In this episode of The High Profit Event Show, host Rudy Rodriguez welcomes Hilary DeCesare, award-winning peak performance coach, three-time bestselling author, and founder of The Relaunch Co. With over 30 years of experience producing events and coaching top-tier professionals, Hilary brings a deeply personal and professional lens to event design, audience curation, and the power of transformation.

Hilary dives into the importance of Intentional Event Design—prioritizing what she calls “souls in seats” over “butts in seats.” She explains how curating the right energy in the room is not just about headcount but about attracting and matching the right attendees with each other. Drawing from her experience as a certified international matchmaker (yes, really!), Hilary reveals how she brings intentionality to every detail of her events—down to who sits next to whom.

The conversation also addresses the ever-changing climate of event marketing and attendance. Hilary shares timely Tactical Strategies to Fill Events, such as offering real value before the event, leveraging speaker visibility, and using creative promotional tactics like bundling and scarcity-based offers. She openly discusses how she has adapted pricing structures to meet economic realities while maintaining the premium experience her brand is known for.

But perhaps most powerfully, Hilary opens up about the 3HQ Framework—a method built around aligning the head, heart, and highest self. She illustrates how this approach has supported her through personal relaunches, including major health and family challenges, and how it empowers her clients and event attendees to do the same. She emphasizes that relaunching isn’t about starting over—it’s about upgrading to your next level.

Whether you’re leading your own high-ticket event or simply looking for inspiration to elevate your next launch, this episode is a must-listen. Don’t miss Hilary’s powerful insights, personal resilience, and the practical tools she’s developed to turn challenges into transformations.

Want to connect with Hilary?

Register for the September Event: https://therelaunch.com/live-event/ 50% Code: RUDY50

Free Tool: http://tuneinpowertool.com/

Website: https://therelaunch.com/

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

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

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

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hilarydecesare

Relaunch to Rich Life Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relaunch-to-a-rich-life/id1510506747

All right, welcome to today's episode. We have a special guest with us, Ms. Hilary DeCesare. Welcome, Ma'am.

So good to be here, Rudy.

Great to have you with us. I know we've been playing a little bit of back and forth to have this interview a reality and I appreciate your flexibility to make it so. I know you're a trendsetter. You're traveling around the country, around the world, speaking, leading events. In fact, you are a three-time bestselling author. You've been an award-winning peak performance coach for 25 years and most recently, you've been nominated or actually you won the award from Life and Style Magazine as one of the top 10 coaches alongside Mel Robbins. So you've been busy.

Just a little bit. As most of your audience is probably also relating to that, yes, very busy. Things are amazing.

Oh, I'm glad we're able to connect here today and for our audience who perhaps is just learning about you for the first time, a couple more things I want to mention is your experience when it comes to events. You have been running transformational events. You've been doing events for over 30 years within your corporate experience and your business. But you've been running your own transformational events for about the last six years, one to two big events per year, about 150 people and several smaller events and leading into that event. You have a very clear 3HQ framework that you use at your events to help professionals who are ambitious to transfer or transition from that feeling of being stuck into confidently relaunching into their rich life. So I'm super excited to hear your best practices and what you've learned over the last six years when it's come to leading profitable and impactful live events.

Thank you, and I do want to mention to everyone out there that I think my twist on what I do versus a lot of the others out there doing it is that we all have relaunches. My company is The Relaunch Co. and relaunches are personal, professional, and they can be global, that all impact us. You mentioned at the beginning how we've been trying to get together, and I let you in on a little personal relaunch. My brother had had a couple cardiac arrests in the same 10-minute span, and yet there were still things that I had to do once I flew back to be with him that I had to rise above. I had to energetically keep going. I couldn't just turn off the switch, and there was no reason to just sit in the hospital room looking at him because he wasn't responsive at that point. So I have really, and I said, it's amazing. I feel so blessed right now to be able to share because we are in our, many of us, that third act, that midlife, I love that Brene Brown calls it. Anything above 35 until you're dead, you're midlife. So I'm raising my hand, and life goes on around you, right? Personal things are happening, health things are happening, and things that are working in the business, not working in the business, are happening and so to have something that you can constantly count on to be able to show up as your best version of you in the moment, on demand, I think is probably one of the most important things these days. So I'm excited to share that with everyone listening.

Wonderful, and thank you for that reminder of the importance of being aware where we're at with our life. Some people, different ages, but actually, I'll just share a personal note here. Today, I’m at a mastermind, and there was a video that we watched, and this is worth looking up on Youtube. Maybe I'll have our team look it up and add it to the show notes here. It's a really great video called, like, Jelly Beans, How Many Days You Have Left in Your Life and it's really a touching video, I've seen it several times, but it's a great reminder of really how precious life is and how many days that we really do have to enjoy our life. It's a really fun video, it looks at how many, if you think of a jelly bean as an hour or a day, and just kind of breaks it down to how many of those jelly beans go towards sleeping, go towards working, of course, entertainment, family time, etc. It's a great little video. I'm just kind of parlaying off of what you said, after 35, you're past midlife. So let's talk about live events.

I want to hold on, I just want to say something on to that, how many hours you have. Labor Day was created, and they always said that you have eight hours of working during the day, eight hours of sleeping and then that other eight hours is hours that you can impact the world. Really what they were saying is that these are your family time, but I look at those eight hours is how you can impact the world. So, as you're saying about stages, any age, any stage, any stage of life, and any stage that you can get on and be able to impact is significant these days, because we only have 24 hours a day.

Yes, thank you, thank you for that. That being said, I know our audience listening to this are eager to learn about some of the best practices that you've come into leading live events, I mean, you're on the court, you have one coming up here in September, just a few, not even a few months away. The number one thing that people oftentimes are asking or talking about is, how do I fill my event? How do I get people to my event? And you're in it right now. I'm curious to hear, Hilary, from you what your experience has been as to what's worked for you, maybe what's changed, maybe what hasn't been working and ideally what you're what you're focused on when it comes to filling your next event. I think that would be really helpful for our audience to hear.

So I first off have never said I want butts in seats, I want souls in seats, I want the right people in the room, I often say I, I'm not about like minded, I'm about like energy. I look at when I am thinking about the event, and there's a reason that I love to have 150 people in the room. There's a book that I read called The Comfort Crisis. Super great book, if you haven't read it, it's on, I think it's on audio as well. What they say is that, what makes a village from the past and now what makes it work? What's the right number where it's efficient and effective and not chaos? And the number that was mentioned is 150. It's the sweet spot and I believe it. I believe it because I've seen it. It really is where the magic happens. So when I think about who I'm trying to bring in, and you mentioned, what's going on and what's changing. I have an amazing network. I just feel so blessed and I think that it came out of when I was getting a divorce, yet another relaunch. I love love. I knew I was going to end up getting married again, but it just wasn't happening fast enough for me. I got to about five years after I got divorced and I thought, what the heck?

I need to do something. I need to make something happen. So I flew to New York and I became a certified international matchmaker. Crazy, because I was a corporate high tech girl, Silicon Valley CEO. You don't see a lot of those with that type of credential. But instead of matching men and women, I took what I learned and I started to match women with connections, women with people that really what are we going for as we start to build success? What are we missing? What are we craving? And it's connecting with women like us, with women that are very all into their business and yes, we've raised our children and we did both. And yes, I didn't make it to every single one of the PTA meetings, but I showed my kids that I have pride in what I do and that is also so important. So when I am looking at filling a room, I think about matchmaker. I literally look at the people coming in and I think about who do they want to connect with? Many times there's place cards at the event and there's people that you're supposed to be sitting next to. It's like a wedding and I really contemplate, like, who needs to meet who? I do this very unusual process of having people connect at the event where it turns on this energetic connection that allows them to actually have follow up with the person after versus just, hey, Rudy, so great to you.

Tell me about you. And you go, I do this, but I do. Oh, and Hillary, I do, and you're like at the end, you're like, whoa, like, I don't know what they said. I barely listen. I'm looking across the room. I'm trying to focus. So when I start thinking about that and many times when I'm talking on these connect calls that I have with so many awesome women, I'll say and they're like, oh, shoot, gosh, I'm booked that weekend or I'm booked. My events are usually three days, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. This time we're doing Thursday, Friday, Saturday with an opportunity to be in a TV show on the fourth day on Sunday. But a lot of times what happens is I'll say, all right, you can't be there this year, but who do you want to sit next to next year? Who do you feel like should be in the room? I think if you go to the website, Relaunch to a Rich Life, you'll see this is the room you want to be in. So once I start looking at that, it's much easier because that energetic connection is now happening. So when then I get on the phone with the next person and I have to say in the past, it has been, you get a date in the future and you save the date and all of that, and it used to be like, it'd be half full by the time you opened up full registration these days and I'm hearing it from like the best of the best. People are waiting. I talked about relaunch that are global. Things are happening. Change is occurring as we speak. So people are being a little bit more like, let's just wait and see what happens in the world, economic times.

Let's just wait and see. I appreciate the conversations I'm having with the Canadians and they're like, hey, right now I'm not that interested in crossing the border. Others are like, I'm all in. So I'm finding that with our event, we are now with just just over two months. Now we're getting that influx where normally it would have happened months ago. It's now happening. People are like, ok, I can now book my plans. I feel confident. I think there's this need for incentives, financial incentives for people and I'll give you a great example. Last year, my event was twenty five hundred for a general ticket, five thousand for a VIP. This year, because of world relaunches, because of situational, I've decreased the price of the ticket, $997 for what we call the ruby level, the general admission and then $1497 or not, maybe it's $1997 for the VIP, the diamond level and then the movie is a platinum level and that's about a $5000 experience. I've really reduced it because you have to be aware as an event planner, as you know, as the person that is energetically bringing these people into the room. The most important is limiting the obstacles, and I don't want people to be thinking like, oh, gosh, I can't go because the ticket is too high.

I have to say, I've gotten people that are like, oh, my gosh, I'm so grateful. Thank you. And it makes a difference that whether it's a discount code or whether it's a, we just did a bring a friend and even this morning on a call coming in from Ireland, she said, oh, my gosh, I saw this immediately, called my friend. You just have to think the way the soul in the seat would be thinking. That's what I really try to do.

Most certainly, and I did take a look at your web page for the upcoming event, and I think you've done a phenomenal, probably one of the best websites for an event I've actually seen, you've been so clear with your messaging and the potential.

I'm going to give the team kudos. It's not me, it's the team. So thank you for saying that.

That's a great example. So if someone listening to this episode who is an event leader or supports live events, I would highly recommend checking out the link here, around the show notes or somewhere near this, it genuinely is one of the better websites that I've seen to communicate and promote an event really well done. Hilary, thank you for helping us understand the psychology behind it, because I do think that that is the most important thing. It's 80 percent psychology, 20 percent mechanics. I like how you said, I want to get souls in seats. I like the idea that you shared that comes from the Comfort Crisis book of 150 people being the sweet spot and how you practice that as a limitation for your event and also how you're saying like right now in this moment in time, you're experiencing that there are some hesitation with travel from our Canadian neighbors from the north. But most recently you've seen them starting to come down. So you do see like a little bit of unique challenges now that maybe you didn't see in the past. I'm curious, just from a specific tactical perspective, what is working for you right now from a tactical marketing perspective to fill, get the souls in seats, get the 150 souls in the seats for your upcoming event?

I have truly, the team is incredible and we have these brainstorming sessions around whether it is Fourth of July and coming out with like a little short term, quick scarcity to be like, hey, this is right now. We're offering a very unique approach to a discount or we're offering a bundle. I would highly recommend. This is so great. So the speakers that I have are like top-notch and what I love about my speakers and every single one of them has said, I'm not just flying in for my specific time on stage. I want to be at the event. I want to be at the table. Match me, Hilary, with other incredible women. So I think that when you are looking at creating this idea around marketing around what feels right to you, and I think people, and you talk psychology, people want uniqueness. Our brain is wired for newness. They don't want like same old, same old and yes, we have the early bird and then we've got the next level. We're doing all of those. But then what's kind of that new and different approach to putting out there? Each speaker that I have is doing something beforehand or as a follow-up in addition to just being there on the stage.

So I have had some of the most, like, okay, so I'll give you a great example. There are some incredible, we're women, for those that are out there listening, the women in the room and for the men, you need to know this about the women that you are presently around. There's perimenopause, there's menopause, and only 5% right now are using this hormone replacement, HRT, only 5%. And why is that? Because of bad information from 2002 in a study. So what I try to do is curate the best of the best to come together. In doing so, I brought two of the best experts and we had this pre-call and we filmed it and we invited people to participate and listen in and then the continuation will be on the stage. So you learn through repetition. You hear it once and, oh, I kind of remember a little bit, but when you hear it again and again, we're looking to change women from the inside out, like helping them relaunch, when I say to a rich life, which is the event, I'm talking about not just wealth as we know it, certainly that's important. I want that too for everybody, but then your health. How do we take your health? How do we take your relationships, whether they're personal or professional and up-level them? It's not, a relaunch is not about turning off your computer and refreshing it, restarting it. It's about understanding that it's like an operating system that we're going to upgrade.

We're going to put that patch on it and level up. That's what we're doing and so it's trying to get creative in what you are offering, not just for the event, but the before, I call it like your relaunch right now. We're relaunching the women before the event, relaunching them at the event, and then relaunching them and continuing on because we all need to keep upgrading ourselves.

Yeah, thank you for that Hilary. What I'm hearing you say is from a tactical perspective and filling your event, a couple key things in there. One, you are very niche with who you serve. Specifically, you're serving women, very high-level professional women. So that tends to attract a crowd. People want to be around people that are like them. That are like them or the way they are?

Even the millionaires in the making. I attract millionaires in the making. That is a mindset that I know I'm destined for success. I know I'm meant to impact and then absolutely I attract the iconic impact millionaires. So women that have done it, but what's exciting about it is that you're sitting at a table and they, the impact iconic millionaires, are absolutely getting amazing information from the millionaires in the making and vice versa. It's this exchange of energy, of ideas that make it so unusual.

Yes. Thank you. I'm also hearing you say that you provide value before the event, leading up to the event. Gives incentives for them to sign up sooner than later so they can participate in that experience and also really starts the experience leading into the event which is wonderful. Thank you for that. Any other best practices or perhaps mistakes that you learn from when it's come to filling your event?

Oh, yes. There's been a few. So I would say, the affiliate programs are so important and we have lists of these amazing women that are like, Hilary, I wanna help you fill the event and we ended up switching from one platform to another and it became problematic. So it delayed it. And here's the thing. We all know, you start planning big events like this year in advance. We should have been doing this much sooner but we really weren't ready. A lot of times, you kick yourself like, ah, like why wasn't this done earlier? But the other hundred things we're taking, I mean, for those out there, we run small businesses. They're not like, we don't have tons of people but what we have done now going forward, we have the most incredible, incredible process where we've documented absolutely everything. We have SOPs for everything and it's a checklist and how soon do we need to do it before the event and backing up and backing up and backing up. We have an amazing event group, Linda at Blue Diamond, and I said to her, now that we've got this on, you need to publish this as a book. It's so good and I think she's gonna do it too. But you have to understand that your event is a direct reflection of you.

When things were starting to get jammed up, backlog, things were not in flow with the event. I could look right directly at my life. I had just had cancer removed on my forehead. It turned into a staph infection, it was terrible. Then my brother has the cardiac arrest and there's a bunch of other things that hit. It was like, I just felt like it was like boom, boom, boom, a punching bag. That's when things fall because you know what? I was really in a state of high level of stress and what happens when you're really, really stressed? Prefrontal cortex shuts down because you've got your reptilian brain that's saying, oh my God, oh my God, we gotta get you safe, safe, safe. So it made sense. So what I have to tell you is the thing that I have learned that is the number one is that you need to make sure that relaunches are gonna happen. I can guarantee you, they will happen throughout. They might even happen during the event. But you need a tool that you can use that will help you through it. I developed one years and years ago. I've been using it with my 25 years of coaching experience, running businesses, raising large amounts of capital for my company and others. It's something that like it's part of 3HQ, the head, the heart, the highest self, which is the best version of you. So you kind of get into your head, oh my God, oh my God, how am I gonna fill the seats? How am I gonna fill the seats? Is this event gonna be successful? Are they gonna love what I'm offering?

All these different things. You then have to tap into, you gotta get out of your head. I'll teach you how to do that in just a second, very quickly, two minute process, to tap into your heart, that space where why are you even doing this? And then that, when you have your head and your heart working together, you can access that best version of you where you are in your flow energetically, even when things are not going as well as you'd like around you.

Yes, awesome. You have a really, really cool process. You and I were talking about that in the green room. And gosh, I wish we had another 30 minutes or an hour on this interview. I know we're coming up on our time. I mean, for our audience listening to this, if you're resonating with Hilary, especially if you're a woman, I mean, men too, of course, but Hilary's event is for women, I would recommend go to her event. I mean, she's legitimately limiting this to 150 people with a good cause. It's not a fake scarcity play. Her event is normally very, very highly priced and I know that she's doing a special this year to assist people who are navigating different economic situations. Hilary, I also know that you're, for our audience specifically, your team has put together, putting together a promotional code for us so that people listening to this, if they resonate with you and wanting to learn more, if they're high speed professionals and they feel stuck in some way, and they wanna, either they're going through or they want to go through some form of reset or relaunch in their life, that you have a special deal for them. Can you tell us a little bit about that deal that you might have for our listeners?

Absolutely, and I love what you just said, because it's about if you're in a relaunch right now, or if things are going awesome, you need to be there because this is where you'll up-level even higher. So what we, again, this goes right back to what we were talking about. I would love to offer your listeners 50% off of the ticket price. Again, the ticket price, where you could go onto the site and there's different promotions, but when you see this, you can get, you can put RUDY50 in, RUDY50, and that will give you 50% off of either the Ruby or the Diamond ticket. So super excited to see you there and when we are in the same room, make sure that you let me know that you were part of this podcast and Rudy.

Awesome. It's very generous to you, Hilary. Thank you. What I want to reframe or reiterate is that your events are premium. Yes, premiumly priced. It's not $100 to get to the door type of event and also premium in value. The container you create, the people that you attract, the experience that you curate, it's premium. The fact that people listening to this have the opportunity to attend at a 50% off of the premium ticket price is really special. Especially knowing that you truly are limiting this to 150 people. So thank you so much, Hilary, for being a guest on our show today and thank you for providing so many golden nuggets on how you are filling your next live event. Thank you.

Rudy, thank you for having me and for those that want to know the secret that I used, you can go to tuneinpowertool.com, tuneinpowertool.com. It's a free PDF that will walk you through it. I hate to leave people in limbo like, well, what was it? So there you have it. So, and again, the website is relaunchtoarichlife.com to find out about the event.

Wonderful, thank you. We're gonna include both of those links here in the show notes or the video somewhere around here. So thank you for giving us that extra resource there at the end. I'm glad you shared that with us, Hilary. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Rudy.