In this episode of the High Profit Event Show, host Rudy Rodriguez welcomes the dynamic Eben Pagan, the acclaimed author of "Opportunity". Eben, with his multifaceted identity, touches upon his upbringing in Oregon, raised by hippie parents, and his initial endeavors as a rock guitar player. He then reflects on his struggles, which led him to the realms of real estate and eventually to the importance of mastering sales and marketing. With an influential figure like Joe Stump guiding him, Eben transitioned into the virtual event space, emphasizing the power of starting small, evolving by understanding audience needs, and the crucial importance of niche targeting in the current vocational training landscape.

As the conversation progresses, the duo delves deep into strategies for virtual event success. Eben shares his insights on how to nurture an idea into a full-fledged event, stressing the significance of organic community growth, referrals, and the intertwining roles of paid media and affiliate marketing. An interesting segment of the talk revolves around the structure for multi-day events. Eben unveils his three-tier strategy: commencing with introducing fresh perspectives, transitioning into actionable techniques, and culminating with validating success stories.

A notable part of the episode is the 'Deep Dive with Eben', where Eben opens up about the effectiveness of testimonials and the potential of offering instant access to higher-tier programs.

In a spirited 'Lightning Round', Eben and Rudy discuss common event-related mistakes and Eben's passion for the intersection of art and business. He also shares his perspective on the legacy, the drive for continual growth, and the deeper layers of life and death. This episode, laden with insights and rich experiences, offers a blend of practical strategies and philosophical musings on the event industry.

Want to connect with Eben?

Website: https://ebenpagantraining.com/

Opportunity Book: https://freeopportunitybook.com/

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

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/EbenPaganMedia

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eben-pagan-59933b15a/

Don’t forget to subscribe to the High Profit Event Show and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!

✅ Want to book a session with Rudy to discuss how you can to get more high paying clients at your next virtual event? Book a session with him here.

Hey, it's Eben Pagan. I'm the author of the book Opportunity and today I'm going to show you how to get more clients using virtual events.

Hi, I'm Rudy Rodriguez and welcome to The High Profit Event Show. On today's episode, we have a very special guest, Mr. Eben Pagan. Welcome to the show, sir. I want to do a quick, you probably don't need a bio for most people listening to this podcast, but I just love to sing your praises and highlight some of the things that I know about you to be true. I know first and foremost, you identify yourself as a husband and a father, as well as an entrepreneur and a teacher and investor and an art collector, which I've learned a lot about art through you, actually. You're the founder of several successful companies, which together have sold more than $100 million worth of courses, education and coaching. You've taught millions of people from around the world how to be more successful through your books, your courses, your letters, videos, and both live and virtual events. On a side note, I know you enjoy teaching people how to discover and develop their best opportunities in business and life and become world-class coaches. So you're awesome, man. Welcome.

Thanks, Rudy. I love you too, man. I really have a lot of respect for the work that you do.

Absolutely. So, in fact, I actually met you. I went through your coursework. I think it's called the Accelerate course back in 2014 when I was transitioning out of the Navy and I shared that story. That was a huge lifesaver kind of a trend through my transition point. I remember you had an event on the back of that. It was in Chicago. Coincidentally, it was my hometown and I was leaving the Navy and I literally got home from the Navy from Japan like the week before. It turned out I could attend. So that event was a life changing experience for me. I've done other events in the past, but there's something that happened at that event when there. I'm like, I need to make some major shifts in my life. There's no more net of a steady income. You were the mentor. You were the guy that showed up in my life at that time. I am so grateful. That event changed my life. So thank you. So I'd love for you to share a little bit about your experience leading events. I know you've done it for many years and maybe just a little bit about your background to a little bit of your story that kind of evolved over time to the point where you were leading events.

Yeah, sure. So when I was well, I had hippie parents. I was born in New York and they didn't want me to grow up in New York. So they moved to Oregon. So I grew up out in the woods of Oregon with these hippie parents. When I grew up, I had no role models of success. Like we didn't know any rich people or anybody that even had a new car kind of thing. So when I was a teenager, I was a rock and roll guitar player. So I dropped out of high school. Then I dropped out of my local community college to go on tour with a rock band. I couldn't get a date. I think I'm the most unsuccessful rock star because I played for lots and lots of audiences. I met one girl and she became my girlfriend. She's an amazing girlfriend that I had for a while. But the point is that I got into my early 20s and I was at my height. I was making seventy five dollars a week as a guitar player and ten dollars an hour in my manual labor job. Now, the manual labor job was cool. I worked for a coppersmith and I kind of worked artistically. It was very cool. But I said, OK, I've got to go figure out how to make money. So I went into real estate and was kind of a dismal failure in real estate. I sold one in a third of homes my first year in real estate and made like a couple of thousand dollars. The point is that through all this, I realized, oh, I need to learn about sales and marketing. That's what I got. Ok, I need to figure out how to get clients. So I started listening to tapes and buying books and you remember tapes like I used to listen to cassette tapes and so forth. Then I learned from a guy. Somebody came through our city teaching these sales marketing courses named Joe Stump and I ultimately went to work for him doing audio visual.

I sat in the back of his programs and I watched. I worked with him for three years as he built his company from three million a year to about 10 million a year. I got to see the machinery and I got to really see how you can use events to draw people in. He used different models. He would do free half day seminars where he'd go to different cities and you could go to a free half day seminar. Then he would have multi day seminars that you could buy and then he had these year long coaching programs. I just got to get this amazing look. And 20 now let's see, twenty five, twenty eight, twenty nine years later, I'm using a very similar model in my business. So it's something that's worked for a long time. Well, now we have virtual events. Ok, we just did a virtual event for seventy five thousand plus people. And things have evolved a lot. But the point is that I've seen how events can work from the real world all the way through. At my first seminar, I did a dating relationship seminar about 20 years ago and I had twenty three people that came to it. That was my first one. But what we did at the program, just going to take a quick little rabbit hole here for a second, is we recorded it on video and audio. Then that became my first video and audio program. So that's another way that you can use, you know, virtual events. Anyway, I've gone on to do lots of events and all different types of things like the Accelerate event that you mentioned. I've done, I don't know, dozens and dozens and dozens of different types of events. I just really believe in them. So that will stop there if you want to pursue any of those threads. We can. But I'm just a believer.

Absolutely. Thank you for sharing your background and kind of what took you there. I got that you're believing. Congratulations, by the way, on that virtual coach expo. How many thousand people, you said over seventy five thousand?

That's incredible. I know it really is. It's unbelievable.

Wow. And the weekend before that, you did a summit for your virtual coach graduates and that had people in attendance there as well. We had a grad summit. I was there and I got to see people eager and excited and many people enrolled in your VCA program, which was incredible. I even had friends of mine who were on that were reaching out to me and saying, I'm in, I'm excited. They were just what an incredible event.

Thank you.

Absolutely. So I'd love to hear, our listeners are always listening for, like, OK, what's the strategy? I think the top of mind question when I interview people, they wonder, OK, I have an idea for an event. So first of all, how do I come up with my idea for the event? I think that's probably how to take it from an idea to a real thing that's happening. And then, how do I get people to say yes to buy a ticket and to show up? I know, Eben, you mentioned in the VCA that you really thought about this for a while. How do you get more people to show up at your events? So I'm kind of curious if you can kind of speak to that process of, I'm going to do an event and now I'm going to get people to come to the event. What do you do to do that? What's your strategy?

Certainly. Can I talk a little bit about niche? Like niche targeting. Ok, so a lot of people who have a message or a gift they want to share with other people. They start out at a very high level of, I want to help people with wellness, I want to help them have a fulfilling lives or I want to help them have relationships that work. Very abstract. Ok, and that's great. You probably can help a lot of people do that. But when you get started, it's probably better to do an event for five people called How to Lose 20 Pounds in 90 Days and just go invite five people you know who you know need to lose weight and then have them come and teach them some stuff for an hour or two, get their feedback. Then from that, say, OK, I just learned how to do this. All right. Now let me do one for 10 people and then have 10 people come and then ask those 10 people, hey, who do you know that could really benefit from this? And then get them to try to introduce you to a few people and try to grow it organically and do the simple one, like how to get a date online or how to do a better job interview or how to set up your books in your business or something that's a little more pragmatic and tangible so that you're not trying to teach everything to the whole world. You're not trying to invite everyone. You're just getting a few people so you can get the experience of doing it so that as you grow over time, when you do show up in front of your big audience and your big community, you know what you're doing.

You know how Zoom works if you're doing it virtually. You know how the microphone works if you're doing it in a hotel room or whatever. You just need to do a bunch of them. Then it's totally fine if one of them falls flat and you thought you were going to have 20 people and only four show up. It's no big deal. You still have four people or one person or whatever. You can just deliver. You can practice. So teach something simple. Get some people in there and just do it to get started because this is going to teach you how it all works. Then from there, as you're interacting with the people, you say, okay, I'm teaching you how to make a meal plan and how to lose weight and how to do all these different things. Great. Then you say, what else would you like to learn? What else is concerning you? What are some of your other problems or challenges or desires? Then they'll tell you and you'll hear them say things like, well, one of the real problems I have is how do I feed my family well? And then you'll hear like three people say that over a few weeks or over a few events and you'll say, oh, is that a need? Then you'll reach out to all the people on your audience or your list or the people you've talked to. You say, hey, who would be interested in coming to a class on how to cook for your family? Then maybe a bunch of people raise their hand. Oh, that's a real problem that I have, or that's something I'd really love to know. Then those people will come and then you'll start to find what your thing is. You'll start finding where you could be unique and you could help. By finding your niche a little bit more organically and growing a little more organically while doing some smaller virtual events, practicing, this is how you discover that kind of big opportunity to do something. People look at me and they say, well, Eben, you've been doing this for all this time.

So it's easier for you to do a big event and have 75,000 people sign up and thousands of people on live and whatever. Okay. Yes, that's true. But you know what? I've been a coach for 25 years. We've had our virtual coach program for, I don't know, probably six or seven years or something now. We just figured out how to do this last year. It just occurred to us, oh, we should do a summit and we'll get all the coaches to come and speak. Then we'll have all these clients come. So it's one of those, we figured it took five years to come up with something that looks like, oh, it just kind of happened. In that time we were building relationships with all the different people and so forth. So it looks like an overnight success, but it took five years or 25 years kind of in the making. So start small, start with a focused thing that you can help people solve and do it a few times to get the practice and then from there scale up.

Awesome. Thank you for that bonus training on niching down. What I'm hearing is, and I hear you emphasize this in many of your training sessions, the importance of speaking with people and asking them what their challenges are, what they need, what they want and then building from there. Eben, you may not remember this, but after the VCA or sorry, the Accelerate event, you sent out an email or your team sent out an email to participants. I was on that list and I jumped on for 20 minutes with you and you asked me these questions and I was blown away by the fact that you, the CEO, the leader of an event with probably over a thousand people, you cared enough and you were curious enough and you were in the work enough that you would actually have these conversations. I was impressed by that. I'm like, Eben's the real deal. He eats his own cooking.

It's very interesting to keep, to stay in the mix. One thing is you can learn so much by just putting on curious mode and just don't assume you know anything. If you're an accountant and you're going to do a program for small business owners on how to set up their books or something, don't assume that you know what they want or need to learn. Instead, call up five people that have a small business and say, hey, I want to teach a little program for small business owners on how to do better in their business. I'm an accountant. What are some of the things you would like to learn and try to lead the witness as little as possible and listen to them. They're going to say things that you just wouldn't, some things of course, you're going to think of like, what program should I use to do my books? Should I use QuickBooks or whatever? They're going to ask those, but they're going to ask a lot of other things too, that are going to be surprising. They're going to say, can I deduct my marketing costs from my tax bill? Or, can I hire somebody and then have them do this part, can I outsource my bookkeeping or they're going to just say things that a lot of them are going to be things that you wouldn't have expected them to say. They're going to have questions for you that you're going to say, oh, that's an interesting question. And it's in those questions that they have where all of your great marketing is. That's where all the surprise niches are that you hadn't thought of before. I could even tell some stories of this, Rudy, how doing this process has been how I've found my way through all of the two and through all the big opportunities for creating courses, for creating programs, for creating live events is just listening.

Then when I hear that thing that they're asking for that I wasn't thinking about, I hear like, oh, this is what they want to know. Okay. Let me try offering a program on that. And then the people, when it succeeds, I go, oh, this is one of those needs that most people aren't aware of that are out there.

That's awesome. And to kind of tie it back to the show here, I'm hearing the importance of identifying your target audience, speaking to them and identifying their problems, their challenges, the things they’re looking for solutions for, and then positioning your event as a solution, like, hey, we're going to address these things and solve these challenges with this event. So that's as simple as that is, it's probably one of the most powerful things someone can do to have a successful event.

Exactly. There's another challenge that I've been working with coaches on a lot. You've seen me work with them a little bit on this as well. We're coming out of a world. Okay. Kind of like world 1 .0 or let's call it world two or 3.0 or something, but it was a kind of world where you learned your skill or your vocation or your profession, your trade. Then you did that through your whole life. There was a way to do it and you did it the correct way. And then you got paid, again, if you were an accountant or an attorney or a doctor, or you worked on a manufacturing line, or you fixed cars or whatever it is, you learned how to do it. There was a way to do it. Then you knew that if you just did it the way you were supposed to do it, 95% of the time, everything would be okay, because there was a way to do that particular thing. Well now online and when we're trying to find our own path, make a niche, create a brand, a name, a business for ourselves, it's not that way. There's not just a prescription. Like you do it this way. And 95% of the time it's going to work out. Well, actually you have to find your own path. You have to find your own ecological niche that you're going to be a part of. And that's challenging for a lot of people because we're not used to having to try things a bunch of times to find the one that works. But if you're going to be a successful teacher, coach, consultant, author, speaker, guru, do programs that could be kind of one of these modern thought leaders, then what you have to do is you have to show up curious and ask, say, I know how to help people with health and fitness.

I know how to help people grow their team. I know how to help people. And then whatever it is, the thing that you know how to do, but then say, but I don't know what people want to learn right now. I don't know what they're interested in right now. So I need to ask them. So let me get a bunch of them together, teach them some stuff for free, and then ask them, hey, what are you trying to do? Like Rudy, when you said, I want to do this interview and I'm helping people with their virtual events and helping people to grow their virtual events. I was like, all right, there's somebody who's paying attention. Rudy understands marketing. He understands sales. He understands building a team, but he's not teaching, hey, here's how to do marketing or here's how to do sales. He's teaching you how to grow your virtual event because the virtual events are really new on the scene. Those have just been around now, like in a big way, obviously for a couple of years. So now this is the beginning of probably the big wave of the world realizing, oh, I need to figure out, I need to know how to do better virtual events. So he's here interviewing me and other people and helping people to go, oh, virtual events. Oh, that's really cool and then that's going to allow a lot of people who are waking up and going, I want to do a virtual event. How do I do one of those? And then they're going to find Rudy and they're going to find this interview and then they're going to be his clients. But if he would have done what he's done in the past and just said, here's how to do sales or here's how to do coaching or here's how to just do something that he's also really good at. It wouldn't have been this focused niche thing that's going to work.

And here's the trick. You, Rudy, and I'm speaking about you in third person to our audience here, to our listener, but you watch with Rudy, you watch what happens. This will likely be successful because this is something that he's figured out through talking to people and doing virtual events and helping people do sales, virtual events, and marketing that he's realized, oh, this is a need. This is probably going to be successful, but it might be just the doorway to even the next level. It wouldn't surprise me because this is how success works. If we check back in with Rudy in a year or two years or three years, and there's some niche of virtual events that he really was successful with, it wouldn't surprise me if this morphs into virtual events for number one selling book authors or virtual events for people who have large communities of a particular type, or there's going to be some segment of it where like he realizes, ah, virtual events for sales professionals or something where it's an intersection of his things. Check back in a few years and see if this evolves or it becomes a part of whatever else is happening, but that's how this really works.

Eben, you're a genius and I love observing how you go meta in everything that you do. You always look for the way to go meta and I love it. I appreciate the authentic compliment and observation in the comments. Thank you and this show is designed to be a resource, a value, massive value add to the market to those men and women event leaders who want to do virtual events the right way, in a way that adds massive value to their community, in a way that gets clients using integrity and honesty and just feels good for the people who are going through the journey in the process. So Eben, you gave us a Harvard MBA marketing class now on how to position a virtual event or really anything for that matter. Once you have the thing on the calendar and you've really nailed the audience, you've nailed the problem. Now you want to get as many lives there to impact and influence. What's your thinking or your strategy around filling your events? I think that's one of the million dollar top of mind questions that people have.

So how do you get people into your virtual event? Well, there are a few different main ways to get people into virtual events. One is to reach out to people and say, hey, come to my virtual event, to say, hey, people who I know, bring your friends to virtual events. Okay. So there's kind of your warm list or your influence list. Another way is through marketing. You can go and run ads, do videos and promote them on Youtube or Facebook or whatever you can, run print display ads, that kind of thing. Another one is you can get other people to promote your event to their lists, and then you can pay them to do that or give them an affiliate commission, so forth. These are kind of the main ways to do it. You could also do PR, you could also do a podcast and build a list that way. There are other things, but basically you can reach out to the people that you know, you can go and try to find people you don't know, or you can find people who already have your client and then do deals with them or do arrangements with them and get them to promote and bring people to your event. I've done all of them. You want to talk about any of them in particular, or you want me to just talk a little about all of them?

Well, what worked for you? You recently did a graduation ceremony for hundreds of people there, and then you did an expo with 75,000 people there. You clearly learned something. What's working right now? I think that's what people love, what worked for you, what's working now.

Okay. So I'll talk about all three for a minute, okay? Because I do all three. Okay. I'm always learning. I'm always trying to be a learner. I'm always trying to figure out what works and I'm always experimenting. All right. So for example, my wife Annie, who you know, is a love and relationship coach. I used to be a dating guru in a past life. Then once I got married and started working with her, we started kind of putting our ideas together and realizing, oh, we have kind of some good stuff for people who are in a relationship, who want to have a better romantic relationship. So a couple of years ago, we started teaching this program we call The Love Dojo. And because we had no real experience, we hadn't taught this material that we taught in The Love Dojo. We'd done it a little bit many years ago, but several years ago. So we said, well, we just want to get some experience. So we just started telling the people in our community and our friends, hey, we're going to do a virtual event. We're just going to have all our friends come to it. This was also at the beginning of COVID and we just wanted to be of service and in a lot of ways. So we had a bunch of people come and we just taught all the stuff to them. In fact, we did a couple of different programs. We did a bunch of them just as a contribution. We're like, let's try them. We just told people to come and Annie maybe got a few clients from the experience, but it wasn't even a money-making thing. It was just a contribution and learning that worked really well. Then that's kind of led to us having insights about making courses and doing products and some of her things that have just put some things on our horizon.

So on the one hand, I think it's a really good idea to just get started. If you don't know what you're doing or when you're doing it, literally put next week, next Monday, or next Friday, just put a 90 minute live workshop, a live virtual workshop with you on some topic that you think that people in your network or community would want to learn about and just go take out your email list, take out WhatsApp, go on Linkedin, Facebook, wherever you hang out and just say, hey, next Friday at one o'clock PM Eastern, I'm going to do a 90 minute workshop on how to have a better relationship with your romantic partner, how to stop fighting and how to have more intimacy. I'm doing this just for my friends. You can come for free. I'm practicing some new material. Come and just get it on the calendar and then do it. So that's number one, because you want to get the practice going. From there, if you're a coach and you're trying to get clients, you invite people to the workshop, teach them for maybe an hour, maybe do a little bit of coaching. Then at the end, once everyone's gotten a lot of value, you say, okay, who's really serious here about having a better relationship with your romantic partner? Would anyone like to do a one-on-one session with me? I've got some space. I've got a few openings right now for clients. I'd love to do a session with anyone here, complimentary, and then book some appointments and go and get some clients. That's one way to do it. Another thing that you can do is at the end of the workshop, just say, all right, I'm looking for more people who want to have a better romantic relationship with their partner. I'm going to do another one of these next Friday.

Each of you, I'd love to get three referrals. I'd just love to get three people that you will send to this thing. I'll do it for them as a gift as well and just start trying to grow a community organically and just learn what that feels like. So that's one approach that I think could work really well. I've done things like that a lot in my life. If you're going to do marketing, if you're going to actually do paid marketing, a simple way to get started with paid marketing is to create some videos. Just start creating some three to five minute video tips where you flip on your phone and you teach for a few minutes and put those up on Facebook or whatever social profile you're using right now, just put those videos up there and then watch for the one that people respond to, watch the one that they give the thumbs up, watch the one where lots of comments they like, and then just go and boost that video. Just go boost it. If you're going to create short videos, make sure you have some kind of an offer at the end to ask people to reach out to you. Another way to do it is to make those videos and at the end, just say, hey, I have a free workshop that I'd love to invite you to where you can learn how to launch your business, get more clients, whatever the thing is that you will be teaching in it. You can go here for it this way, when you boost that post, you're getting more leads. You're getting more people that are coming and joining your list. That's a nice, simple way to get started advertising and marketing. As you know, it really is a whole world. So go start studying it. If you haven't done advertising and marketing, you just need to read some books, take some courses. The keywords to look up are direct response marketing because that's where you'll learn about how to write headlines.

Copy, make compelling offers to people. Another strategy is partnering. So doing affiliate partnerships. Jay Abraham, who's like just the ultimate guru of marketing that I think that's walking around right now on the planet, he asked the question, who has already invested the time, effort, money, energy to find your ideal client. They've got a whole big bunch of them. They got a list of them and you could go to them and say, hey, would you promote my stuff to your audience? And we do this all the time. What's great is there's technology right now that will track all of that. So you can just give them an affiliate link. They can send people to your virtual event. You can pay them for those people. If you have an offer, if you offer them coaching or products or services, then you can track and then send them some of the money. You can say, hey, if someone sends a thousand dollars with me, I'll give you $500. Then you can share that money with them. This works really well for us. When we do our product launches, we'll have tens of thousands of people that will come and join our list and come to our events and do things that our partners sent, and then we'll share some of the sales with them. So there are a couple of quick primers on getting people to your events.

Awesome. That'd be brilliant, my friend. So of the event that you did recently with 75,000 people in attendance I don't know if you've analyzed this already. It's only been a few days, what do you think was the number one strategy that worked best?

That one was mostly paid media. We just ran ads and said, come to the coach expo, get a free ticket. We did it as a free event and people came and signed up. Then when they signed up, we offered them stuff for sale like you can get the recordings of the program, you could get notes and so forth. That helps pay for the leads. Then we also had a bunch of affiliate partners that mailed and sent us leads that joined our list. Those people were speaking at the event. They're just affiliate partners that we know and so forth. So it's easy for them because they're like, hey, go to this expo and learn from a bunch of coaches and so forth. So it's probably, I don't know, 70/30 or 80/20 or something advertising versus affiliate marketing for that one.

What medium was that, that you advertised? Was it primarily Facebook or were there others?

Facebook and we did some Youtube ads.

Very cool. I was always curious to know that. I know that's probably more advanced for people who are more advanced in their marketing skills and they have experience where they can scale to that level, but I appreciate you sharing what worked. I actually went to the process as well. I'm a student of the process and I love the value ladder on how to register for free events. Then the opportunity to upgrade with the recordings. I think there was a VIP option as well, which even included a one-on-one consultation with a member of your team, which I thought was brilliant. So a really cool model. Thanks for sharing that. So, here we are, we've done a good job of nailing the niche. We've done a good job of promoting the event and we're maybe the day before the event leading into the event. I'm curious, what do you do to prepare, like to lead at an event? Like what are some of your preparation rituals?

Well, I think one of the things that's most important for preparation and for getting people to just come and to be at the event live is to remember that they need something right now. Someone that's considering coming to an event, they have a need and they've got kind of the place that they've gotten to in their life or their relationships or their business or their health or wherever they are. They want something, they want to learn something or get something and they need it to make themselves feel okay. They need it to take care of themselves in some way or to solve a problem or to take advantage of an opportunity. It's really all about just coming back to that over and over and over. So if they want to, if they're lonely and they want to get into a romantic relationship with someone and they're lonely and they want to have somebody that they love in their life, then what I would do is I would just try to remember, okay, they're lonely and they want to have someone in their life to have a romantic relationship with. So that when I'm sending the reminder emails and I'm saying, hey, make sure you come tomorrow, our event is happening. I want to show you how to attract someone and have a great romantic relationship with someone who loves you. Then I try to remember that. When I get on saying, hey, welcome everyone. I'm looking forward to showing you how to attract a great romantic relationship. So you can have somebody in your life who loves you. This is why all that listening we were talking about earlier and doing the early ones.

So you can hear their language, the words that they use, and then all the way through it. We just finished up with session one, about how to attract someone. In session two, we're going to talk about how to get into a relationship with them. So I'll see you after the break, looking forward to showing you how to get into the relationship that you want. Just keep saying and keep reminding yourself of the thing that they want, because it is really easy to wander off and talk about what you want to talk about, or what you think that they might want, or what you think they should want, and forget the thing that they do want. So that's it.

Such an important reminder. I often see that common mistake, when people lead events and, and go to maybe talking at a higher level, or not meeting them where they're at, what they need, and just not connecting the dots, as well as they could. It's one of the more common things that I see. So I'm glad that you're highlighting that here on this show. So that's how you put yourself in the mind frame of what it is that they came here for. You really kind of put yourself in their shoes. And here you are, you're doing a multi-day summit, during the summit itself, in addition to obviously speaking to their needs, wants and desires. Is there anything else that you like to focus on to really make sure that the event is impactful? That they have a shift, that they have a transformation, that they have an identity shift. I know you've talked quite a bit about having that identity shift, so that it's a logical next step for them to continue on with you. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Sure. If you want to do it, how about this? I'll share a model that I learned from a mentor many years ago for doing a transformational event because a lot of us, we don't just want to, I don't know, teach people something. We want to have them have something that's meaningful, that happens to them where they say, wow, this really impacted me. This is going to make a big difference. So here's the model. If you do a three-day event, this is excellent for a three-day event. On day one, what you do is you focus on mindset shifts. New ways to look at the world. On day two, you teach techniques and action steps. On day three, you get validation and examples. Now I've used variations of this for a long time. Let me show you how it works. So when new clients arrive at your event, and by the way, you could do whether this is a three-hour or a three-day event, the basic principles are the same. New clients tend to be kind of idealistic in one way or another. They often think that they know their problem and their solution. So what's your problem? Well, my problem is that I weigh 30 pounds more than I should. Okay. And what's the solution? Well, I need to exercise more. I just need to get to the gym. Now, the challenge with this is that number one, to get them to actually start going to the gym is going to take more than them just saying, I'm going to start going to the gym. They need to have some big shifts internally.

They need to have some mindset shift or some new way of looking at reality that has them say, oh, this is why I need to start going to the gym. Got it. They need to have that internally. Now here's the other side of the equation though. The other side of the equation is new idealistic clients or students, they're usually kind of wrong about what they think the problem and the solution are. So they'll be right to some degree, like, yes, if you are overweight, it would be good for you to talk to health and fitness professionals, they will tell you that if someone who's overweight just starts exercising, but they don't change the way they eat, they will often gain weight. So this is kind of universal. I've just coached a lot of these kinds of folks is where I learned this thing. So what you actually have to do is often counterintuitive to what you think you have to do. So to do this, to get people to have an insight, to do something counterintuitive, you have to start off by getting them to look at themselves in the situation differently. And this is why day one, you want to do mindset shifts. So for example if I'm teaching a group of men who I'm going to help with dating, and let's say they're kind of socially awkward men, and they're just used to this idea of, oh my gosh, there's an attractive woman and I want to meet her and I don't know what to do. So I'm going to go over and just say, wow, you're so pretty. Would you go on a date with me or buy her flowers or send her a note, or they just don't know where to start kind of intuitively.

I'm going to shift this on that first day by saying, it's not about convincing her to like you. It's about activating attraction inside of her, like a mating dance with an animal or something where you do these things and then all of a sudden they feel attracted to each other, because it turns out there's a human mating dance and nobody's taught us this. We say, oh wow, I didn't realize that there's a whole part of me, and her, that has this kind of the ancient animal part of us that needs to do this mating dance. I could do something that would make her feel attracted to me. Like that's just a whole, it's just from another dimension. It's a whole new way of looking at things. This is the kind of mindset shift. If you can teach a few of these that will make it so that a person's mind will start opening up so that when you get to day two and you start teaching them techniques and action steps for doing it, they're more open and they're more kind of flexible. So then the next day you start teaching action steps for doing this new thing that they maybe weren't even aware of in the first place. If you need to shift them from thinking that they need to exercise to you need to watch what you eat, on day one, you need to give them a mindset shift called, if you're overweight and you start exercising, you will probably gain weight. That's a mindset shift. That's something where someone says, huh, what, why is that? And then you explain why. Then, you give these new reframes, these new ways of looking at things. And then on day two, that's when you can start giving tactics. Okay, here's the food to eat in order to start burning the fat.

Here's the way to eat so that it lines back up with the things that you said on the day one. So mindset shifts at the beginning, then techniques and action steps on day two. So they get some good content, some good practical stuff. Then day three, have some validation. They have some other people come and say, yeah, here's what I was doing, I was overweight, and then here's what I ate. Then here's how it transformed my life, so that they can see, Oh, there are other people with those mindsets. There are other people that are taking those actions, and it's actually working. If you've only got an hour to do this, at the beginning of the hour, give them one great mindset shift. Say, here's the big one. If you're overweight, and you start exercising, you'll probably gain weight, and here's why and then for the one technique that you do right after that, you say, so if you actually want to lose weight, then here's the way to do it. Eat this many meals with this many calories, and then this is going to help you lose weight. Then when you get to part three, maybe you don't have time, because you're only in an hour, you don't have time to bring validation, and you say, you be your validation. You say, here's my story. I was 30 pounds overweight. I started exercising. I gained 10 pounds. Then I learned about this thing. I figured it out with the diet. I ate like this, and in 90 days, I lost 20 pounds. Here's the before and after picture. So you can be your own kind of case study. But the point is that if you do one of these over an event, two, three, four days, and it's a virtual event or an in-person event, and you do some interaction, you do some other kind of interesting stuff, have people do exercises and things, by the time you get through the event, they will actually experience what in the event space we call transformation, where they come on at the end, and they say, this has just changed the game for me.

I finally understand. I can do it. I see how I was thinking wrong. I see what I need to do right. You get great testimonials and so forth.

Wow, Eben. Drop the mic, man. I think you just delivered the golden ticket right there. Thank you. Thanks for giving that mental model of a three-day event or really any time frame that we can use to make sure that people have a shift, have a transformation. I know people were listening to this. They're listening to this because they want to lead people in a better place after their event than they were when they came into their event from a mindset perspective as well as a business perspective. Eben, you and I had a discussion a couple years back with the VCA about the topic of Caledonia's book Influence And The Six Forces Of Influence. We really talked a lot about commitment and consistency and somebody's desire to be consistent with their identity as being the most powerful force inside of them. I see how you implement it within the virtual coach where you have people declare, I am a coach and communicate that with their community. Can you, because this is such an important point. I remember you made the point that you want to do it in a way such that the identity shift they have, it occurs to them that the natural next step is for them to join your program. I think that right there is so valuable. I would just love it if you could take a couple of minutes to expand on that.

Psychologists, I don't know, people that pay attention to this kind of thing have noticed that we have this thing called self-concept, self-image, identity, self-identity. We have a persona and a public identity as well, kind of our reputation out there, but we have who we think we are. We like to stay consistent with who we think we are. At least most people do. There are a few people who don't necessarily, they're not attached to their own identity and they're more flexible. I recommend we all try to be that, but the reality is most people are. If a person says, well, I'm a bachelor, then they want to remain consistent with that. If you say, hey, are you interested in getting married and having kids soon? They're going to be like, no, I'm a bachelor. Or if they're married and have a family and they're happy and so forth, you say, hey, you want to go on a date with a friend of mine? You're like, I'm married and I have kids. I'm a father and a husband. We go right back to that identity. Well, it's the same thing too with politics. Oh, those conservative wackos who think this, or those Libs, those damn libs, they're all crazy because of whatever. But we have our identity in there that is against that. When you can figure out what your labels are for yourself, or what you think you are, then you'll just notice that you try to remain consistent with those things. And so the idea is with your clients, with your audience, if you can help them to start taking on a new identity, that is just, it's a total game changer because then they will, a new identity or even a new reality, like the way the world works, then everything inside of that, their beliefs, their values, their behaviors, all of these things that kind of nest inside of identity and reality model, they all, almost like dominoes, getting knocked over.

This is why religions and a lot of exclusive organizations and cults and so forth, they always have a ceremony at the beginning where you get dubbed or you get declared, you take on a new identity, you do a public thing so that you'll be consistent with that thing. So if you can get your clients and your audience to see what the next level of development is for themselves, and you can help them to see that for them, and then to really take on, yes, that's where I'm going. Then you have an offer that helps them become that person, then that can really work. Now, obviously, we have to be careful and we want to do this very ethically and we always want to do it in a way that it both benefits you and your client or your audience, but you mentioned being a coach. A lot of people, they have knowledge, they have experience, they have skills, they want to be a coach, they even see internally like, I'm a coaching type person, but they haven't just owned it. They haven't said, all right, I'm a coach. So sometimes in a training program or in teaching, sometimes even in a sales presentation, I'll say, all right, throw your hat over the fence, just do it, man. Just say you're a coach, like let's declare it here. Go into the chat, just type in there, I'm a coach, and then everyone will type in, I'm a coach, and I'll say, great. Now, notice how you feel, and when you are talking to other people, introduce yourself as a coach. If you're a chef and now you're a coach, when people in the future ask you, what do you do? You say, I'm a chef and a coach, or just I'm a coach, and just start saying it, and then everyone will get it, they'll practice it a little bit, maybe in the event or in the session, and then I'll say, now, great, if you're really serious about this, come with us and come to our virtual coach program, and we'll show you how to make that a reality and how to get clients and how to grow your practice and so forth.

So if you can help people get to see the next level of identity and then really buy into that as a vision for themselves, and it's the right thing for them, then it makes it more likely that they'll join you and your community or your event or your program if that then helps them realize that identity or manifest it more.

Eben, amazing. Thank you for expanding on that. Between that and the model you just gave, I think anybody listening to this has the tools they need to radically shift somebody's lives and get clients in an ethical, moral way through their event, so thank you. And here we are, if you're doing a multi-day event, there comes a point in the event, day two or day three, where it's time to invite people to work with you at a higher level, and by the way, I actually was lucky enough to be in the room, both events where you introduced the VCA and the virtual coach, and I was blown away. I've seen you do it before and you just get better and better every time. It was the best I've seen you do, and I'd be curious if you can share a little bit about some of your mindset and mental framework that you use as you invite people to work with you at a higher level. I think that'd be helpful.

Well, you're probably better than me at this. You know a lot about this one yourself, but my approach, my strategy for doing this is to, in my mind, I just imagine that one of my clients, somebody that's with me is, they've now gotten a taste of whatever it is that we're trying to do, becoming a coach or building their business or learning marketing, and now for the serious ones, the ones that are really committed, there's a pathway for them to go to the next level, and I want to show them there's a pathway, there are benefits, there are great results you're going to get, there are others that are on this path with you, and that by being here with this community, it's that condition you put in place that's going to make it all work. Like making this commitment, that's going to give you the highest probability of getting to that place that you want to get to. So that's how I kind of tend to structure it. Most of my high-end invitations slash offers are you've experienced the power in my course or my program or my book, now you get it, you want to go to the next level, here's the next level, here are all the benefits, here are some examples of people that are succeeding with it, and then here's a great offer. If you register right now, we'll give you some extra stuff, we're getting started soon, and then come along. It's a remembering that if you have a hundred people in a room who all said that they want to be there to do something like be a better mom and dad or get their dog to stop barking or meditate until you're enlightened or whatever the topic is that you're teaching on, to remember that of those hundred people that are there, 20 of them are probably really serious and they just need a pathway to join you and something that explains to them they can get what they want, avoid what they don't want, they can do it in a community, they can learn, they can get the download of all of your years of experience summarized, it's facilitated. It's that. And now come along, start right now, let's get you to that next level that you want to go to.

Awesome, man, thank you for sharing that and you know the saying that goes along the lines of when two or more people meet, the person who has more certainty will influence the other person, and I was watching you last week and you were so congruent, you were so confident, you believed in yourself and your program so much, it just communicated to your beingness, it was like you just knew. You're like, hey, I promise you're going to have the most successful year of your life, period, or you come look me in the eyes, you show me you've done your homework and I'll give you your money back, no questions asked, you said it but with so much congruence, it was amazing.

You know why? It's because for the two weeks before I was doing case studies and I was sitting down with people who had just gone through it, who were telling me their stories of using the material, doing the things that we said and getting a bunch of clients and making a bunch of money and creating the lifestyles that they wanted. It's like just seeing people telling me that they were helping people build their businesses and whatever, I said, wow, this is really working. The people who weren't doing all of the things themselves, they weren't getting the same level of results and I was like, this is it, we're really nailing it here. So the conviction of getting testimonials really helps a lot too.

That right there is a great two millimeter distinction bathed in your testimonials, a couple of weeks prior just to remember the difference. You were so clear and so congruent, it was like, yes. By the way, a quick little plug for the VCA. I was a member of a VCA program for two years and I'm in the business of training, education, coaching, high-end mastermind programs and helping others grow and scale their own and no offense to any of my other friends or clients or partners, but the value that I got for the dollar in the VCA was by far the best experience, the best return on investment, the best experience ever. I was blown away by how you deliver every single day a support through COVID, after COVID, the whole thing, I was like, I didn't know this was possible that someone could deliver and give and create such an amazing container that if honored and followed directions, we're going to get amazing results. It's no surprise to me that you had dozens and dozens of testimonials leading into the event. So I'm grateful to have been one of them. Thank you.

Thanks Rudy. And thank you for giving me one. I appreciate it.

I just speak in my truth, man. So thank you brother for sharing this. And I do want to highlight a couple points on the event. My observations, you do a great job of building the case by using what seems like market research. You don't make it about your program. You're like, hey, this is the industry. These are the trends. This is where things are going. I love how you do that. Then it just becomes that in combination with all the other factors we talked about, it just occurs as a natural next step for them to join the program. I love how, at least in your high end program, you do it as an application. You say, hey, put down the $500. There's zero risk to it and speak to a member of my team, fill out an application. I'm a big believer in the application process as well. That also is congruent with commitment and consistency from Keldini's book. What you did at this event that for me was brilliant. As you said, this class starts tomorrow. Like you joined us, you paid $500. You're in the class with the students tomorrow. You basically have a week to test drive this thing while you get things sorted out with my team. I thought that was brilliant. They just jumped right into it. It was just like no delay. They were in it from one day to the next. I'm curious, how did that turn out? Did that work well for you guys?

I think so. I think it worked great.

Awesome. Very cool. I'm always learning from you, man.

So I know we're going a little bit long here, we're going to kind of start wrapping up here. And I appreciate you having just taken extra time to go deep here and add value. I know this show, this episode is going to be one that's watched by hundreds, if not thousands of people. I know I'm going to watch it multiple times and take notes myself. So I want to go into kind of a lightning round, rapid fire questions, like a 30 second or less top of mind, what comes up for you. The first question is, what would you say are three common mistakes that, maybe you made or that you discovered you were making when doing your events?

It usually just comes down to talking about what I think rather than understanding what they are there to learn and then wrapping up whatever it is that I'm trying to teach inside of what they're there to learn.

Awesome. Great. Thank you for sharing that. Anything else that you would say is maybe to something you made a mistake, you learned from it, you did it wrong, but it was kind of, maybe it was counterintuitive, something along the line. In doing events specifically.

I mean, when I started doing events, Rudy, my first seminar that I did, I, this was it. I stood up on stage. I had my laptop and I would put up a slide that would have like 10 bullets in tiny print. Then I would put that slide up on the screen, which nobody could read the thing. Then I would just read the slide. And when you watch the video, it's just terrible. I'd read the whole slide and then I'd kind of turn to the audience and make a couple of comments on it. But it was good enough. They say done is the new perfect. I would say it's the mistakes, be willing to make all those mistakes because what you're going to learn is so much more valuable. You just have to be willing to make all those mistakes. I'd say another mistake. I didn't make this one, but I see a lot of people making it, not pressing the record button. Because when you teach, just press the record button, who knows, it might be good. Then you could put it up as a free piece of content. You could use it in other ways. You could transcribe it. You go, what did I say? So definitely press the record button. I think that's really important. Related to that, when I was kind of getting started, you want to get as many forms of value as you can out of everything. You really want to do that. So, let's say you do a free event for five friends on how to lose weight or how to get a date or something. Record it, run it through a transcription service, turn on Otter AI or whatever.

Just have it be transcribed. Go back through it, make some notes, take a chunk of it, put it up on your social media, take the notes, make a blog post or an email newsletter. Reuse your stuff, use it in different ways. I think that's one that I could have done a much better job of when I first got started.

Great feedback. You know, I was actually in the middle of this show, I was like, wait a second, did I hit record? Hit record. Eben, next question. You're an avid reader, that I know about you. What is a book or resource that you might recommend to someone who's leading or hosting virtual events?

That's a good one on virtual events. You're so cutting edge here, I haven't thought about this. Let's see a book or resource on virtual events. I think you need to write one, Rudy. It's a really good question. You stumped me. I don't have an answer on that one. Whatever Rudy writes, you should read.

Well, I'll run the transcript by you and you can give me a little endorsement. Let me know if it's a good one.

Thank you. I mean, the thing to do is to just read some books about sales and marketing. Read Spin Selling, read Ogilvy on advertising, read Claude Hopkins stuff, and just really internalize client needs. Be thinking in terms of client needs, not what you think they need, what they think they need. And then you sneak your stuff into what they think they need. I mean, sneak in a positive way. You don't lead with like, here, you should be learning this. Instead you say, oh, here's the thing you want to learn. Let me teach that to you. Then here's another thing that I want to add.

Awesome. Love it. So here's another question. It could be a little personal, could be business, but what is the next summit that you want to climb or the next kind of thing you're working towards in your life? What is that summit for you?

Right now I'm working on a passion project to do with art. You know, when I was young, I mentioned I was a guitar player, I was a rock and roll guitar player, but I left my artistic life to go figure business out. An opportunity came up last year to kind of work on this. It's just truly a passion project and to work on visual art. I've been working with a few artists and trying to just make some cool stuff. It's been so cool. It's been so great to work on this. And so for me, it's to develop the artist side, because I think that we can be practical people. We can get things done in life and just like do and get results. I think that's an important side of us to cultivate. We can be relational people where we give and receive emotional energy. We can be intellectual, but I think we need to cultivate the artist piece of us. I interviewed Richard Branson several years ago and he said the entrepreneur, like a great entrepreneur, is really an artist where they want every piece of it to kind of be perfect. I relate to that. I try to make as many pieces of my courses and programs as possible. To just really develop that artist side of me for a while, I think is important so that I can improve the quality of everything that I do more.

Beautiful. And here's a follow-up question to that. What do you feel is the challenge or obstacle you need to overcome to reach that next summit?

Oh man, art is art, this is the hardest thing I've ever done as far as a project. It's just to stay in the game, just keep showing up, keep being willing to make stuff that's horrible and believing that if I just keep going and keep improving a little bit at a time, eventually I'll make something that is good.

Beautiful. I remember in one of our lessons, you taught this idea of you getgoing on something and you get to a point where you kind of want to stop or quit. And then you notice that this is probably the point where most people stop and if you just go a little bit beyond that, you end up being good because you just went beyond the point where most people stop and quit.

It's the old three feet from gold, think and grow rich thing. It's like, don't stop, keep going, just keep going.

Keep going. So Eben, here's an interesting question. What legacy do you want to leave? When it's all said and done, what do you want to leave behind? What do you want to be remembered for?

Just believing that there's a next level for each of us and all of us. There's another level that when we get there, everything changes. You know, we can all awaken to another level of our own potential, our own being. There's always another level. There's always another level to go to. And right now we're starting to integrate this idea into culture and the whole planet is starting to realize it. I think there's a whole other level of collaborative possibility available for our planet. And I'd love to contribute to that emerging.

Contributing to the emerging of a collaborative world.

Well, a collaborative world that knows the benefits of continuing to develop. Continuing to develop. Because as we go through life, we go through phases. We're a child, then we're a young adult, then an adult. Then a lot of us will have families and then maybe we'll have multiple generations of family. Professionally we'll be in school, we'll have a career, then maybe we'll graduate and become kind of a manager, or maybe we'll go on and become a coach or teacher. It's a natural process to go through developmental phases. When you become an adult or you have a family, you see everything totally differently. You kind of look back on childhood and you realize, oh, that's why I saw things that way. Wow. What a cool perspective. Now that I have a child, I see everything through the child's eyes in a different way. And that allows me to kind of keep going. I think there's fulfillment in increasing development. There's, as long as we believe in it. If you study Abraham Maslow or Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book Flow. He wrote another book called Creativity that I really love. He talks about how to basically be, I'm paraphrasing here, but to be happy and fulfilled, you have to continually increase the complexity in whatever your domain is, because that's what keeps things interesting. You keep increasing your complexity and what you're able to do and what you're able to hold.

And the more you learn, the more you can learn, the more you develop, the more you can develop. I'm not trying to be some idealistic, super progressive, whatever person here, but I'm just ground level, I have experienced that there's always another level to develop to. When you develop to that level, it makes all the other ones that you've been through in your life interesting and new ways. You can create at higher levels, you can collaborate at higher levels. This planet, we've got a lot of things that we need to figure out right now, and we need to collaborate at a much higher level. I think we're going to. I think we're going to figure this out and not without some casualties of some rainforests and some species and some people and some cultures. That's already happened and I hope that we can wrap our heads around not being so kind of needlessly destructive. I know I have a lot of work to do and I think a lot of us do, but I believe that we can get there. I think we can get there and take care of the planet, take care of each other, and start doing things for more internal growth reasons, rather than just for a lot of the external power status money stuff.

Awesome. I appreciate taking a moment to really expand on that and more of what's important to you and your mission and what you want to be remembered for. Speaking of legacy, you wrote this amazing book called Opportunity, How to Win Big, or How to Win in Business and Create a Life You Love. I opened it up this morning because I wanted to prepare for our interview, and I've read it before. So I opened it up, and I was actually speaking with one of my coaches that I pay and I work with. I said, I'm going to open up to a random page and just see what comes out. I opened it up to page 66, and I saw a little star that I put on the side there. And I go over and I find this question that you wrote, that you asked yourself, you wrote, the question that now accompanies me daily is, would my current behavior contribute to me having a happy and triumphant death? That was cool, man. That's a cool question. But a powerful question. I shared that with my coach, and he wrote it down.

Well what's interesting, Rudy, I don't think you've seen this, but now when I start all of our classes, you know how I do that refresh where I get everyone to kind of stand up and stretch and move around and whatever? At the end of it now, of all of them, I have everyone envision, it's the end of your life, you're laying down to take your last breath, close your eyes for the last time. And you're feeling triumphant. You're feeling successful. You're feeling fulfilled because you've lived your life. You've done it. You gave your gift. You really, you lived your purpose. And then they kind of even zoom out and become aware of the witness of who's observing, which part of them is observing, directing their attention. So I've incorporated it now into all of those, because this is something Annie taught me. Annie brought onto my radar screen, this idea that your dying moment could be the most triumphant moment of your life. I had never considered that. I was afraid of death. I was like, I don't want to die. That sounds scary and terrible. And she said, no, it could be your greatest moment of triumph. I was like, huh, what are you talking about? She's like, yeah, think about it. If you live your life, the solution to the fear of death is not trying to work on your fear. It's to live more life. If you live more, then you're not afraid of death because you used your life up really well. You feel fulfilled with your life. And I said, whoa, that's really good. Annie's my greatest teacher. So yeah, she's where that idea came from.

And the more I do it, the more I think about my life ending with me looking back and saying, I did it. I came, I tried, I worked hard, I loved, I did all the stuff, and I gave my gifts. What's next? Like the mystery, nobody knows, but I want to kind of be like, all right, we did that. Now what's left? Or no, that's what's left. There isn't anything left. What's next?

Incredible. Thank you, brother, for that reminder. And just on a side note, I watched the documentary on Netflix yesterday, per my friend, Ram Dass, Coming Home. And it's my introduction to Ram Dass. I was really touched by this idea of just being at peace and having your death actually be like a celebration of the most beautiful thing, the transition of your life, but that you've lived such a life that was worth living, that you're like, yeah, that was awesome. That reminder every day. And we don't know life without knowing death. So, Eben, what's like the number one way listeners, they want to learn more about you and what you do? What's the number one way they can contact you or just learn about what you do or get involved with what you're doing?

Look me up. Come find me, see what I'm doing.