Why in-person events compress your time-to-success in high-ticket sales

Hey, I'm Dylan, and this is the High Ticket Sales Podcast. Since 2017, I've been completely consumed with the idea of making an online income. And believe me, since then I've tried and failed at my fair share of businesses. In 2022, I quit a 6-figure sales job to go all in on this remote closing thing I had heard about. Fast forward a couple of years into 2024, I took home over $400,000 as a fractional sales manager, all while running another business in the space that actually did better than that. This industry has allowed me to achieve one of my biggest goals, which is to earn well and do so on my own terms. On this podcast, you can expect me to share what's working right now for sales reps and sales teams, nerdy deep dives on topics that are interesting to me, and conversations with my friends. Minimal edits, no sales pitch, no script. If you do like this pod, make sure you drop a like and subscribe so that you catch the future episodes. Now let's get into it. So I just rode out on my bike to the park in the middle of the day, get some sun, listen to a podcast, and sit down with a pen and paper. To brainstorm what I was going to talk about. And if you're on the video, you can see right now I've got a little bit of pen ink and imprints on paper because the pen that I brought didn't work very well. So on this podcast, I'm going to be trying to dissect what I just wrote for you guys. The good news is these are not just random thoughts. These are all thoughts that I had put together that made me feel like it was important to film a podcast on in-person events and why they're important and why they can change the trajectory of your career or your life and why that is over simply doing things remote. This is coming at a fitting time because we just wrapped up our 4th annual High Ticket Sales Meetup. So I want you to know that while we just sold out of our VIP tickets for a 3rd year, I'm not just making this podcast to sell you more tickets. There are no tickets to be sold. I'm doing a little bit of reflection on these events and how they changed people's lives after all the many, many, many conversations I've had this past weekend. So we've been running this event for 4 years now. I've seen people come to all of them. I've seen people come to 2 of them, to 3 of them. And it's kind of crazy. You're not coming to an event 2, 3 years in a row and not being in this space or quitting or something like that. Like every single person, including many of the speakers that come to our event, they come back significantly better every single time. That being said, they're not quitting. They're sticking to the thing. It might be slow, might be some ups and downs, but they're showing up. These people are making friends at the event, friends that they would never get to meet online, or maybe they've been connected to online, but they like didn't really know them until they were put in a position to speak with them in person. The types of people that are coming to these events, you have to think about how serious they are because just like it costs you money to get there and you're considering amongst all things, is this worth it to you? They're doing the same thing. And then falling on the side of, yes, this is worth it. Yes, the time here is worth it, the investment, the connections. And when you combine a bunch of people that think the same about that, you are literally getting in proximity to the best and brightest in the entire industry. And our VIP ticket was $600 this year and we sold out. It's a little bit different if it's a cheaper ticket, but we sold 100 VIP tickets and that doesn't include room and board. That doesn't include taking time off of work. So really, like anyone who showed up here is all in at least $1,000 minimum. Way back when, a gentleman joined our community after being disqualified from Shelby Sapp's program. He was a gentleman, didn't have lady parts, so he ended up at the Cereal Sales Community. He wanted to go straight into closing and he did, but he got onto some pretty funky closing roles right off the bat because he didn't have sales experience, but he stuck to his guns. He came to our event, met someone who introduced him to a sales manager who brought him on to close where he made his first $30,000 a month not long after that. Same guy, same training, different connections, different level of access. That connection in no other world would happen and turn into that unless they shook hands, met face to face. And I think they went and grabbed a meal together or something. When you're doing things that are fun, that you like, that you enjoy with other people who have similar interests to you, such as with our event, we had a spikeball tournament. You might think, ah, it's a sales conference, sales event. Why would we play spikeball? I don't want to do that. People will remember things a lot more, including their association of you, if it's associated with something that they also remember in a positive manner. Or if we went to, example, Barton Springs, the big natural spring here in Austin, Texas, right outside downtown, people love that. You have one conversation, two conversations with some decent people there. They already love what they're doing, where they're at. You were a part of that memory. You will be remembered as something that— I'm not going to say they love you, but like they're more inclined to like you if you aren't doing weird shit. Also, in some of these sales conferences, like, dude, I had speakers come down that I don't know how we got them to come down for free without paying them. Like, I had people come down that usually get paid to speak on stage, and some of them did it because they're low-key looking for sales reps. They're low-key on the hunt for some good quality talent. Whether they say it or not, that's the only way that they could justify it. Every single year when we host these events, it's not a job fair, but people are getting jobs because people are making genuine connections because they're in the room, they're not being weird, and they're putting themselves out there. When we opened up the speaking panels and I gave a little welcoming address, one of the things that I said was like, if you're brand new, you're about to have a lot of big perspective shifts by what you see here today. on this stage and what you experienced throughout the weekend. If you're not brand new, you're probably going to leave a little bit pissed off that you're not further along because all these other people are crushing it. I had someone who just joined our community, does really well. I think he owns a pool service business, like they clean pools and they have routes, also does some real estate. Successful dude, career sales guy, business owner. And he came in here just looking for more leveraging for his skill set with the time that he had. He literally joined our community like a week before and decided, yeah, I'm going down to Austin. He's watching all the speakers on stage and he comes up to me afterwards and he says, hey man, like I was really interested in these speakers and what they do. How much do you think they make? And I told him this specific person is basically doing like sales management at scale for multiple teams. I was like, yeah, I mean, honestly, dude, he probably takes home like $150,000, $200,000 a month. And he just looked at me. This is a guy that like on paper, traditional success, he's got it. And he's asking me and he's being speechless when it comes to dudes in their early 20s. So his perspective was broken. I mean, he joined our community because he's like, yeah, dude, I can make like $10K, $15K, $20K a month here and build up and maybe do more. But you are truly like, when you are standing in line for some Texas barbecue next to someone who just so happens to make 6 figures a month, just so happens to make $20K, $30K, $50K per month, it's the little conversation, the little joke, the little, hey, can you pass me some silverware? It's like all the little stuff that just adds up to you being remembered, to you getting a shot, to you Being considered for something that you just otherwise would have never been considered for, but because they liked you a little bit for one reason or another, you're now being considered. And we had some other people show up, man, and they had fallen off the horse and they committed to coming to the event. And it's exactly what they needed. They needed to know that all these people were crushing it and that they were just being soft. And that's why they weren't crushing it themselves. They needed to see all these people that have less experience than them, but Do better, pretty much. When you're in the high-ticket space, you operate a lot of times on an island. In your town, nobody really knows what you're doing. Your family probably doesn't like it. Your peers probably don't know what you're up to either. So to be able to get into a room over the course of a day, 2 days, a weekend, whatever, and feel understood and heard, but then also see the potential, it's so much easier to go home and roll that momentum into good stuff. into job applications or more hours on sales training or whatever you need to do, whatever lever you need to pull. Every single day you open your phone, I open my phone and I see— think about this. You literally see, if you go on social media for 20 minutes, you see 100 different people, whether it's profiles, comments, likes, your notifications, YouTube videos. Like if you spend any time on social media on a regular basis, you are seeing so many people to the point where it's almost easy to Pass up things that you're not supposed to pass up because we're just desensitized, right? It's like one thing after another, after another, after another new reel, and you're just scrolling. And I mean, that's just social media, right? Everything slows down when you're in person. You're not just a face online. You're a human being in front of them who shook their hand, physical touch, who's having a conversation, who can ask questions. It's so much easier to get the time of day of potential friends, potential employers, potential coworkers through the in-person stuff. And it can happen At any fricking time. I mean, even like example, I'm not hiring anybody right now, but a lot of people were helping me set stuff up, put in, you know, lift an ice chest, pick up trash, set up chairs, all these things. Like people are volunteering their time. And I can tell you what, dude, like if I'm hiring people for a sales team, I know they're here for a sales conference and someone goes out of their way to help me set up chairs, it's not even about the sales experience, it's about their character. Good character is one of the hardest things to find in this space along with some other things. But I can understand that if you're at this event, You're probably okay at sales, maybe if you could afford to be there. But what I don't know is what, what is your character like? And ultimately, for me, someone like me, I am more interested in something like that. In-person events let you condense time to get to feel like you really know somebody. So you could go online or apply to a job and have a bunch of email back and forth, but you won't really feel like you know somebody like you will if you're standing in line for lunch next to someone, and then you see them later out at the bar at the little like after thing, and then you see them at the spikeball tournament and then you actually play against them in the spikeball tournament. Then you can make jokes about being competitive the whole time. Maybe this is a sales manager of a million-dollar-a-month offer and they're just another person at the event. And maybe you're really, really athletic or you're really, really good at spikeball. And that's an opportunity. It might sound silly, but an opportunity to show them that like you bring value into the world, I guess you could say. It's like, wow, this person's committed to this. I wonder how good they could be at sales if they committed to that. Or I wonder how much better they could be or how much of an asset they could be to a team, given that they have the perseverance to commit and get really good at something. That's why working out and being in shape is such a telling tale, because it's not hard to lift weights. It's hard to stay committed to lifting weights. It's hard to keep your diet clean and do all that stuff. And people like to hire people that can do hard things and not question it and not overthink it and persevere when things get hard, when you get sick, when you get injured, when you get busy. That's a respectable trait to have your priorities right and have priorities that actually serve you. I had probably like 3 or 4 people that came up and they called their shot. They're like, I want to be a speaker next year. I want to hit this goal. And if I hit this goal, I'd like a chance to speak, or can I speak, or would I be considered? And I can tell you, like, I don't know who's going to be speaking next year or if we even do the event. But the fact that they kind of planted that seed, if the time comes and they are hitting certain milestones, I would love to consider them. For something like this. So the in-person events, if you plan on being in this industry for 6 to 12 months or more, it's really, really, really hard not to ROI. It doesn't matter how much the ticket is. Now you want to make sure it's an event that is aligned with what you're trying to do. Like if I'm in high-ticket sales and I'm going to an agency owners event, like, I don't know, maybe not going to solve your immediate problem. It could. Maybe you could find yourself into a job if you talk to the right people. But like, if you know that your people are going to be at this event, and there's a price tag and people are buying it, it's probably because the event is worth it. And you just have to think like it's not so much about the event, it's not so much about the speaking panels. Like information is out there. It's you spending time getting proximity that you wouldn't get otherwise with people who could afford to be at that event. If they're in your industry and they can afford to be at that event, they're probably good people for you to know because high-ticket sales, I've said it so many times, is not about what you know, it's who you know. The best offers aren't hiring on LinkedIn or Indeed. They're hiring by asking the best sales reps on their team, who do they know that would do good in this position? I took a selfie with an attendee and a community member who really, really, really wants to get on a team of somebody who was speaking there because we have like 5 people on that team and they all do really well, including one of the $50K per month guys. And he was like trying to game plan with me. And this is awesome to see. He's like trying to game plan with me. How can I finesse my way into the team? Not, not finesse, but like, how can I creatively get the attention that gets me considered despite maybe not having so much experience coming into this. And I think if you can combine a little bit of a warm introduction, some sort of icebreaker in terms of like why you're reaching out and why you're different and why you should be considered, such as, hey, we were at the same event, and then you just go and get creative. I mean, it's not too far-fetched to get a job that you really want. What's more far-fetched is to stand out as a cold application in a sea of hundreds of applications. So this is my bull case on high-ticket sales events, but also my thoughts on how they can actually like accelerate your success in this space and how they allow you to condense the time in which relationships are built. And relationships ultimately lead you to the good place. They lead you to where you want to be in this space. All the highest earners that I know in this space that are on these big teams, $30K+ per month, they're getting in these teams through who they know. If you're really nervous to go to an event, go with a buddy, go with a friend, go with someone that can introduce you to someone, or go and meet someone that is there with other people. That is the easiest way. The hardest Part about events is meeting the first few people. But then once you meet those people, you can get to meet the people that they met. It's like a warm introduction. It's like a referral, right? So just go get 3 to 5 people that you can kind of chat to, talk some shit, make jokes with, let the ripple effect play out. And I promise you'll be in a better spot. Spend the money on the ticket. Don't overthink it. I've gone to some pretty expensive in-person events, some that didn't even really apply to me, like super, super direct. And I can't really think of anywhere I just didn't ROI, even if it was just from one connection. I'm under the impression that I can learn something from everyone. And if someone, even someone who's earlier on in their career, a little bit lower level, so to speak, they can say something that completely changes the way that my brain thinks about a scenario in my head or a problem that I'm facing, maybe it could be a massive unlock. So it's not that I'm being taught something by this person that I never knew before, but it's allowing me to interpret my own perspective in maybe a different way than I never had before. And you can really get that from anyone. So I think being open-minded and being in the room is the most important thing. That's it. That's my TED Talk on why you should go to in-person events. I would tell you to go to our in-person event, but it's already over. You're going to have to wait and see if we do it next year. That's it for this episode. Goodbye, you guys. Well, you made it to the end. Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode and you want to catch future ones, be sure to like and subscribe. I'm kind of just releasing these when I feel like I should. As of now, there's no formal schedule for new episodes, but if you think there should be, comment down below. I want these to be fun for both of us. Last thing, if you have something cool to share, or you want to be a guest, or you want to recommend a guest, or you just want to complain about how bad this episode sucked, you can email me at dylan@serialsales.co. Thank you again for watching. I'll see you next time.