Cultivating Success: Navigating the Speaking Industry with Kane Minkus

I understood how important it was to have world class thinkers on your team. So I wanted that for small business owners because they typically couldn't afford it. And so, you know, having gone through about a dozen different world class mentors in our in my 20s, I wanted to bring that. So that was one thing I was obsessed with. And I recommend people get obsessed with world class quality stuff.

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Hey, everybody. Roland Frazier here. Welcome to Business Lunch. I am excited today to have my guest and friend, Kane Minkus. Kane, welcome to the show.

Hey. Hey, Roland. Thanks for having me. Lovely to be here.

It is wonderful to have you here. So I would love to. You guys have built an amazing business that has events across like three to four dozen countries and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of attendees every year. And I just. And then you had this big pivot that you've been making as a result of the challenges that happened with the shutdown and things like that. Would you just kind of give people an idea of like, you know, who you guys are, you and Alessia, and what you've built up. And then let's talk about the story of kind of how you're making changes to the model and everything going forward. Does that sound cool?

Sounds perfect. So who we are. So we were both serial entrepreneurs and we started many, many companies that I'd say were from micro to small. So our largest company, Alessia's largest company was 30 million a year. My largest company was 20 million a year. But we started many, many of Them. I started about 24 different companies throughout my 20s for different reasons with different partners and things like that. I'm from the States, she's from Europe. And although we only met eight years ago, when we met, we realized we were almost like the same person cut into two different bodies. And luckily she was beautiful and smart, but didn't speak any English when I met her. We'll talk about that story later on. But anyway, she was a serial entrepreneur in Europe. She'd started seven companies where she was 30. And so we just, we have this passion for working with early stage entrepreneurs, helping them get things either launched or scaled in that early stage. Right. Usually our students at our events are, let's say you know, under half a million. And we, we look to help them get up to, let's say, a million plus in their revenue. That's kind of our focus. So. So I actually started this company 15 years ago and we've had about company is the company's industry rockstar. Thank you. Yeah. And we've had 3 million people go through our stuff, whether it's online or offline. And we've had about 550,000 go through our conferences throughout the years. We do it in 32 countries. So we've touched a lot of lives. We've been around a lot. And what's most interesting is we really get to see what's working and not working globally. And we don't just, we hadn't just done it off the Internet. I say hadn't because the virus has certainly changed everything. But we actually had been circulating 200 days a year to 30 different countries personally. And so really getting to sit down with these business owners all over the world and say, what's working here, what's trending, what's not working? And really just bring these great techniques to people across the world.

I would love to explore that before we get into kind of how you've pivoted. How the heck do you serve 3 million people in all the different countries that you're in? I mean, and really you did it from a cold start. What does that process look like? And then how would you adapt it, knowing what you know now about, you know, about events, just not taking the pandemic into consideration.

Yeah, yeah. So. So prior to all that, I mean, you know, we focused. So let's go back to how did we do it all? We really focused on, I'd say we focused on sales. We actually, we, we never had a challenge with sales at our business meeting. I never had any issues with Sales. And I always felt that sales was a pathway to having people commit to bigger games in their lives. So we really focused on that early on. So when I started this business, my original business partner, his father actually started company called Odesk, which is now called Upwork. And so we had both had significant kind of backgrounds in entrepreneurship and we really wanted people to engage and learn and we want to work with them, we work with them holistically. So we work with them on what they have to do, we work with them on their mindset, and we kind of combine this together, like a systemic look at their whole leadership of their business. So because we were so focused on sales, funny enough, and I think this is a little bit of a different story than how a lot of these guys, you know, get us. We actually didn't focus on marketing at all and didn't care at all about marketing. We really just looked to leverage people's groups and communities and we looked to just say, you know, hey, we had absolutely no real good marketing skills at that time, in fact, especially the Internet stuff. And so we just continued to look for other people we could partner with. So partnerships were a huge deal at our company. They still are to this day. We look for lots of partnerships.

And how do you go about that? Like, like how do you so. And because this is for people who, this is us kind of giving back to the entrepreneurial community and there's some people who are looking to start in businesses or add something. And so let's talk about that partnering. So because you're starting from a cold start and you're not marketing, so this is great. How do you do that? Like how do you identify who you want to partner with and then what's the approach like?

Yeah, so we, we worked pretty diligently on what would make us different. So we wanted to be able to really understand what differentiated us so that when we could approach people, whether they were well known leaders or influencers in the marketplace or whether they were not, didn't make a difference.

We wanted to make sure list of like your target, your, your ideal 100 or something like that.

We absolutely started with a wish list. And some of that wish list was outrageous. We had Richard Branson on that wish list and you know, we had big names, Tony Robbins and these. And then we just had local people, like meetup groups and we just made a whole wish list saying here's who we need to be talking to because they have great community.

So community, where did you start in terms of geographically?

We started absolutely locally we're from the San Francisco Silicon Valley area. So we just started right here. And we started calling, literally. I mean, if you want the mechanics. We started picking up the phone calling and emailing people that had meetup groups that had communities, Rotary clubs, anybody that had a local group. There was a lot of women entrepreneurship stuff going on, networking groups. I mean, we even found ourselves in groups that we should not have even been in. We would go and speak at places where they were looking for jobs and we were teaching entrepreneurship.

That's great, right? An entrepreneurship better than a job. And were those. What were those calls like? Like what.

What.

What do you offer them? Is it to just to come and speak or to speak and sell or how did. How did that work?

Well, yeah, so. So this would been back 15 years ago or 17 years ago when we started. So we would literally call or email. I think we used to meet up a lot at that time, which I think has, you know, is not bearing as much fruit for people these days. But it certainly was at that time. And we would email a leader of a group or call them, however we could get their information. And we would say, this is what we do. We kind of share a value proposition right at the start, right at the top. So we'd say, here's what we do. Here's who we focus on. Here's what we do. Here's what makes us different. We would love to come speak at your group. So we were very direct about it. A lot of hustle. And we said, we'd love to come speak at your group. What do you think? How can we add value? And this was an important question that we'd always ask them is how can we add value to your group? So it's something a little different than I think how a lot of people say, set your presentation and go out and just tell people what you do. We actually didn't do that at the beginning. Nowadays, of course, we. We've done it so much. I know kind of how to position and what's what, what we should be doing. But at the beginning we would say, how can we serve your group? And sometimes they'd say, well, we just had somebody in on sales, so could you talk about negotiation or we just had someone in that's done all, you know, that kind of stuff in business. Could you guys talk about NLP or influence skills? And then we would say, sure, because, you know, always say yes, whatever it was. Sure. We could talk about circus clowns and, you know, wine, no problem. And we would. Then we'd say, okay, let us. Let. Well, and then we would say, let's book a date. So get real specific. We'd say, yeah, we could do it. Let's book a date. Because the calendar is the most complex part. And assuming that it works out, assuming that this works out, we come. At least we have a date in the calendar. So we get a little commitment from that call. And, you know, more. More often than not, they say, okay, well, here it is, March 15th. That's probably our next one. It would also give us a sense of how far away their opportunity was. Right. And then we would go in, we create a little proposal which we did have start to become kind of the standard proposal on our laptops. And we'd send a proposal that would give a little cover letter. It would say what the presentation is that we were kind of creating for them, give some bullet points, a little description as to what the takeaways, and then, you know, a little bit of our history, who we were and what, you know, the value we were going to provide, and, you know, that kind of stuff. And then we just send it to them via email, PDF. Boom. And we would follow up with them a couple days later and say, I hope you got that. You know, let's lock it in. Right. And that started the flow of presentations. And within probably two or three months, we had booked three to five days a week. We were speaking all around the San Francisco Bay area. You know, we live in a good area where there's a lot happening, a lot of groups, a lot of boroughs and things. I think most people that live in major cities can get the offline thing happening relatively quickly. Yeah.

And what's cool about that, that I think people should take away from this, is that you don't have to travel to 200 cities and multiple countries. You did that all initially in just that one area. And you were speaking four or five days a week.

Right.

At different groups. Cause there's so many.

Yeah. And we actually have a little technique I teach as part of. You know, we teach a speaker training where we teach people how to speak all over the world. And there's a tip that I actually share, which I normally don't, but I will for your group, which is there's a great tip that when. When we would present whether we would sell something or not. And we. We kind of got into the selling thing early on. Cause we didn't have a brand, so we weren't going to get hired. As Keith notes, nobody knew who we were. So we said, look, if we want this to be a sustainable, interesting thing, we need to sell something. So after we would do some sort of pitch, whether it was for an online product or for a live seminar, which was our focus, we would come back up to the front of the room and we'd say, hey, who here really enjoyed the presentation? And put their hands up and say, great. Who here is in another group or community that meets once a month, once a quarter, or once a year that's got at least 25 or more people in it? And you know, invariably, you know, a handful of people would keep their hands up and they would say, if you'd be so, you know, polite, take your card out of your, your pocket or your purse or whatever, hold it up in the air and our assistant will connect with you and see, you know, you can connect us to the leader of that group and we'll see if it's good for us to come add value to that group.

So smart.

And invariably at every single presentation, we would pick up another five to seven cards, two or three of those would turn into another presentation and it would just keep rolling like that. Between our hustle and that request, we were, we were book solid within months.

How did you turn that into money?

Well, so naturally we had to decide what we were going to offer. And like I said, we had seen. I actually knew nothing about this world. I came out of B2B businesses, B2C.

Businesses that came out of real business, as we like to say.

I had never seen this world where people were like, I've got my five tips, I'll show you two and then buy my program. I'd never seen that before. So I started to see some of that. And of course, I had actually never seen Tony Robbins either. I mean, I was really green in this whole world of speaking. But when we did start to see the options, we noticed that there were keynote speakers, people who were getting paid flat fees, and they had brands and books and things like that, and that was not us. And then there were people who were offering training programs and we felt pretty comfortable that we could put something together. So we started with putting together a three day training. And I actually had done a lot of work with a company called Landmark Education in my early 20s. So we noticed that Tony had a similar model, a three day, ish event, I think it was, you know, unleash the power within. And we started to notice what people were doing and it was kind of that 3ish, 4 day kind of thing. So we said, all right, we'll Create a three day event. And we just gave it a title. It was called Mastering wealth through Relationships. That was our first event and we made some bullet points. We put them up on a slide and we said we're going to do an event. And you know, looked like we knew what we were talking about and said here's the title and here's what you're gonna, here's the takeaways. And we slapped the price on it and we made it, we made an offer. Now, to be very honest, for anybody who's listening or getting started, we knew absolutely zero about what we were doing. We were just trying to watch people and we were making lots of mistakes. And this was prior to getting, you know, advisors or mentors in this area, which later we realized were absolute gold to help us accelerate. But initially we were just throwing stuff at the wall and you know, occasionally something would work and, and, and people would buy. Um, but obviously I was gonna say, you know, obviously we realized there, there had to be a structure and a whole, there could be a whole professional world to this, which we worked on later.

Okay, and so then you started selling those events and, and just basically kind of grew using that same rough model, you know, did different partners, maybe better partners as you networked more and that sort of thing.

We did sell it. And I'll tell you what, what, what we were obsessed with, I was obsessed with two things. One was absolute world class delivery. So I had had great business mentors and advisors in my companies in my 20s and it was not the, you know, it's not the Brian Tracy's and the, and the Les Browns and wonderful people. But I was working with Silicon Valley coaches who were, you know, coaching Oracle and you know, Apple and Microsoft and things like that. And they were, they were used to coaching world class executives. So I really understood what it meant to have somebody that was extraordinarily ordinary of a thinker. Yeah, like yourself for example. This is why I'm talking to you because I love the way you think and I, I, I understood how important it was to have world class thinkers on your team. So I wanted that for small business owners because they typically couldn't afford it. And so, you know, having gone through about a dozen different world class mentors in our, in my 20s, I want to bring that. So that was one thing I was obsessed with. And I recommend people get obsessed with world class quality stuff. I think there's a, there's too much noise in the marketplace place, whether it's a live event or online, the Second thing we were obsessed with was continuing to refine the process, refine the sales process. Every time we got done, I went back and I would say, which slide worked, what didn't, which joke worked, which story worked? And we would just. I was obsessed with fine tuning it to really understand what was working, not working. And I do this to this day, every presentation. I've given two and a half thousand presentations. We've been on stages, you know, next to Tony, with 12,000 people. In fact, we ran an event for Tony, you know, in Israel, 12,000 people. We speak in, you know, huge stadiums, every event. My business partner Alessia, who's my wife, knows 24 hours before I'm still sitting with the slides going, should we move this here or move that? I'm very like, you know, OCD about every little thing that goes on. And so those two things I think really helped it work. So from there obviously we were creating results. Right. And I'll say the other thing that made a huge difference is we started to get mentors and advisors and hire people that could really help us. I'm a huge fan of that. Of course, that's what we do. I know you do some of that as well. And that's, that's a, that's a key to acceleration. So we got great people in our world too. You put those three things together, brilliant people that are ahead of you, you know, a real obsession with fine tuning and a real obsession with world class delivery and it just, it was working.

So that's a great formula.

Yeah. So people wanted in. So we started getting invited quickly to, to, to work with people and that started creating a role, a rolling of partners and marketing partners and things like that.

How did you make the leap from the United States to international? I think a lot of people would be curious as to how to do that.

So for me it was a very, it was a very natural. So I, I grew up split between America and France. I went to my, my parents sent me to school in France when I was 10, mostly because my dad couldn't deal with me. He wanted to get me out of the house. The third born, he didn't want to have, you know, a third. And so my second language was French. And I think I quickly fell in love with the exotic ness of something totally different. I mean, I went to school in Versailles. Paris is just a beautiful experience as 10 years old and it did make a huge impact also. My father was an executive, a CFO of a multi international company. So he was traveling a lot As a kid. So I think that there was initially there was a comfort level. And what I would recommend for people that want to go international is pick an area that they feel related to or comfortable. Maybe because they have some family background, maybe because they have friends there, they have a community somewhere that would feel like a simple pond to jump into. Instead of saying, oh, I always wanted to see Siberia, so let's go put an event there. Like that's not probably the best way to get started. I often recommend because our students are very interested in internationalizing going global and it's so easy today. And so I often say, where do you have community? Where do you have friends already? With Facebook and our social media, it's so easy to have friends in different countries. Countries. So where was the first place we went? The first place we went? I'll say that also my, in my early years I had other companies where I had contacts internationally, not in this industry. But what I started to look at was I think, where is first of all English, Totally comfortable. Right. So we looked at those, the uk, Australia, Canada, things like that. And then where do we have contacts? And oh, I remember how we first started. We were speaking at an event in Los Angeles and there was a gentleman named Christopher Howard. I don't know if anybody remembers who he was, but he was a well known American speaker in Australia and his promoters were there. We were speaking at an event and they watched us present and they came up to us and they said, you guys are amazing. Now let me give you a little background of this presentation. We were supposed to be selling in a room. There was about 800 people there. And we ended up doing a deep dive nlp, you know, like a whole mindset thing where I don't think we sold anything because it wasn't, it wasn't a proper pitch at all. Right, right. But the whole audience got up and they were, they were cheering because it was just, it was a, it was, you know, while everybody was pitching them all day long, although we were supposed to pitch them, we didn't. We did a very deep dive discussion into like human behavior and who we are. And so people appreciated so much that everybody got up and they were cheering and it was a big fanfare. And these organizers, these event organizers from Australia happened to be in the audience. So they came up to us at the end and they said, would you like to come to Australia? We can book rooms all over and fill up rooms all over the world for you and, or all over Australia rather than for you, not over the world. And we can actually, you know, help you get in front of audiences. And we said, sure. And so that was the first leap was over to Australia.

Okay, nice.

And.

And then it was that done compensatory wise with the promoter person. How did that happen? How did those things work?

So they were the organizers and the promoters, and they were running a pretty large event company in Australia and they just saw promise in us to be speakers, to be, let's say, bigger speakers than what we were. And they started booking us all around Australia. And so we started running events literally every weekend. We were running events for 500 to a thousand people that they were booking.

So.

Great. And so it was, it was, you know, it was, it was hustle. So we got that opportunity because we were hustling, we were in front. But the important thing I'd like to tell people is we were not that great. And we were actually not closing well enough to be being supported by event organizers. And at some point they sat down and they said, look, we, you guys, you got to be able to close more if this is going to keep, you know, going on.

That's a big deal too, is you teach, but teaching doesn't close. So you have to figure out, how do you teach and deliver great value and get them to. Because when you start, I had this too, and I'm betting you guys did, is people would run up to you after you do your thing and go, it was the best thing I've ever heard. Best speaker here, made the whole thing worth it. And then they don't buy anything. And you're like, oh, yeah, yeah.

And of course, we work a lot with our students on that because that I was in that same thing. My business partner used to call me the professor on stage because I would teach like a professor. And that's, that's not. And what I've learned is that, you know, when you format a presentation, you're teaching different things at different stages. Right. So that first pitch might be about teaching people about the opportunity that's available, the way they can capture those opportunities, the things that get in their way. If you start teaching them all the how, you know, many times they actually just get overwhelmed.

Yes.

And, you know, the reality is my experience has been that most speakers on stages that I've met around the planet, their stuff works. It's worked for them, it's worked for others. But there is that art is about translating it in a way that is responsibly selling it. And this is what I talk about, because I Think a lot of people get on stage, they say, this is easy, it's a piece of cake. You can have all that, you know, and that's not very responsible. There's a certain amount of work that goes into everything, but if you make it systematized and simple enough, people will say, okay, I can do that. And then you get the right clients because you get people that say, I can do that. But I get that I have to step through the motions. Yeah.

So it's a journey. It really is. Okay, so now you start doing that and then what was the transition into doing your own events? Basically just kind of. You saw what was going. Oh, I did want to ask. So on the promoter thing, is that like a 50, 50 split on revenue? Is that how that generally worked?

Yeah, well, so it would, it's, it's, it's a moving target over the years, you know, it's, it is a. So you typically. We typically, yes. When we would speak on stages for promoters, we would give them 50% of what we sold there, then we would move them into another training that we would do and then there would be some other split. And that split has shifted from 10 to 40% all over the board. And those are typically more expensive, longer term integration programs. Right. Mentorship programs and things like that. That's typically the split.

Now then, so then going from do you still use a lot of promoters or are you primarily doing your own events? And I don't mean your own events, but I mean, are you primarily marketing and everything yourself for a lot of the international stuff these days?

So now it's mixed. So certain territories in the world, we work with partners and certain territories we don't. And many times when we go into a new territory, you know, at some point you're expanding and you start to get to places where you feel very foreign. When we went into the uae, for example, we went to Dubai. I had no connection to the culture, never been there, I didn't know anything about it. And this was about three years ago, we got asked to come, come and speak on a, you know, event with Lisa Nichols. And we went there and the deal was they were going to represent us there. And sometimes when you, you know, at the level you get to with us, they want to sign you like an artist, right. So we get signed in for a three year deal or something so that if they're going to put you in front of a big audience and pay for that, they're going to want a piece of the action from you for several years. Right. And then, of course, you know, we worked with other major global promoters, like Success Resources, which is a big global promoter, and the same thing. They signed us to, you know, Asia and Europe at some point, and they saw us speaking at an event in Australia, a big event with 8,000 people. So the point is, is that you. You create opportunity by showing up to the events and getting yourself out there. And what I would love to relate to everybody listening is that there are opportunities. Promoters are looking for speakers constantly. And because now we are promoters as well, we're always looking for great speakers who have a unique angle and a great product and a great presentation. And so the more you speak and present, the more you get yourself out there and podcasts and webinars and live events, the more opportunity you have because people are in the audience watching you. Right.

And then now doing all these events 200 and some days a year, and then the world decides it's going to shut down. What happened since then? What'd you think? And how have you dealt with that?

So, you know, my background is in performance. I was a record producer for Sony Music. I was a performer. I was, you know, I'm trained as a comedian, as an actor. You know, I grew up in Chicago in improv, so I love Live.

Loved your performance, by the way. In front of that crowd, you were singing a U2 song in front of, like, 25, 30,000 people. That was pretty amazing.

That's right. When we did the event with Tony, we brought him in and we had some extra time, and so I decided to sing because it's what I do for whatever, so. So I love Live, and. And our company had been very oriented around live, and we did so well at it that, you know, the question was, is why would we do something else? We were doing well. You know, it was our thing. The problem is the universe decided that it was no longer going to be our thing or anybody's thing. And so we did a conference in Singapore, and we had about 500. And then I went to Orlando. We had another 400 there. And then I came home in March, and two days later, the lockdown happens. And so, like, I think every company, we pivoted to webinars, and we started on Zoom, and we started delivering our events on here. And I started sitting at my desk four or five hours a day delivering webinars. And I would walk out of my office and I would say to my wife, I absolutely hate webinars. Absolutely.

Can I get you to hang on one second? I've got Somebody ringing the doorbell like crazy. Just one second. I'm sorry, I'm going to pause it.

I'll be right.

All right.

So. So I'd come out of the office and I'd say, I hate webinars. I was not a webinar guy and I absolutely. I hated him. Like, I was exhausted at the end of them. I would feel my voice would get really rough. You know, in order to look like you're looking at the audience, you got to look into a little circle, a little green light, right? Yeah, it's. So I just did. I hated him, you know, so the opposite of a theatrical presentation live, where you're engaging in, you know, so. So I didn't know what to do because we knew that this was going to be a significant thing. So what we decided to do was we had to build ourselves a studio that, that I felt would allow an interactive component. And. And when it comes to live events, I'm absolutely obsessed with a couple things. One is the live experience. I like people to have a very live, experiential thing going on. And our events are very experiential with music and lights and the whole thing. In fact, 12 years ago, when we were running this, Tony Robbins sent down a couple of his guys and they ended up, as far as we understood, basing Business Mastery off of what we were doing. I mean, you know, not. I don't want to take credit for his stuff.

That's great.

But they love the fact that we were taking business and entrepreneurship and merging it with this concert and this whole thing. And that was just. My background was concerts and performance. So that's what we were doing. And then, you know, he invited us to come to Business Mastery and that whole thing. So that was similar. So. And of course he's taken it and, you know, taken it to another level, as he always does, but that was, that was the feel was this experiential thing. Well, how are you going to create that when you got your laptop in a zoom room?

Right.

So we started going to work on that. So I took probably about, I don't know, 10 or 15 grand and I built a studio here. And I know not everybody can do that, but today we teach them how they can get it done for, you know, at different levels of production quality for, you know, maybe a thousand or two thousand bucks. Sure, it will require a little investment, it does require some gear. But at the end of the day, if somebody's actually looking to create a higher class production value, they can do it today. And we Got a little video mixer. We got a couple of nice cameras, you know, a monitor. And. And then I got some, you know, headphones and some, you know, in ear monitors and a real microphone. And then we put a TV behind us. And, you know, it just now when people see it, they feel like it's coming out of a TV production studio.

Right.

And so that actually allows me to stand, which is a big deal for me because I hate sitting and teaching for hours. So I get to. Well, basically, what it is, it built an environment for me that suits my ability to deliver my message and my education in a way that feels right for me. And I think each person can do that with. With their studios today.

So then now you had a whole bunch of events booked, I'm sure that had to get postponed or canceled or whatever. So how do you. What are you doing to kind of. So you've got the. Obviously you've set up your studio. How do you convert that? And how are sales going? And what, if anything, are you doing different to keep things flowing in terms of revenue and profits?

Totally. So we are running virtual summits in. And basically what we're doing is we took our offline experience and just looked to create it. Initially, I thought, okay, there's a virtual world and you have to do that stuff. But actually, as we've continued to test and refine, because we've done about eight virtual summits now, we realized that actually, if we just take our offline summit, exactly what we were doing, and we put it online exactly the same way, that actually it works great.

So are you selling the same way? Are you marketing and filling the events using the same channels and same prices?

So. So price points are definitely cheaper online. Our experience is that it's cheaper online. It's probably so. So offline, I'd say. And we're, you know, everybody's new to this right now at the level that we're doing it. Everybody had been doing virtual summits and live events occasionally or webinars, but now we're doing them almost on a daily basis. So we are still getting more data. So you're catching us early in that. But right now we are finding that we were selling our offline general admissions seat for 297 and our VIP seats for around $600 right now.

What were they normally selling for before Offline?

That is offline. Sorry, that was offline. Yeah, that would be great. That was online.

I see.

Okay. All right. Online, we're more at like 97 and 197 at the moment. So 97 for General Mission and 197 for VIPs.

Have you tested the. Using those other prices?

So we've tested at 147 and 300 sales were not. We are looking for a certain volume for the energy and the engagement and the way we work is, you know, some people, they're okay with, you know, 30 people in their, in their three day events. We're not. We actually look for three to 500 paid. So we go for a little bit more volume. And that's because we are ultimately not really selling education. We're really looking for businesses to be partnering with over time, mentoring and advising and, and really investing in them over time. So we're looking, we, we need a big pool so that we can see what's the right fit. We only take on 20 students out of every summit online. And that means we really need a pool of, you know, 300, 400 so forth.

And I have a couple ideas for you. If we don't get a chance to talk about it on the, on the show, I want to chat with you, but I think we can get you those people at that, at those old prices. But the other thing I wanted to talk about for sure was your business model, which is unique in how you work with those students. Would you share that a little bit? Because I think that'd be a really cool thing for people to understand.

Yeah. So, so a long time back, between Jay Abraham and Tony Robbins and, and Robert and Kim Kiyosaki, who I was close with throughout the years, you know, doing tours and different times with them, they all recommended that we stop trying to sell education. So about, about nine years back, we stopped selling education. And that actually was great because I, I think education is great, but it's become oversaturated now. You can get, you know, seven bucks a month, you can get Netflix of education. Right.

Fairly commoditized.

Yeah, it's totally commodities. So we stopped that. And what we focused on owners to do bigger projects with, partner with and invest in is what we say. And so we've got essentially two major tracks. And our third track is coming up here. We've got services, so we do a lot of service businesses. We've had hundreds of thousands of experts and coaches and consultants. And then about two years back, we launched our physical product division with Kevin Harrington and my sister, who's been in physical products for 25 years. And that is booming as well. And then we're slowly inching up tech. So that'll be the third arm and so the idea is that they come through, we spend the first three days, we teach them really everything we know. And the nice part about the model that we built is we don't have to make money off them. Educated, being educated, so we don't have to hide certain things in order to sell them to them.

That's so nice.

Yeah, it's very nice. Even from a trainer perspective, I can say anything. I can show them anything. I can show them what we're doing in our business. I can teach them everything I can say, okay, I'm going to pitch you and then I'm going to go through the mechanics of the pitch and pay attention to everything I'm doing. It's just very, very authentic.

Right.

Because we don't need to sell them on. There's a mystery curtain and you get education behind it. So we do that in the three day and we just, we just pile as many systems as we can while keeping it, you know, chunkable so they don't get overwhelmed. And then when we offer the mentoring programs, our mentoring programs are literally practically zero profit for us as well. Essentially they are just the cost of what it costs us to fulfill on the program. So they get this world class advising team, they get five of us advising them over two years for essentially what I would consider peanuts. And that's, that's awesome as well for them. And the whole idea is that during that it's a vetting period to see who is the best businesses to partner with and invest in over the time.

So, which is kind of interesting. So you don't partner right away and you're not selling some super expensive package right away. But it is a two year program so that you have time to develop. How do you, how do you do that? So if you're not making that much money on the front and you're not making that much money in the beginning, then. I know, I'm sure just like a venture capitalist, you're looking for the big hits to be, to make up for all the others. Is that kind of how that works?

So we've done, over the years, We've done about 1800 partnerships on different projects and things. And you know, those turn into. So let's say when you say not that expensive, actually our packages are probably considered expensive for people. It's 10 to 50,000, I should say.

Not particularly profitable then. How about that?

Yeah, yeah, no, they're not particularly profitable. Especially as we scaled to trainers and coaches. I mean, you know, my wife and I were doing, we'd Say, yeah, okay. The funny thing that we discovered, which is a little bit of a comedy, is the profit in our business is 30% and it's 30% because 30% of them pay us and never show up, which is unbelievable. So it was a byproduct of the fact that the profit in our company, which is literally 29.7%, was a byproduct of people actually paying and not showing up. I mean, we have people that pay $50,000 or €50,000 or 50,000 whatever, you know, pounds and they literally don't show up to a single thing. And they, they were, for whatever reason they, I don't know, they're happy or they disappear. I don't know what happens to them. We follow up and everything.

No, no, too. I think it's, I think it's like therapy. It's, it's that they feel good about having made the investment in themselves and even if they're not ready for it now, they want you on the shelf for that period of time to be able to do it. Right.

And some of them wander. But I like to say, you know, I like to say to myself that they got so much value out of the three day event that they felt it was worth 50.

I like it, I love it.

And they, they paid for what they got. And I'll tell you, a lot of people, do they take, they take this. I mean, we have no governor on the quality of education. So whether you spend 20 minutes with us or 20 hours with us, it's all going to be real stuff that needs to get done, you know, in your business. So I mean, we have people that invest 50 grand and all they do is go through our online university and they triple their company because they just apply it, you know. Yeah.

So what do you see as the going from here then back to opening? How are you gauging that? Because in the events business it's difficult because you have to plan so far in advance, particularly for large events and their deposits and things like that. How are you guys approaching that?

So very, very carefully. We are in zero rush to get back to live events. We are working on refining our virtual world world. We were building a virtual live streaming theater and site online. We're going to get very invested in the virtual world. We don't have actually a very vested interest in going back live at the same volume that we were at at all.

Isn't that funny? It's, it's kind of nice not having to travel quite so much. Right. Even if you love it yeah, well.

And, and I think that the main, the main gap that we got forced into because we always said, oh, we got to go more virtual and we got to travel less. And we have three kids. We just, we have a one year old. Right. So. And my wife speaks with me on stage and she teaches and it's, you know, you do it together as it's not even like I go off and she takes care of the kids. Like, she's like, so I'm going to be, you know, when, when are you going to watch the kids so I can record the podcast. So there's a lot of balance stuff going on. And at that level, it was, it was tough. We did it well, but it was tough. So we, this forced us to cross that chasm where we created a world that we actually feel excited about. And I'm more excited about it now because now I've been on Sunday night, I get on, I do a training for 400 people in Dubai, and then, you know, the next day get on and I'm in Asia. And then the next day we're in the States and I don't, I get to walk out of my office. I did a, I did an event for our students in Dubai on a Saturday morning, 10am to noon. And then I walk out of my office and I pick up my daughter and she says, you know, where were you? And I said, I was in Dubai and now I'm back. And so then we went off to the park and I don't have to go through a week of jet lag and everybody telling me how much they miss me and, you know, and all that to change the world. And it really is setting yourself up in an environment where I think you're really able to deliver the experience with your message.

Yeah, I think that's awesome. You can reach so many more people too, because you're not. It's not just those people who are able to be out of their house and have their kids babysat or whatever during that time in that one specific geolocation, on that one specific set of dates, you get so much more read.

There's one other thing too, that I think is really important for people, people who are building their brands or building their workshop companies or seminars, is that there's a difference between walking into a room where nobody knows you or you are there because you're the seller. Right. You're not the brand. You're not the Lisa Nichols or the Les Brown or the Kevin Harrington or the Tony Robbins. And then you show up on that stage. And it's exhilarating for several years. But I've kind of gotten to a point and I think many people are getting there. Where you want to walk into a room where people know you, like you and trust you already and they're, and they're there for you instead of there for somebody else. And you happen to be there.

Right.

So where we'll go back to live events is we are now offering, you know, we're doing all the training online, the skill set training, and then they'll get their tickets into the live event so they can all travel in and that way we can walk into a room of 500 to 1,000 of people that have already spent time with us. And you're smiling because you knew these things a long time ago.

But you know, it's, it's, to me, it's, it's been very educational going, going through this, this time. What I wanted to share with you that I think might help because I do know several people who are selling their tickets at the same price as they were before and getting the same amount, if not more of people attending. And one of the ways that they're finding that to be very effective is to really have a pre selling event that's paid at the lower level and then sell into the live event following that. So that basically they're doing a challenge before, five day to 30 day challenge before that's inexpensive, 17 to $100. And then those people see the value, achieve the result that you promised them at the end of the challenge and then feed those people right in at normal prices, 7001-000150-02000 for VIPs into the live event, which then is done as you say, you're doing yours, which is, you know, you're standing up. And it's not just you looking into the box like that. It's, you know, actually the production. But, but that's been working really well. And also selling into those via webinar is very effective so that you don't, you don't communicate that the value of the virtual event is less or that the experience is any less, because it's not. We know that.

Right.

But people have to be, have to be pre sold I think now. So it's more of a two step, not just the ad to come to the event, but the ad to come to the pre event that then has a lot of people in at a low acquisition cost or a low cost to them and then you put them in at the regular price into the other events. That'd be something that would be fun for you to take a look at.

That's great. So we typically do add to free. Let's just call it, we call web class now. Because I can't, I can't, I can't use the word webinar without wanting to vomit. Right. So, so we, we do a, we do an ad to this free web class which is, you know, a couple hours, two or two to three hours. And then we offer from there. I'll, we'll try, we're gonna try these different price points based upon that suggestion and see if we can get it balanced. I've always had this belief that there are people in the room that have the value of what you're doing. They get it, whatever it is. Yes. And then there's those that don't. And if you price it to try to hit the middle, then you miss where the real value is.

I agree.

Yeah.

And so, so the, then the webinar. The other thing I would test is test the webinar being paid. Even if it's $7 or $10 or $12. Test that being paid. Just like the challenges that are paid are working way, way better than the challenges that are not. Because people commit to it. They show up and it's not. You definitely don't make any money. You do, however, like, you know, we do ours right now at $55 and we're in our third one, have been very, very, very successful in converting those people into significantly higher end programs that, that are the value that we sold the live event before. Because I went through exactly what you guys did, right. We were selling $3,000 events and people would come and then, you know, we couldn't do that anymore. So went online, did the five day challenge model at $55. That liquidates our ad cost. Our average order value right now is right at $100. So we can pay $100 to acquire a customer before we go negative at all. And then those customers are worth, you know, over, you know, about $1,500 because they're converting into the higher end training. So be, be worth thinking about.

That's great. That's great. I love it. And I think we could do that internally, working with our partners. Externally, they actually look to utilize each event as a database builder. So I think the, the challenge when you work with partners is that they are less interested in actually monetizing versus just pooling in as money leads because then they're going to retarget them with lots of different speakers and opportunities.

Well, see, so that's why this is great too because the, your front end isn't selling an event that you're trying that you've got to get 200, 300, $700 for. You're doing, you know, $5, $7. And if they're promoting, make it as low as you want for the challenge, but make it something because they need to commit a little something. But then they build that database. So we have an affiliate relationship for the people who are promoting for us. So they get all of the leads that they generate on the front end lead generation thing, which is the challenge or the webinar. And then they've got all the data plus their affiliate commission rides through to everything else that we sell. And so it works out. It works out well, it's worth exploring.

Totally, totally. I will definitely. Pretty much everything you've ever told us in it gets in the queue and then gets done. It was, ah, he was right.

So a few things before. I want, I definitely want you to tell people how they can get a hold of you and how they can find out about your events. Because I highly recommend everybody that's listening or watching go to one of these events. What, what would you say are your, your biggest, your three biggest things you'd like to leave people with as far as moving forward, being successful in their business?

So three big things? Well, the, the first one is I think that, so we, we although we look to take a very different angle on business systems so that when people come to the events they think there's, you know, it's not like, oh yeah, you know, regurgitated, I heard this. Or there's 20,000 people teaching branding or whatever. Although we try to do that. I think the biggest aha's for people that we've experienced is we've been steeped in human behavior work for basically my whole life. My father had a patent on brain development, human development. He had a company where he patented a process where parents could identify their children's learning preferences and then match them up with toys, books and games from around the world to accelerate their, their learning process.

Wow, that is so cool.

So he, it was called Kids, Dads, Moms and he ran that as I was growing up. And he worked with Howard Gardner from Harvard, who was one of the founders of Multiple Intelligence Theory and you know, Ken Wilbur and these guys. So I've been steeped in this since I was a little kid. That's what I grew up in. They would test Mensa games out of me as A kid at the kitchen table. And why I always say I'm so weird. But so. So what I. What I've really learned is that the big shifts that come for people is in the thinking, the way they're thinking. And there's a deeper level than the kind of the classic, you know, And I hate to use Tony's example because he does great work, but there's some deeper levels that I think people need to get engaged in, and they need to be willing to get engaged in them. So what I'd say is that if someone wants to have a real leap in the way they're running their businesses, because there's a lot of smart people that have nice systems and things, but, you know, you hear somebody learns a webinar system, you know, like a Russ Ruffino webinar system, and they say, oh, this worked or it didn't work. And, you know, Russ's system. And it's. It's never really about the person or the system. It's really about the way you're thinking. And what I. What I encourage people to do is start to track and take a look at their beliefs. Start to. I don't keep a journal, write things down. I mean, this is some of the things that my coaches had me do in my 20s was when I discovered a thought that was holding me back. For example, in my early 20s, I discovered that I was more interested in being friends with my team than making sure things got done well. Right? And that was a very big discovery around leadership for me. So I literally. It was almost embarrassing. And these are blind spots. These are reasons you work with coaches. You don't notice you're doing that. It's the fish swimming in water going, where's the water? And so I really want to encourage business owners because that's what's cool about our events, is it doesn't matter what level they come in at. We're not talking about. About just, you know, do this, do that, do this. It's how you relate to branding. It's how you engage in sales. It's how you think about negotiations. It's how you relate to technology and leveraging yourself. And this is why we love working with you. You think at that level, too, it's more of a systemic approach. So one thing I'd say is stop looking for tactics and start looking at the whole system of how you're thinking and what you're doing and question everything. Hard to do totally by yourself, but it's a start. And you know what I Did is I took that little to the poster to put it up on my desk. It's said, I prefer to be friends with my team instead of get things done right. And everybody that walk in would see that at my desk. And I had a. You know, I live with that reality until I continue to let it evolve. Because awareness is of course, really important start. So that's one thing. Two, get around people that challenge you. I think it's very, very important. Even just like that, that little tip where you said, you know, charge for it. Why, you know, I say like, oh, you know, resistance. Like, are people going to buy? And, you know, I can start to feel that. And I think, okay, well, I like that. I like that where Roland says something to me and then I say, ah, I don't want to. You know, I said, well, that's where I got to go. Right, right there.

I got to figure out what's.

What's that resistance, what's going on. This guy's smart. I need to like, what does he believe? One of the first lessons that I got from my coaches in my 20s was find people that are successful that believe things differently than you and then align yourself with, with their beliefs. So I think it's very important to be around people that challenge you. That's a big one. Oh, I guess the last thing would be use your community more. I think that the people that are most highly successful, they, they're not islands. They're. They're engaging with each other and they are really engaging the community. They're contributing to it. They're taking from it. They're. It's, it's a give and take thing where they're working. And I see a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs, they have the hero syndrome where they think they're going to, you know, that they're, they're better if they figured it out on their own. And I think that that's exactly the opposite of what really works, which is you're better when you figure it out in a community and then that community is there. Because the best advice I ever got when I was in the record industry is be, be really great with people on the way up because you're going to need them on the way down. Absolutely.

I love that last, that last tip too, because it is true. You and Alex, who I think introduced us and Tony and all of, even the people at Success Resources, all of us tend to talk and we aren't an island and we are always sharing. And so we are collectively raising the tide for all of us. And you do. When you first get involved, especially in entrepreneurship and speaking any of those things and events and elearning and just even a coffee shop or whatever you decide you're going to do, you're so focused on the product and the thing that you ignore the community and the community will help you not only make the product better, but just make everything better. Because they've all that, like, that tribal collective knowledge that they all have is so much greater than yours could ever be and so much greater than you could remember. Because even if you may say something to me and I'm like, ah, yes, I know that. And I just haven't been doing it because, you know, it's not. There's so much to think about. So even just having a reminder network of things is really helpful. Right.

So, you know, we got a chance. There was a time period where we're spending a lot of time with Vishen from Mindvalley, and he. And of course, we were both in this mission of evolving education. And, you know, that's where we're really passionate about education. We don't care about selling it. We care about people getting it in their bones. Right. And so one of the discoveries that I think he either made or reminded us of, which I thought was really, really valuable, and I share this a lot, is learning actually happens the best when you're in a. In a. A community of people at different levels. I think people are always saying, I got to get to the top and I want to be around just the top people. And that's. Yeah, it's actually not the best way to learn or grow. It's great to have people that are behind you, that are at the same level, that are ahead of you. I mean, when I have conversations with our students, which are, you know, miles and miles behind us in terms of experience, I have discoveries by how I'm teaching them or sharing that. I say, oh, we should look at it like that next time.

Yeah.

So it's very important to be in a tribe where you've got people at all different levels. That's how we learn.

Love that. Yeah. It's also, you should always teach, because when you teach, you learn, and when you are teaching, you refine. And you'll see from their perspective a thing that confuses them, that you got crystal clear. But then you're like, man, I could explain this so much better even to my team and the other people that I'm working with. So it's. It's really. Yeah, I love that. That's A really good one. So you gave us four, which is super cool. I like that bonus.

And when you, when you, when you look to extract value out of every experience, I could be talking to a student who's got, you know, zero business experience for acumen, and they say one thing and I'm like, actually, that's a great idea. We call it the beginner mind because many times the beginner mind looks so freshly at something, you've been doing it in your way so long, and then they say, I did it this way, which is totally silly. I'm going, actually, that's frigging brilliant. Yeah, I just love it. I love being around people and I think just use your community and be around people, engage as much as possible.

Well, thank you for taking the time to be with us today and share all the cool things you share. What is the best way for people to come to your events, find out more about you, connect and all that kind of good stuff.

So probably social media is just, if you go to our fan page, you go to industry Rockstar on Facebook, you. You go to our website, instructor.com, you can go look up Kane and Alessia. I mean, we're everywhere. So just like everybody today, you just go drop us in Google and you'll. You'll find a pathway to learn about where we're going to be and how to engage with our stuff.

Awesome. Well, dude, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate being here and look forward to talking to you about how successful all the cool things we've talked about today are as you go forward.

That's great. Thank you, Roland. I appreciate it. It was wonderful.

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