EXPOSED: The Shocking Truth About Live Events & Revenue Growth You NEED to Know
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There's two types of live events, right? Virtual events. There's free and there's paid. Generally, what I do and what I've just done the last couple of weeks with 50,000 people were free. I wish I had 50,000 paid. I'd be making even more money. Unless you have like a big brand and like 30 grand in ad spend, you're going to be scared to spend a bunch of money on selling tickets and

And you're probably going to sell tickets and get like 50 people register, right? And then only 20 show up and it's kind of disheartening. So at least with free, you can get thousands of people maybe attend or register at least. And then obviously more people on there, which gives you more confidence and more energy and stuff. My name is Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast. And I'm here to change the way you see your life.

in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Guys, welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today, we're going to talk about selling from live events. I'm going to talk about virtual and in-person events. In the last couple of months, I've ran two big live virtual events. First one, we had 30,000 plus people at

This last one I did last week, we had about 20,000 people register. So about 50,000 people live, well, at least registering, 50,000 people registering for those two live events. And this coming weekend, I have a big event with Les Brown and I host my own live events. So I wanna talk about filling live events, live virtual events and selling and why they're great, right? And why you should have them in your business, especially if you're a coach or consultant. But even if you're like an e-commerce brand owner

or you have maybe physical products, don't underestimate the power of live events. I know a lot of fitness pros and people selling health products, they host live events still, even though it's an e-commerce product and they do very, very well. Now, of course, coaches do very well. Consultants, education brands, high ticket.

But also software companies. And if you're thinking, what? How do software companies sell events? Look at Russell Brunson, right? Like he's a software company. He's built a big personal brand. But ClickFunnels is a software. And he has massive events, right? And he has a mastermind education component. But he does very well with in-person events, right? And then he also does very well with live virtual events.

He's hosting every couple of months a big virtual event where he's filling tens of thousands of people. And what he does is he bakes in other products and stuff as part of the challenge or the event to sell the software on the back end. And I'm not going to go into too much of that, but it can work for pretty much any business listening today. That's what I wanted to get across with that intro.

So talking about live virtual events to start, like I said, we just hosted two big virtual events. Those two events, we did about half a million dollars in sales. And it's pretty good because obviously there's a buildup, there's time, there's promotions, et cetera, but you're only doing a couple of hours, right? So the ROI for your time actually hosting it and presenting it, it's amazing. And we're

Once we had built the first one, the second one was very easy, right? That second one, we did a little less in revenue and a little less people. We had about 20,000 register, but we probably spent like three or four hours on the logistics and promo of it. And then a couple of hours on the event because we had built it all. We just reran a new version a month later. And of course, you know, I'm not saying you'll do those kind of figures, right? Like that's just what I've done in those two examples. And obviously I have a big brand and stuff.

and I've worked up to that over many years, my first ever webinar, I did way less, right? Or my first ever event. So you do have to build up, but they can be super powerful. That's why you see Grant Cardone doing it. Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi do big massive events all the time virtually and in person obviously. Russell's doing them. So I always like to reverse engineer success from other people. And pretty much every like top person in our industry doing over 50 million.

have big live events and big virtual events on a regular basis. So just like, to me, it's kind of like that. Well, that makes sense. Then I probably should do it too. Right. That's kind of how my brain works. So we got into it more about a year ago. Um, and we really committed to it about a year ago and we've probably hosted, you know, 20 plus event live virtual events at this point, um, done millions of dollars from it really added a new revenue stream to my business. I'm super, super happy with that. Um,

and super helpful for me. And I think people enjoy it more than ever now. Like it's harder to sell education products. So yeah, look at it as something to maybe add, okay?

So let's talk about live virtual events. Okay. And of course, when you talk about a virtual event, it can become like a webinar where it's evergreen and automated over time. But I actually prefer doing more like bigger one-time live events. And I never thought in the past that I would do these because I always used to think, oh, there's so much work and you put weeks into it and it might implode and go wrong and not do well.

So, you know, honestly, I wasn't a big fan of it a while ago. I used to love just like running my evergreen automated offers, my low ticket courses and just leaving them running. But now I do both, right? And they both do well. And it's just a whole new experience, new revenue stream. And it's pretty great for the brand, like talking about this live virtual event. We had 50,000 people register in those two events in the last couple of months.

So it's like imagine building an email list of 50,000 people like that took me like three years to do. And I do it in two months. Right. And obviously they're not as warm as like buyers and stuff, but still it's considerable. Right.

So how what is a live virtual event first, right? You probably are. Okay, really? You got me hooked What is this thing if you don't know what it is to summarize what it is? It's a basically imagine like a one day. It could be a two-hour thing It could be a full day. It could be like a full two days or three day challenge style But it's literally like a live event done virtually. That's why it's called live virtual event. Um

And we, you know, like I'm standing, I have a full real camera doing it, presenting, blah, blah, blah. Not always. Sometimes I literally just do my MacBook sitting down. But like generally when you get really good, it's like a full production almost, right? And you don't have to do that, but you want to treat it like...

like that from a business owner's perspective and also from an audience perspective of engaging with them, hyping them up, having a nice backdrop, having different speakers maybe, different slides, different presentations. So it's not like a webinar where you just get on and everyone's muted, cameras are off.

they can't chat and you're just pitching it like doing a presentation and a pitch for 90 minutes. A live virtual event is more of a bigger deal, right? And I actually think that's why it does well 'cause people like it. And obviously it became very successful, you know, Dean and Tony and Grant and people have really spearheaded it, I would say in our industry. Pete Vargas, a friend of mine too,

Pedro, another friend of mine, since COVID, right? So in the last three or four years, since the lockdown and obviously events got canceled for a year, it really pushed this like live virtual event

And one of my other friends, Bill, he's been on my podcast a year ago. He was doing like 20 million a year from in-person events. And then because of COVID, he switched to virtual events and now he doesn't even do in-person events. He just does virtual events and does like 20, 30 million from them. So you can do as well, if not better from virtual events.

because you can advertise to more people, you can go worldwide, people don't have to fly, they don't have to make the travel, right? And it's easier for them to attend less friction, but you still get, and obviously there's downsides, but you still get hours with them to present to them, to build rapport with them, to indoctrinate them, to provide value to them. So it's really beneficial

for your brand because those people, if you imagine you spend two days with someone, they're much warmer than if they watch a 30 minute video or they just book a sales call, right? So you really warm these people up well, even the non buyers. So we talked about structure, right? So it can be like an afternoon, it can be a day, it can be two or three days.

and then generally how i structure it is like big production right so it's like big sales page website page it's structured like an event page with different speakers topics agendas uh

You really want to hype it up and make it fun. And the reason for that is people want to feel that experience, right? They don't want to just be like, oh, it's going to be a webinar, right? So you want to make it feel great. And like, if you watch how Tony does his, it's fascinating because what he'll do is like, he'll have people, you know, have it on their TVs and they'll be like jumping in their living rooms on video and they'll like pan to their videos, like on his virtual stage. Like, so that's really great to just like model and think about.

And then, like I said, days wise, it's hopefully pretty clear now. You can start of an afternoon or one day and then you could obviously go for more in depth if you wanted to. Speaker wise, it's not quite as necessary to have like 10 different speakers like an in-person event might be.

What I would suggest is like you're the main speaker, maybe a staff member or two, or maybe like a couple of big guests, like famous people or semi-famous in your industry. So that'll help you promote it and really push it to the world, right? I wouldn't have like, hey, I'm going to have 20 different random speakers. That becomes what's called a summit. That's a little different, okay? And they do work. They've been around a very long time.

But I don't think they work quite as well as that's more like with a bunch of affiliates and everyone promoing it. This still wants to feel like your event, you're the host, you're the presenter. Okay. So maybe pull in a couple of industry experts or like celebrity experts or celebrities or well-known figures in your space, maybe a client or someone that's well-known that can really kind of amp you up. Yourself is going to be obviously the main person, then maybe a staff member, right?

So that's the idea behind the agenda and behind who's going to speak. And then in terms of topic and theme, you always want to plan a topic or a theme. You want to plan, hey, this virtual event or topic or theme is going to be around, I don't know, how to run Facebook ads successfully, right? Or how to...

How to build a million dollar company through webinars and it's an event or it's a live event all about webinars. So you want to have something kind of specific like that or how to become a speaker and land speaking gigs or how to become a

world-class sales rep. So you want to try and have something specific versus just like make money, you know? Um, and in fitness, it'd be the same thing. You'd want like a, maybe a virtual event called like the, you know, the fat loss accelerator live, where it's all about how to lose fat. Um,

while eating the foods you love, right? And it's different talks about losing weight, how to still enjoy your life, what types of diets to have, one on supplementation, but it's all around the theme of fat loss. You don't want something just like health and fitness event because it's too broad and it's not specific. So you want to have something a little more niche and specific, okay?

So that's the kind of theme. Once you've got the theme, just like any offer, have a really strong hook, a really strong promise, a clear outcome in two days or in one afternoon or in one day, you're gonna learn, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, right? And then you wanna build your agenda around that and teach what people wanna learn, what's buzzy, right? So don't just teach like, oh, you're gonna learn about food,

Working out and supplements, it's like boring, come on, of course I'm gonna learn that. That's like the three things that everyone teaches, right? So you wanna make it sexy, right? So it's like, you're gonna learn the celebrity workout that helps you burn fat from your home in 20 minutes or less. That's the workout portion.

the food portion, you're going to learn how to quickly lose weight in the foods you love. And there's one secret rule to eating that will help you lose weight on any diet. And then for supplements, you're going to learn the five supplements that help burn body fat, proven by science, and what supplements you should avoid. You see how I just took three boring things and I made them sexy. So

Your agenda on the topics or what we might call pillars, right? The key elements or the key pillars is very important. You structure them well and make them sexy because you want people to be reading that registration page or sales page and go, wow, I want to attend. Okay.

So next is price. There's two types of live events, right? Virtual events. There's free and there's paid. Generally what I do and what I've just done the last couple of weeks with 50,000 people were free. I wish I had 50,000 paid. I'd be making even more money.

So what we do is we have a free ticket and then we have it on a upsell page. On the thank you page, we have an option where they can upgrade to VIP. That's generally how most people do it. It gives them the opportunity for if they want to buy a ticket, it's normally $50, $100, something like that. And they'll get extra sessions, maybe an extra speaker, maybe some takeaways like cheat sheets, workshops, stuff.

um maybe an hour of q a with the host you right or me in this case um before or after so generally the goal this is really important the goal with that is it covers the ad spend so say we spend 20 grand promoting the event we want to have sold um 200 people at 100 right or whatever the mass is to cover that 20 grand in ad spend um

And then that way you go into the event breaking even. Sometimes we still lose money. Like more recently as we've scaled, we like go in in the red, like 30, 40%, but it's okay. But when we started, we were breaking even. So if you can go in breaking even, it's like, hey, now I've got whatever, right? Say your first event, you have a thousand people. Hey, I'm going into my first event with a thousand people registered and I paid zero money for it. And then...

Obviously, if you make 20, 30, 40, 50 grand at the event, it's like it's free profit, right? It's all profit because you covered all your expenses with the VIP ticket. Now, the other cool thing is you don't have hotels, you don't have flights, you don't have staff costs, you don't have venue, you don't have food. Like I'm hosting an event this weekend and we spend 50 grand just on the venue and food and logistics, right? So you do save that and that's nice and also less stressful.

So we talked about free versus paid. If you're going to do paid, you'll obviously sometimes do like a $29 ticket, $49.97, something like that. It's generally cheaper than the $500 or $1,000 tickets. You need a very strong brand to really sell a virtual event at that price, in my opinion. So I generally like freed. It's less.

It's easier to start to because unless you have like a big brand and like 30 grand in ad spend, you're going to be scared to spend a bunch of money on selling tickets. And you're probably going to sell tickets and get like 50 people register. Right. And then only 20 show up and it's kind of disheartening. So at least with three, you can get thousands of people maybe attend or register at least. And then obviously more people on there, which gives you more confidence and more energy and stuff. Right.

So talking about ticket sales next is attendance. Here's what the downside is to free. Because it's free, there's no big commitment. So generally when it's a free ticket, 20% show up.

I know that's kind of crazy. So if you have 50,000 people register, uh, register, maybe 10 or 20, 10 or 12,000 will show. Um, so like when we've had 30,000 people register, we got about six, um, six to 7,000 attend. Um,

maybe about 8,000 in total that came and got, went right. But that's about the rule of thumb, 20%. And that's just the way it is. Like even webinars, right. That are like same day webinars. And so only 30% maybe will attend. Um,

Even when you sell a low ticket program, right, like 50% will go through it, 50% won't. So you're always going to have lowish attendance. Even when you sell live event tickets, we find like 10, 15% don't show up. So it just is what it is. But it's a numbers game. And really, it's like, hey, yes, it sucks. Obviously, we'd all love 100% to show up.

But generally at scale, it will be like 20, 25%. Obviously, smaller events to warm traffic, you might get 50% show up. I've not seen decently sized events with more than 40, 50% show up that are free. Paid, I have. But obviously paid, you get more show up, but you have way less total registrants. So it kind of balances out, right?

So, and the ways that are really important, I can't go into it all today, but to improve show rate, you want to be texting and emailing, you want to be getting them excited. You maybe want to even run retargeting ads if it's like two weeks out before the event. And we actually do most of the promo 10 days out because if we go any earlier than that, we find that the show rate gets even less from those people that register like three weeks away for a free event, they forget about it.

And we really push it hard on the last three or four days. That's where we actually get 50% of our people. And those people are the best show rate and buyers because they're kind of warm, right? So talk about show rate, text and emailing them to get them to come. Ticket price. We talked about how to style your event, the hook, offer positioning of it. We talked about VIP ticket. Promotion wise. Yeah, just social media, affiliates, email in your list, text in your list.

Running ads is obviously what I mostly do, posting on social. And most of that should happen 14 days out with a big push in the last four or five days. That's the promo side. And then the final side is obviously pitching, right? So you have yourself, you open, maybe a couple of speakers, you're back, another speaker, you're back.

And then you generally will pitch if it's a one day event at the end of the day or a half day event at the end of the day. If it's a two day event, you might pitch on the end of day one and then again at the end of day two. So you're pitching twice and you basically just want to pitch like a webinar offer, right? So it's like a clear one time. It's a clear offer.

It's not like, hey, we have these 27 different programs you can join. It's like, hey, we have this one thing. And it's generally 25, 30 minutes of you setting up for it, talking about why they should invest, what it includes, giving them the options, what the outcomes might be, what they get, testimonials, price point, maybe a payment plan option to a guarantee and Q&A. Right. So that

part wants to be after most of the content when they're excited that you've built rapport, you've showed them all this cool stuff you do and all the knowledge you have. Okay. And then you want to follow up with those people with emails and texts for the next few days, because a lot of them didn't buy but might buy or they forgot to buy or they didn't attend and they still buy from even if they didn't attend, then you can still buy the offer. Okay.

So that's generally how you position the pitch pop. So there you have it guys. That's literally how to build out your entire live virtual event. And in person is very similar. Okay. So just to touch on in person a little, I couldn't go into it too much today. I'll do another talk on it, but, um,

The big difference with in-person, all of those similar rules apply, but you want to do the promo about three months out. You want to secure your venue and ticket prices will generally be more like 200, 500 and a thousand. We'll generally do like a general ticket, a VIP and a super VIP. So we'll really build those ticket tiers out. And we still obviously pitch at the event. And if it's a two day event, the same thing, we'll probably pitch end of day one and again on day two. Yeah.

So that's how you present and build these great live events. I suggest you start live virtual event, especially if you're a coach, consultant, et cetera. It's definitely interesting tests and, um, yeah, happy to help you more on it. Just, um, go through that system, uh, probably plan a month ahead, build it out for two, three weeks, and then two weeks of promo. Um,

And like I said, if you have a thousand people register, you should have 200 show up, maybe a little less if you've not optimized all your reminder sequences. And ideally you're selling 10%, so 10 to 20%. So if you have a hundred, two thousand people register,

say 200 show up, you should sell about 20 people into the program, which could be a $3,000 or a $3,000. It could be a $1,000. It could be a $5,000. Obviously 5,000, you'll have less buy, but it's more value. 1,000, you might have 20% buy, but it's lower value. Okay.

And yeah, hopefully it's an amazing experience. You had a ton of value. It's a lot of fun. It's tiring, but a lot of fun. And you make some good money in the process. So that's how you build live virtual events, guys. I hope that helped. And I'll see you very soon.