closeups? Can they see people's eyes? Are they getting the nuance of body language? Like they're really trying to learn this way. For a kinetic learner, they need to be able to type. They need to be able to engage. You need to have chat available. You need to be doing polling. You need to be asking them questions that they can answer this way. You need to facilitate lateral conversation or breakouts so that they can talk to each other. So that that kinetic learner has a participatory way of learning. So for us, when we're working with clients who are producing conferences or summits or retreats, we're always encouraging and trying to find ways to feather in a diversity of content and engagement opportunities that address and facilitate these different learning styles being expressed. The goal is that, especially in long-form content, you can get away with a lot in short-form content that you can't in long-form. So if you're doing a 90-minute webinar, you don't necessarily need to be thinking about all of these things that I'm expressing. Like kinetic learners, they'll find a way to engage. They'll stick around. If you're producing a three-day conference and you haven't found a way to address somebody that needs to participate by moving their body, movement breaks, yoga in the morning, some way for them to get up and dance once in a while.

You've seen these at events. For some people, they're doing that by design. Other people, they're just doing it from a hype perspective, but they're not really related to the fact that people need to move. So in long-form content, it's so vital that we're integrating different ways for people to participate that addresses their different learning style needs, such that they feel heard, gotten. All of that, if we do it right, they're much less likely to be multitasking. They're much less likely to be off on the side, skimming Facebook or typing on their phone or playing Candy Crush, whatever the thing is that keeps people interested.

My takeaway from what you're sharing here, Jason, is that it's easy to fall into the habit of production. It's important to look at every audience differently and ensure how that audience in particular learns or prefers to learn and engaging the different learning modalities of that audience to maintain engagement. It's not always the exact same every single time.

The other thing that I focus on a lot is, you know that feeling when you, maybe you've funded a crowdfund campaign at some point. Have you ever funded a project on crowdfunding?

Not on crowdfund, but I've participated in funding.

So, there's this thing that happens so often where you'll take an action, you'll sign a petition or you'll fund a crowd, some documentary on a crowdfunding platform or something. You'll take an action that's meant to contribute to the thing, but you never get to see the results. You never find out, was my participation relevant? Did it make any difference whatsoever? Often at events, that's another thing where you've got people there for a half day conference on the environment. You ask people to take certain actions or to engage in certain ways, but they never learn whether or not that action had bearing, whether or not it has any significance, whether or not it makes any difference. So whatever kind of event we're producing, whether we're selling a coaching program or whether we're asking people to protect an old growth forest, ensuring that they understand the relevance of their participation is really important. Nobody wants to be a passive bystander or consumer. That's why live content is so different than YouTube. We don't want a live retreat that's being live streamed to feel like they're watching a YouTube video. It has to be like a pre-filmed piece of content. Like, how is it relevant that you're there? How do I acknowledge that you're here? How do I tell you the relevance of you being here? How do I show you that you're being here makes a difference for me? If we get to the place where you understand and I've created enough participatory avenues for you to understand that your participation makes a difference for me, you're now really interested. You started to become invested because we're part of it together.

It's not just you consuming my content. So I think that finding pathways for people to understand their relevance and to feel like they're part of a thing and not just consuming content, it's a very different experience for them.

I like that thing you told me in the back in the green room about the five by five, how you have people, you have five actions they can take and then you give them five minutes to take those actions and then you check in to see how many actions everyone took. So you can actually quantify the number of actions that were taken by your audience in a way to say, hey, am I actually moving people into some action that may benefit them and the cause or the event that - The five by five, I like that notion or that idea. Jason, let's chat a little bit more about your studio. I know that you guys were a venue for events for many years and just about 13 months ago, you guys made that transition into being a virtual and hybrid studio. Can you share with our audience a little bit about that? Why you made that decision and maybe some of the capabilities that your studio has for supporting people who wanna have profitable and impactful live events?

Thanks, Rudy. Well, the choice to make the transition wasn't really ours. We'd been an event venue for 19 years doing film screenings and art shows and kids' birthday parties and super mixed use, all rental-based, all external. The occasional thing of my own, but mostly external rental events. Our landlord required us to change the model or exit and there wasn't a lot of flexibility and there wasn't a lot of notice. My broadcast company, Stream Of Consciousness, had been alive for 10 years by that point in time last fall. So I kind of saw it as an opportunity to take my venue and to harmonize it with what Stream of Consciousness was doing and to create a true home base and a production studio for virtual and hybrid events, which of course have been growing a lot. We've been producing those out in the world, but usually it's four or six of us with suitcases and flights and I'd rather bring people to me and I'd rather service my region than chase the superstars around the world and deliver these broadcasts remotely. So we sold. It was an interesting 30 days, Rudy. We sold our big sound system and a bunch of the venue lighting and kind of clubby, bouncy vibes and installed a whole bunch of Blackmagic equipment and got new PTZ cameras and a bunch of new gear. We built a nine screen stage so that we can provide a speaker with a very sophisticated virtual event system. We installed a big video matrix and other tools and at this point, Sunset Labs is the most sophisticated boutique studio on The West Coast. I don't think there's anything in Vancouver that's even close to where we are at now and sort of the complexity of what we can do.

We were a stage when Burning Man was shut down during COVID. We were one of the official stages for Burning Man and produced that from Victoria. We've done the first ever live broadcast to IMAX here in Victoria. We had seven IMAXs across Canada with kids learning about the ocean produced from the studio. So we have a nice tool set here and I'm excited to introduce it to the world. It's been a beat of re-educating our community about what we are now and what we are not. We're still declining all kinds of invitations for Christmas mixers and kids birthdays and film nights. As we reintroduce ourselves to the world as a virtual and hybrid event production studio.

Like the evolution.

It's fun. I really appreciate the, now that Stream of Consciousness and Sunset Labs are so kindred in the nature of the work that we do, my energy and my education and my nervous system have all really appreciated the singularity of that. Like we do one thing and we do it out in the world in that way or here at home in the studio. So I've appreciated the compounded nature of that. We're about to do a big broadcast for the launch of The World Indigenous Economic Forum, which is gonna be a 24 hour broadcast from here in studio with different indigenous nations joining us from around the world as the sun rises around the world. That's on November 15th, I think. We just finished a big three day summit called The Victoria Forum, which was about the future of British Columbia. We've done events with Ukraine and Kiev. We just did a big event within Australia and New Zealand, Maori and British Columbia Coast Salish indigenous leadership having a three nation dialogue about economics through an indigenous worldview. We're getting the perfect type of work. Now we just need to populate the days and get more of it.

Awesome, man. So for our listeners here who are keen and maybe want to explore running a virtual event or a hybrid type event, maybe they wanna learn a bit more from you. I know you have a few opportunities for them to get to know you. Would you mind sharing those with our audience?

Yes, we host discovery calls and a lot of our clients are producing events remotely. So the event is elsewhere, the talent is elsewhere, but we're producing the virtual event from here in the studio. We can take calls with people and show them the studio, show them our capabilities, talk to them about their vision and mission and what they're up to and discover how we can help produce their event and make the most of it. I've provided a link there that people can use to book studio demo time with me and we can talk about what they're up to.

Excellent. We'll make sure that that link's here with the show notes that go along with today's recording. And am I understanding correctly, Jason, that when you say you can produce from there, but the other participants can be elsewhere, does that mean like your clients can stay in their home, but yet you become the central production source for the event, is that correct?

Yes, so we're mixing the show and adding the graphics and the music and the cutaways or doing breakup room management or that kind of thing. We've produced like a meditation teacher training where we've actually set up a multi-camera micro studio in a living room in California and we're mixing that show from here and doing a multi-camera mix from the studio. We do a lot of remote production and I'm really excited about multi-language remote production. I'm really stoked about the evolution of AI and its relationship to the availability of language and again, breaking down barriers to access. I think that a year from today, we'll be producing all of our conferences and summits and in particular, the cause-based environmental conferences or in 10 languages easily all the time. So it's an exciting time to be in this field.

Being able to translate in real time using AI to a variety of languages and cultures and places around the world, that's really cool. Very cool. Jason, you also in the show notes here, you're also including a checklist, I believe, like a tech check for event leaders as well. Do you mind sharing a little bit about that? I think a tech guide for speakers.

A lot of people that are speaking on stages remotely who are doing that from their home studio or from their home or even taking meetings that are really important or pitching investors, whatever the structure is, it serves them to look and sound great online in those ways. So we just made a little primer, how to look great and sound great. It includes kind of what I call the four fundamentals, which is audio, video, internet, and audio, video, internet, and the fourth pillar, the very important fourth pillar. That's so funny. It breaks down all of those so that people can make good choices about how to look great and sound great online.

Perfect, and if people wanna learn more about you, I know your studio website is Sunsetlabs.ca, not .com, but .ca for Canada, Sunsetlabs.ca. Yes, and you also have a LinkedIn profile, which we'll include here along with the show notes as well. Jason, any final comments to wrap up our interview today?

No, Rudy, thank you so much for your time. It's a neat time to be in the event industry and I'm grateful for yourself and Richard and other folks in our field who are looking at innovative ways to connect. I just really appreciate the show that you've curated and all these conversations that you've brought together, which serve people like me in the field. Thank you.

You're welcome, my friend. It's been a pleasure having you on today as a guest. Appreciate you being on.