The business conference world has created its own rules for speaking, sponsorships, event production, ticket sales and “collaboration,” and somehow convinced everyone those rules are normal.

Leslie has notes.

In this special solo episode of BFD, Leslie is breaking down what she has watched happen inside the business conference and coaching-event world, from speakers being expected to sell tickets to sponsored stages being presented like earned speaking opportunities to massive attendance numbers that don’t necessarily tell you who is actually in the room.

And to be very clear: this is not an anti-profit, anti-conference or even anti-pay-to-play episode.

Paying for the right stage can be a legitimate marketing strategy. Selling from the stage is a legitimate business model. Sponsors should get ROI. Event producers should make money.

The problem is when nobody calls the relationship what it actually is.

Leslie shares her perspective as an event producer, professional performer, speaker, talent developer and someone who has worked behind the scenes of major live productions, while also owning the mistakes she has made producing her own events.

In this episode:

• Why “pay-to-play” speaking is not automatically bad, but lack of transparency is
• The difference between a keynote speaker, sponsored speaker, presenter, affiliate and sponsor with stage time
• Why speakers are not responsible for solving an event producer’s ticket-sales problem
• How the word “collaboration” can become a sales quota
• Why massive attendance numbers don't necessarily equal impact or ROI
• What good event production actually requires behind the scenes
• Why flashy activations, celebrity speakers and expensive production can’t replace substance
• The difference between creating an emotional experience and creating actual transformation
• Why great performers don’t need spectacle to hold a room
• What speakers, sponsors and attendees should ask before saying yes to an event

Because a beautiful stage does not automatically mean a well-produced event, a packed room does not automatically mean the right audience, and being “selected to speak” means something very different if there is an invoice attached.

It might be time to stop outsourcing your discernment to follower counts, revenue screenshots, celebrity proximity and giant stages.

Sometimes the chandelier is gorgeous.

You should probably still check the foundation.

Learn more: www.theeverydaycelebrity.com

Follow Leslie: instagram.com/lesliejespersen

Welcome to the bfd show, hosted by leslie jefferson.

All right, bfds, welcome to a very special solo edition of bfd.

It's your girl, Leslie Jesperson.

And I hope you are all safe set for this conversation because I have notes.

I have notes that I have honestly been sharing for over a year now, maybe two years, but it's about time you guys catch up.

It's okay.

It's okay.

The timing is.

Is perfect because the veil has been lifted, okay?

And people are finally seeing the absolute that has been going on behind these like, life and business coach enrollment events disguised as an educational or.

Or a transformational conference.

Okay, first, some disclaimers.

Number one, I am not speaking about one or two events.

I'm going to very intentionally not name anybody because that is literally not the point of this.

These recent conversations are just making people finally talk about this shit that I have been watching for years.

And I had a very, very powerful psychic download about a year ago, and it made me really pull back.

I did a winter and spring speaking tour and I'm not speaking for and I'm not attending events right now, which I know is.

Is ironic, but I feel like I need to just pull and let people get their shit together because I'm tired.

We are all tired of spending our hard earned timed energy money and being bamboozled.

And I will say I'm gonna go through some bullet points and please know that I am fully aware I'm gonna get into this.

But I know that I am not perfect.

I know that people have had not so great experiences at my events.

It's been.

I've.

I've had some major fuck ups.

So anyway, just to say that now, number one, we have got to stop putting these people on pedestals because they are good at marketing, because they have great branding, because they have hundreds of thousands if not a million followers on Instagram.

You have to understand that these people put their pants on the same way you and I do.

Maybe they do.

I don't know.

Maybe they're so delusional that they have people put their pants on for them.

I.

Whatever.

But I say this because I was someone that forgot my own power for so many years and outsourced it because I put people on pedestals.

I was so desperate to rebuild my life after divorce and homelessness and displacement and single mom, like every.

Every part of my life that I thought was sucky or made me not a good, you know, mentor or whatever.

I idolized people that made A lot of money that seemed really successful and I was sorely disappointed and it really caused me to forget my own power.

So that's the first thing I want you to take away from this, is you.

If you catch yourself thinking that you are less than somebody else, there's, there's some shit going on in, in the marketing, in the sales, whatever.

Now, yes, your mentor, the person that you choose to surround yourself probably has experiences and expertise in areas that you do not have and that is a great reason to pay them.

But if you want to be around people because you want to be them, red flag anyway.

So stop putting them on pedestals.

I don't, I don't care.

Especially these conferences.

If you want to go to a concert, just go to a concert.

If you want to see the same celebrity keynote speakers, you know, you can literally watch their keynote online.

They say the same every time.

Okay, Now I have been in these rooms, I have been backstage with these celebrity speakers.

I wrote about it.

I wrote about almost all of this in my book, by the way.

Shameless Plug the Everyday Celebrity, how to Build Authority, Get Booked and Command your Worth.

Coming out this fall.

You can go to the everydaycelebrity.com book.

Okay?

Anyway, I talk a lot about this in that book.

I have worked with actual celebrities.

I still work with actual celebrities to this day.

I have been paid to speak, I have been paid to be on stage since I was nine years old.

And I had all of this experience working in the entertainment industry.

And when I entered like the boss babe, women entrepreneur coaching conference world, I was like, what the fuck is happening here?

Is this how you guys think it?

Maybe this is.

Maybe I've been wrong again.

Going to how I just totally under positioned my own value, my own expertise and experience in events.

I mean, my parents were producing festivals for 17 years.

I was in these boardrooms as a kid.

I watched how all of this happened.

And still when I entered the women's entrepreneur space and these conferences, I was like, oh, maybe that's actually not, not how it's done.

And then when I went to produce my own events and book speakers and sell sponsorships and like speak professionally in these rooms, I was like, oh, what am I in the Twilight zone?

So I say all this to say, like, I understand this basically from every side.

I have a very unique perspective.

And, and again, I have, I have made some of these mistakes.

I have made a lot of mistakes.

The first thing I need to like, I need you to hear is the online business conference industry has created its Own rules for speaking production events.

And somehow they convinced everybody that these rules are normal.

Bestie bfds.

They are not fucking normal.

Okay?

Good marketing does not mean you know how to produce an event.

We have become way too impressed by what an event looks like online.

We are getting caught up in attendee numbers, which I have a whole hot take on that.

I actually don't like the big rooms.

I don't want to be surrounded by 500 or a thousand people or 5,000.

I want an intimate room where I can actually create connection, maybe get some clients, maybe you never know where that could lead to.

I don't care about the celebrity speakers.

I've said that the, the flashy activations with no actual substance.

And now we're adding AI generated mockups of events.

So like what you're seeing, you know, this, these stages and the LED walls and like the production and the, the red, like I'm picturing some of these videos of AI videos that I've seen promoting events.

And then when you see video from the actual event, they are two completely different things.

And like the insane production that they are promoting literally does not exist in the room.

And we are forgetting that the entire point of producing an in person experience is for the attendee.

Listen, I love art and I understand that if you've never done something before, you might have to do mock ups, you might have to create a concept art.

But don't visually sell people a production that you aren't actually producing.

Being bigger, the bigger you want to scale.

It's that more money, more problems thing, right?

There are so many things that you have to think about.

Bathrooms.

I learned through a mentor of mine that bathrooms are really, really important when you have people all gathered together at an event.

I did an activation, produced a little comedy experience for the Atlantic City Beer and Music festival called Shitty Jokes.

Yes, Shitty jokes.

Why?

Because the founder, the producer of the Atlantic City Beer and Music Festival saw that there was a problem with people waiting in line for Porta Potties.

It's a beer fest.

Everybody' gotta fuckin pee.

So what he did to solve that problem was create an experience while people are waiting in line for the bathroom.

And it was, it was genius.

So I say all of that.

I use that example, you know, things like that.

Registration, flow, microphones, staffing, crowdflow.

Crowdflow.

People do not think about this.

Stage management, talent management, Internet load in.

Like the bigger you get, the bigger the production gets.

I also want to share some experience that I have and the perspective that I have because I am now going into year six, working with the Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day Parade, which is the longest running Thanksgiving Day parade in the country.

We are in our 106th year, 107th year, right about there.

And so I want you to understand this is a live telecast.

So this is broadcast on abc.

If you've ever, you know, woken up Thanksgiving morning, maybe you watch the Macy's one, you should be watching the, the Duncan one in Philadelphia.

But it's a live telecast.

And what it takes behind the scenes to broadcast this, right?

And what it takes to also manage the thousands of people that are there live, managing all of the talent.

I'm on the talent team, so I.

That's the, the leg of this that I am involved in.

But there are so many moving parts and the amount of meetings, the amount of discussion logistics that is happening, it's a real thing.

And I think that that event hosts get ideas and they hire an event coordinator, but they don't understand if you want to go that big, you need to, you need to hire a different level of production.

And this is where like the revenue bragging really makes me bonkers.

Because someone can say, you know, I made a million dollars from this event.

That's great.

The people backstage will also tell you every place where you understaffed it or failed to deliver because production is invisible.

If you put on an excellent show, no one should know about your production.

But when you drop the ball, everybody's gonna notice, okay?

And I, I take to heart when people attend my events and they notice how seamlessly everything ran it.

It's great that they notice and they reflect that to me.

But also that just means that they've been in so many other rooms where it's a shit show that they have something to compare it to.

So now my next note, we have got to stop worshiping the quantity.

I already kind of touched on this.

How many people are in the room?

I understand this one immediately because I have had so many fucking sponsor phone calls that ask me this question.

I had a real shitty sponsor that I won't.

I don't think I can name them, but they tried to argue with me about how many people were in the room.

Down to like a difference of 10 people.

Excuse the fuck out of me.

I have photos, I have video of how many people were in the room.

But maybe, just maybe, if you were good at closing, you wouldn't be spending time nitpicking because I have converted $20,000 in a room of 22 people, okay?

So if you can't, as a Sponsor.

If you only care about the cattle call, the number of people in the room, I challenge you to do better in your sales.

I understand.

Of course sponsors are going to care about reach.

I'm not saying that attendance does not matter.

I'm saying that it has become the number and people are making decisions based on it without asking what the fuck the actual number represents.

Because I literally took a sponsor, a six week, like, program, like, how to get sponsors for your event.

Because this is very.

I will be very honest, this is the one area where I struggle with my events.

I.

It's just because I don't lie about my numbers.

In this course, I was literally taught to take the expected number and then double it.

And I was like, are you kidding me?

She's like, this is what everybody does.

No, they don't.

Or maybe they do.

And here's the whole fucking problem.

This is why sponsors are caught up in flashy marketing, just like attendees are, and then they get sorely disappointed and then they're pissed, and then they don't want to sponsor events anymore.

Like, it's crazy.

What you need to be asking is, who are the people in the room?

Are they your ideal customers?

Are they engaged?

Do they already know you?

Are they part of the community?

Do they interact with a sponsor?

You know?

And like, if you just have a fucking table, then that's on you too.

If you just say, I want to stand up on the stage and pitch for 10 minutes.

No, I don't allow that at my events.

And you as a sponsor should get more creative.

Okay?

These are all the things that you need to look for.

Most importantly for the conversation of how many people in the room.

How did you get those people there?

Because if your model is okay, I have 20 speakers and they each need to bring 20 people, then that giant attendance number is fake.

Because if you're selling me, I might be getting ahead of my notes, but this is flowing.

Okay?

If you're telling me that I am going to pay to be a speaker or I'm gonna pay to sponsor and there's gonna be, say, 500 people in the room, but hey, you're also gonna get 20 tickets.

Well, I.

That means 20 of those people are my people, and that means every other sponsor.

Like, you didn't.

What did you do then?

If I'm paying you, I'm giving you the money that goes towards the production cost and we're all bringing the people.

What the fuck are you doing?

Okay, bodies in a room are not the same thing as impact and maybe Just maybe big brand sponsors need to stop asking how many people and, and start asking what actually happens to the people once they're in there.

What, like, experience can they create?

Okay, now I'm going to get into da, da, da, da.

Hear me when I fucking say this.

Speakers are not required to fill your fucking room.

I know this is an audio only and you can't see me, but I am clapping.

Okay?

I changed my mind on this.

Okay?

As an event producer, I used to have this belief that.

And by the way, I learned this belief from attending other events and I thought that I was just doing it wrong.

I have this belief that if you are speaking, then you should be really committed to the room, the community, and, like, want to be there whether you're speaking or not.

And what I realized is this thought process I had was heavy scarcity mindset.

It was heavy on taking things personally.

If people didn't want to be in my room unless they were speaking, I took it as a personal insult and I was desperate for sales.

Now listen, I still require my speakers to be present for the entire event.

You are not hanging out in the green room, doing your keynote and leaving.

That is intentional because of the community that we built at Everyday Celebrity.

But professional speakers, they apply for speaking opportunities all day, every day.

In what fucking world are they supposed to be able to buy a ticket and attend every event that they apply to speak to, even if they don't get booked?

That's fucking dumb.

And that just shows how little event producers in this space know about professional speaking.

Okay?

And I've.

I've watched this, like, weird gaslighting thing happen.

We didn't select you to speak, but if you really believe in the community and maybe want to speak next year, here's a discounted ticket.

Thank you.

Okay.

I. I send rejection emails to speakers and I will also offer them a discounted ticket, but I'm not going to hold it against them if they're like, no, thank you.

Okay?

Because there's a difference between, you know, paying to.

Paying for my travel, which I don't even know if I have it on.

I can, I can also get into, like, pay to play.

I think I get it.

I get into it.

There's a difference between, like, paying my flights and hotels and being away from my family for a speaking gig and attending a conference for myself.

Like, the investment levels are different sometimes.

Like, I've.

I've been.

I've attended enough events.

I don't.

I don't need to just go.

That doesn't Mean that if I'm booked as a speaker, I'm not going to pour my heart into the community and be present and, you know, participate, but it's just like if I.

If I did that for every event that I ever applied to speak at.

Like, what?

What?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

Speakers should share the event.

Yes.

Especially if you are in, you know, a newer speaker and trying to speak more.

Tell your people you are speaking.

Show them.

I love an affiliate program for speakers that is completely different than making ticket sales part of the speaker's job.

I can't tell you how many speaker applications I've gotten where they ask me, do you commit to trying to sell 10 tickets?

Bitch, if I could sell $10,000 in tickets, don't you think I'd sell them to my fucking event, not yours?

What, you want me to.

Who made these rules?

Okay, I was looking at this through the producer's problem.

Believing in your mission does not require becoming your customer.

And it is not the speaker's job to solve the producer's ticket sales problem.

Okay, now going deeper in this.

The word collaborative.

The word collaborative has become code for sell our fucking tickets.

And again, I'm seeing this word everywhere on every speaker application I fill out that my clients fill out, and on speaker invitations that I'm receiving contracts, all of it collaborative effort.

And I'm sorry, but actually, I'm not sorry.

Increasingly, what you mean by collaborative is please help us fill our room.

The events that just happened.

The one event that just happened.

I clocked this six months ago.

I clocked all these people who are saying, I'm speaking at this event, suddenly marketing the event, suddenly sending out email blasts.

Here's my code.

And then we get so desperate giveaways.

So you're bringing 20 of your.

You're bringing your whole fucking team.

You're bringing half your clientele.

Just produce your own event like it.

Just listen, if you paid to speak, you're a sponsor, okay?

That.

That is what it is, and there's no shame in that.

Okay, so if.

If I'm paying and sponsoring, why would you want me to also fill your room?

Again, promoting the event that you're speaking at.

Doing affiliate sales is totally normal and beneficial, but requiring people.

I literally say, I will always promote.

Like when I get that question on.

On speaking applications.

And it's probably why these bitches don't book me.

That's fine.

I don't mean to call people bitches.

It's just.

I'm from Jersey, okay?

This is just our language.

It's probably why I don't get booked because I will not agree to that.

It is not my job to fill your room.

I will promote, I will share and, and I will put my heart into it and I will be excited, but I'm not going to be given a sales quota.

Stop it.

Stop it right now.

Okay?

The whole you have been selected thing.

So this is an experience that I'm going to share.

And again, not naming any names, but I'm calling this out because this happens so often.

Earlier this year, I applied to speak for an event.

I knew the host, I knew that this was her first event.

We had been on many calls offering her, you know, speaker support.

This is the first time she had ever headlined an event, hosted an event.

First time she really spoke on a stage like this.

And so I was like, oh, I'm really proud of you.

She, she, she couldn't afford to hire me.

Fine, I'll apply to speak on the application.

It specifically said there's no fee to speak.

We were in a community call of hers.

She invited me to like be on her advisory team for her community, which was not what it was promoted as.

We're on a live call and she introduced me and she literally was like, and guess what?

She's gonna be a speaker.

I was like, oh, my gosh.

Okay, that's cool.

You selected me.

Amazing.

I thought we were talking about the keynote speaking position that I had applied for.

And then afterwards I find out this is actually a sponsored speaking spot.

She basically said, hey, so I have all my speaking spots full, but here's the sponsorship, sponsorship information.

And you can be like a roundtable expert or like a workshop facilitator.

Excuse the fuck out of me.

These terms are not interchangeable.

You cannot just say you've been selected.

You need to be clear.

There are, there are FTC regulations when you are posting on social media.

If you are gifted, if you like.

No one is following these fucking rules.

There are, there's a difference between keynote and a sponsored speaker and a sponsor with stage time and an affiliate who earns stage time, a presenter that is required to purchase a registration.

These are all very different things.

If I bought the stage, I'm not going to go around saying I was selected from hundreds of applicants to speak.

No, I sponsor and I pay for an advertising opportunity.

These are all legitimate business models, but they are not the same fucking thing.

I am not anti pay to play, okay?

I have no problem paying to be on stage.

I say this all the time.

I personally have not ever done it Now I've done barter agreements where I will come and do this for free in exchange for like positioning and stuff.

To me, the right sponsored speaking opportunity is basically like an in person Facebook ad.

Someone else did all the hard work to get the people in the room and all I have to do is show up and do what I know how to do.

Perfect.

Perfect.

That doesn't work if I'm bringing my own people who already know me in the room.

Okay, second point here is this is no shade to ticket prices.

You can charge whatever the you want.

Price can be an extremely effective way to qualify who you want in the room.

My issue is transparency and credibility because half the people, maybe not even half, 20% of the people in the room paid for a ticket and everybody else was given a free ticket because they needed to get bodies in the room.

Also, I will not sell somebody a keynote with a pitch at my events.

I made versions of this mistake before and I realized, oh fuck, I have made a big mistake and I changed it.

Because when money becomes the qualifier for who gets the mic, it is going to affect the credibility of the programming.

Listen, if, if you're paying for the stage, you're purchasing media.

Okay, I'm completely fine with that.

This last conference that I hosted, my speakers did not pay.

However, we had a no outside photography or videography clause because I am a media production company.

If they wanted us to produce a speaker reel or produce their, their video assets, then they had to purchase them.

Okay?

So the moral of this story is charge whatever the fuck you want, but you need to just understand what it is.

And the, the most, the version that most people are encountering are these like everyday events.

The website says free to apply, you apply, you're selected.

Congratulations.

And then someone just on thread said, selected speakers are required to register, but we've graciously given you a special discounted presenter rate.

No, stop it.

It's not just these big giant conferences that this is happening to.

It's some way somehow people got in their heads that this is how it works.

And it's not.

Events are expensive to produce.

I am someone who was broke most of her career and figured out how to do this shit on a shoestring budget, but most people don't know how to do that.

I enjoyed.

We, we decided this year that we were going to cut back a lot on expenses and really focus on the attendee experience.

Shocker.

I know, but like there weren't a ton of flashy activations.

We were, we are a media heavy conference.

And I don't even use the word conference anymore.

Honestly, we are a media heavy immersion experience.

Experience.

And I made with my very own hands and my team, we made some of our decorations and activations and honestly, it was so much fun.

Like, that was such a team bonding experience versus paying someone $5,000 to do it ourselves.

Let's move on.

All right, this is where the online business world and the actual professional speaking industry is split.

And this is again where I have a lot of perspective that a lot of people in this industry do not have.

I've been getting paid to perform since I was nine years old.

I work with professional speakers, celebrities.

I'm looking at these contracts, I'm seeing the speaker agreements, I'm seeing what my clients are being asked to sign.

I'm literally in Voxer right now with a talent development client, helping her unravel a very fucking confusing retreat facilitator offer that turns out not to be a retreat facilitator offer.

What the fuck is wrong with everybody?

Just be clear and stop trying to look like you know what you're doing.

If you don't hire somebody, who does.

I see what is happening.

The.

The corporate and professional speaker circuit does not operate like this.

And somehow this tiny ecosystem invented a system where talent pays and sells the tickets and promotes and brings their audience and pays a travel and hotel.

Sometimes they even have to buy their own ticket and the producer will just say, oh, I'm doing things differently.

No, no, I mean, I caught myself.

I was part of an event earlier this year where she kept saying, we don't have a stage because we, we don't want anybody up on a pedestal.

What?

What?

And then, like, there's literally no team.

I end up being the event coordinator for the day because as an mc, I had to.

To make sure, like, there was no team.

So just say that you couldn't afford a stage or just don't fucking address it at all.

Instead of being like, we're doing things differently.

No, you just can't afford a professional event model yet.

And that's okay.

But, like, don't fucking create these different stories.

You don't have to get.

You don't.

You don't get to transfer the financial risk of producing your event onto your talent and then say that you're cultivating a community.

The speaking industry didn't just, like, suddenly change.

We're just all a very, like, incestuous corner of the Internet built that built its own economy around stages and sponsorships and ticket sales and proximity and prestige.

And the boss babe costume, and then suddenly that's what you think speaking is.

The part that I really want to talk about next is because I am watching people confuse being flashy with being a good performer.

Hear me when I say I love a good production.

I love lights, I love music, I love costumes.

I love a dramatic entrance.

I am literally a fucking actor, okay?

I am absolutely not above dancing on stage or wearing a pretty outfit.

I literally have people dance sometimes as part of somatic activity.

Okay?

I work in entertainment, but a good performer can stand on a bare stage with a microphone and nothing else and move an entire room.

I learn a lot of this from watching comedians.

It's them in a fucking black T shirt, jeans, and sneakers with a microphone.

I'm.

This is gonna really piss people off.

You do not need to twerk, do fucking backflips, wear peacock feathers and a boa and force everybody to dance.

And constantly it's, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me.

I'm being free.

I'm feminine embodiment.

Bleh.

To create an emotional connection with your audience.

If that is genuinely your personality, which I know it's fucking not, because I've been with these people backstage, but if it is, twerk your fucking heart out.

There are people, these women, that do this.

I can see it in their eyes.

I see it.

They are trying.

They're trying.

When you are embodied, you don't have to try, okay?

I'm not talking about personal expression.

I'm talking about the needing, constant spectacle because you don't know how to hold an audience without it.

It's like these magician sideshows in the old days where they used to.

What do they call them?

The snake oil salesman.

That's what it is.

It's, oh, look over here on my right hand, because I don't know what I'm doing with my left.

And then hopefully you'll buy it like, it's crazy.

And we, as an audience members, we have to be able to discern what is real, what is authentic, what is embodied, and what is not real.

Performance is intentional pacing and timing and tension and silence and storytelling and presence and delivery and knowing when to push and when to shut the fuck up and let it land.

I can create emotional elevation in a room.

I can create collective effervescence.

This is literally my job.

This is part of a keynote.

This is something I have studied in performers for 30 years now.

A skilled performer knows how to do that without all of the shit around them.

Doing the emotional work for them.

Creating a spectacle cannot compensate for a lack of performance skill because they will spend all this fucking money on costumes and stylists and.

And music and.

But they won't hire a performance coach.

I realize that sounded that.

Like, it triggered me a little bit.

Maybe it did.

But, like, it's true if you need the peacock feathers and a dance break and.

And 12 audience participation exercises just to make people feel something.

I have questions about what happens when I hand you a microphone and turn the fucking music off.

I have questions about what you can do for me as a coach when we're on Zoom.

True performance does not need a spectacle to create transformation.

Listen, my entire fucking event is built around where being too much is your superpower.

This is the irony, okay?

I realize it.

That the mystics and the misfits and the people who have always been too much, they don't need to fake it.

They don't need to manufacture it.

It's an embodied energy that they naturally carry that triggers other people.

And this is about being inherently who you are.

Not feeling like you need to be flashy and obnoxious because everybody else in the room is doing it.

Wearing crazy makeup is you.

Absolutely, yes.

I love doing that kind of stuff.

That's how I experience expressed.

I express myself with my makeup and, like.

Yes, but a quiet person who barely raises their voice and can still own the fucking room.

Also, yes.

Expression.

Is not everybody performing that same, like, version of I'm unapologetically me.

No, you're just.

It's not a performance in a way that you think it is.

I don't want you performing freedom.

Freedom of expression.

I want you to be free and embodied enough to stop trying to be what you think you have to be.

That is the everyday celebrity mantra, really?

That is our mission.

Emotion is not the problem.

It's whether there's any fucking substance under it.

So we're getting into, like, the performance layer a little deeper.

These events can create huge emotional experiences.

Of course they can.

I have been a victim of it.

Again, wrote about this in my book.

The music, the lights, the movement, the community, the performance.

I know how to do that too.

But my issue with all of this Flash and the activations and the photo ops, they are doing the heavy lifting, and there's no substance behind it.

Did you actually learn something?

Did something actually change for you?

Did you get what you came for?

Can you use any of this when you leave without hiring them and joining their program?

Or was the entire experience designed to create?

I Need more.

And then the transformation is always conveniently located inside the next offer.

Please understand, I. I sell from the stage.

I'm not saying that this is a bad business model.

I'm not saying that enrollment and conversion events are bad.

I'm saying that if I'm going to charge someone a thousand or two thousand dollars to be in my room, they're gonna get a transformation whether they join my mastermind or not.

Okay?

This is why some of these events make six and seven figures.

I'm not anti profit.

I'm.

I'm anti pretending that the sales mechanism is.

Is the transformation.

Making somebody feel something is.

Is good performance.

But giving them something they can actually take home is transformation.

And as a speaker, as a leader, as an event host, you should be able to do both.

This is why I do everyday celebrity the way that I do.

This is why I've made the certain decisions.

Even when they make my life really hard and they stretch me, I know what it feels like to have sponsors asking for bigger numbers.

I know the temptation to shove more bodies into the room because the number looks better.

I have been that person, and I just don't give a fuck anymore.

I don't care how many people are in my room because I believe that the right people that are meant to be there will be there.

Now, my speakers are expected to participate because putting your energy in there, it's really a benefit for them if they want to convert off the back.

And this is how I train my speakers.

If you want to convert and get those people in your audience as your clients, you better be there to fucking talk to them before and afterwards.

This is.

My speakers are required to be there for me, but also for them.

They're not my fucking marketing and sales department.

If you are a sponsor, you're a sponsor.

I'm calling it what it is.

You're not getting a keynote.

Now, I will sit down and do a fireside chat with you, and I will interview you.

I will let people get to know you.

But then, like, if you don't stay, people are ready to hire you to pay you.

And you lost.

You lost that opportunity.

And then you're gonna be like, oh, I didn't get any ROI for that event.

Don't sponsor them.

You lost it anyway.

I'm not letting someone you know do that.

Everyone in the room is a part of my show.

The point is.

The point is not like watching important people be important.

Everybody.

It's.

It's like a collaborative.

In a good way.

A collaborative energy exchange.

Whether you Bought a ticket or whether, you know, you're a speaker, like, whatever.

If you're in the room, fine.

I'm not gonna shame you because you decided it wasn't for you.

I have fucked things up.

I've said this before.

I will probably fuck more things up because producing live events is hard.

At my Nashville conference, I had someone get on a whole fucking zoom with me afterwards and tell me how she thought I fucked up.

Her experience was valid.

I don't think a lot of it was truth from, you know, she just.

She just missed certain things.

But the fact that she missed certain things is on me as the leader, as the event, you know, producer, as the experienced curator.

Even though it happened, if she missed it, then that was somewhere that we dropped the ball.

And I think this last event we did was the best one that we have ever done in seven years.

I'm not telling you that I produce perfect events.

I'm telling you that I respect how fucking hard it is to produce a great one.

And I personally think that these people need to be held to better standards.

They need to hold themselves to better standards, but they won't.

And as a psychic, I am a seer.

Okay?

This is the frustrating part about being clairvoyant.

I see.

See this.

I see where something is headed.

I saw this happening.

Like I said in the beginning of this episode.

I saw this a year ago, and I can say it, and.

And people think I'm being negative or jealous or triggered or whatever, but then it.

It explodes, and suddenly everybody's talking about it, and Threads blows up, and everyone's like, yes.

Oh, my gosh, this.

And I'm like, guys, I tried to warn you.

I tried to tell you, but instead, you're all losing out on a lot of fucking money to learn this lesson.

I hate that.

I hate that for you.

I hate that this happened.

But I'm glad that people are finally seeing it.

We have got to stop waiting until someone famous gives us permission to trust what we already know.

Stop outsourcing your discernment to a follower account, to celebrity proximity, to revenue screenshots and giant stages and attendance numbers.

Sometimes as.

As a clairvoyant, as a seer, I see where the crack in the foundation is while everybody else is, like, looking up at the chandelier and being like, wow, oh, my God, it's so pretty.

And I'm like, this house is going to fucking crumble.

In closing, wrapping it up here, I am not telling you not to attend big conferences.

I. I see the value in them.

I'm not telling you not to pay for stages.

I'm not.

Like, there are so many benefits I have made.

I've made way over six figures from speaking.

I am not telling event producers that you're not allowed to make money.

Please make money.

You're really fucking good at it.

I'm not saying that you have to stop having beautiful activations and, you know, the peacock feathers and the twerking, not my thing.

But I'm saying, like, pay attention to the mechanics underneath all of it.

And what is your audience getting in terms of transformation?

Not how can I get them so fucking wrapped up in this that they buy from me?

Again, this is a very controversial take because there's a lot of people who say, like, the job is to sell them.

Yes, yes.

And I think you can also sell them by providing a transformation right there in the room.

Speakers, read your agreements.

Ask what collaboration means before you say yes.

Attendees, stop letting marketing make the decision for you.

Ask what you're actually buying.

And sponsors, stop using bodies in the room as your entire KPI.

Okay.

Event producers calling you up, calling you out.

Call the relationships what they are and the deliver the experience that you fucking sold.

And for the love of God, stop making speakers responsible for your fucking ticket sales.

I'm Leslie Jesperson.

This has been an episode of bfd, and if no one's told you today, you are a big fucking deal.

Show up accordingly.

Catch me at lesliejesperson on Instagram, on Threads, and we are the everydaycelebrity.com Our next event is August 2nd and 3rd on the Leo New Moon and Solar Eclipse in Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA.