How To Build Your Virtual Stage

The Host

Dallin Nead

CEO & Founder

Episode Transcript

what's up everyone welcome to visionaries where we believe your powerful message is the best way to grow your business impact the world and live a meaningful life today we have a special guest and his name here we go it's chris creed hey what's up chris how you doing good man how are you good hey it's good to see you i'm so excited to have you on as uh as mentioned in the title we are gonna talk about virtual events today um so what uh what attracted you this idea of helping people um build and launch uh profitable virtual events dude it's actually a kind of a crazy story and it does involve covet a little bit but let me let me go back to um the beginning here a little bit i was uh i was always in events like i was always in um in theater and and uh i was a trumpet major and a vocal major in college so i was always in that in that world um and you know always performing on stage and then you know when i graduated college my wife and i started photography business and we did that for over a decade so we got to be a part of producing events and on the back end of over hundreds of events um and then you know i actually started running my own like in-person creative retreat for uh creative entrepreneurs we would go on the woods and go camping and drink bourbon it was so much fun um and so i had some experience actually putting on live events and then i just became like a live event addict i was going you know all over the place to all kinds of different events i just love the way they feel right and um but that actually it led me to um to uh to be in digital marketing and that's another story but like i got into digital marketing and uh i landed my first big client uh and it was it was it was a theater company i was doing work for them and helping them sell out shows and when i like the stuff we were working on was just really fun and it worked and that was one of the things they asked me to do so i was helping them do that and then i started getting other clients for funnel building for um you know helping artists sell out their shows and things like that and all kinds of stuff everything was going well and then all of a sudden one of my biggest clients says chris we're going to have to go another direction because we're our biggest line item on the budget that's not aside from the rent of the building and i was like holy crap i didn't know that i felt terrible but like that was true but like just like that though i had lost my uh a 40 000 a year client and i didn't know at the time what had happened but i started to feel like this this this like doubts start to creep man you know what i mean of like i you're not good enough you don't know enough you're not smart enough those kind of things i don't know if anybody's ever felt that before but it happened right

but no one feels that sense of insecurity whatsoever yeah right and so i i was feeling those things and i was feeling kind of down and i was honestly feeling a little scared even though i felt like in my mind i was like no big deal i'll just give you another client right but something was kind of breaking in me um and that's when i got a message from my friend stephanie stephanie blake we all we know um she was like hey i got this ticket to this event um and if you you know if you want to go i know they're sold out right now but if you wanted to go that event was funnel hacking live and i i didn't want to invest they they raised the price to take it to the end of like 1200 bucks and i was like i just lost this 40 000. i can't do that right now um and so it just didn't make sense and again i was looping those stories right which is causing that so anyway i ended up taking her up on that i go and i'm sitting in uh towards the back right behind the screen and russell brunson is on stage and he's talking about the hero's journey right he's talking about how like every in every good story um the hero has these things and something he said in that in that moment kind of like triggered something for me he said um he said every there's a hero in these big stories like star wars and like lord of the rings and stuff there's there's the big epic stories there's a point where the hero is called to a destiny that i don't quite understand and for some reason i just start like tears start well up in my eyes and i close my eyes and i open my eyes and i saw russell on stage talking to 4 000 people right and then i saw and i saw the impact that he was having on them and then i saw the the oh those 4 000 people in their chairs talking to their people on their stages and i was like holy crap like i saw the exponential impact that was happening right in front of me and i knew right then that i would spend my life helping the people who help people and helping them build their virtual stage so they can stand up and impact people in a in a really massive way and honestly at that point i was thinking okay cool i'll help people take their content and turn it into a live event and then covet happen and live events stopped happening right and so i now what i do is i help people take their content put it into a virtual event that will sell by creating killer offers um and creating events that people actually want to go to because the truth is people don't do things they don't want to do and most virtual events suck so that's what i've helped people do now yeah man that's that's a long roundabout story to like feel like that's that's how it happened yeah yeah i don't think it was long at all and and i think it's powerful too it shows that like many of us we experienced a moment of like like a catalyst right it's a turning point for us to recognize oh my gosh like i can go this direction or i can go this direction i can pivot and that you know even if we feel like we have failed or you know for you you lost this client it was like you're you're going like that the timing for stephanie to reach out um and and for russell to deliver that message message was relevant to you and uh and it showed the power um of what he was living right he was living that uh that in-person event but that event experience and what kind of impact it can have so why not especially now you know when people want to be virtual uh phil say being virtual uh is bringing the virtual experience to them and i think uh i i would completely agree that there there can be near as much impact if not more sometimes virtually um because you can connect with people who may not even show up to a live event yeah yeah absolutely man and i something you said there made me reminded me of like what i feel like so the the concept of an inciting incident in a story right is where the character um it hits this point like it's when frodo puts on the ring and like things go nuts and like he realizes that it's his job to take the ring to mordor and like throw it in the volcano right nobody else can do it he's called to that destiny that's the inciting incident right so when she emailed like a events give that to people naturally because they bring people they gather people like-minded people together and they inspire them naturally and we kind of joke about inspiration being like nothing right but it's it's actually important because it means that like to inspire means to breathe out so like you breathe in and i don't know means to breathe in so you breathe in inspiration and you breathe out creativity breathe out the express the natural expression from inspiration is to create something right and so events give that to people just like you said they become the inciting incident so when you're when you're thinking about um that about if is this going to be you know something that's going to help people well is it going to gather them is it going to inspire them is it going to change them and cause them to take action on something then yeah that's going to make a big huge impact on a lot of people and yeah like you said it can be an infinite amount of people you know yeah how would you oops bump my mic uh how would you say your experience with theater uh contributed to your your unique approach and perspective to doing virtual events yeah man well you know being in that world for sure like it or in the performance world and in that side like you know you you get to see the passion that people bring to the stage right you get to see the excitement and the delivery that people bring to that and so i try to help people help coach people through that of like how we're going to come on and like you ever seen the movie the greatest showman oh who hasn't it's so good yeah so good right and so that whole idea of like pt barnum-esque stuff like of like coming on and like just expressing yourself and like be being like on a stage i think sometimes we can get caught up of like you know we're we all have zoom fatigue we're all on zoom meetings all day now so it's like we're used to just getting on here and like staring at the camera but like you can actually bring something to it it takes a little bit of work but you can do it so i i think that's a part of it and then having worked with theaters to help sell out shows it's kind of a unique um perspective that i that i got from that because one of the the for the the the client that i originally worked together to to build the system that i that i teach is that it's they were a brand new theater so like that how do you get people to come to a brand new theater in the middle of nowhere tennessee um who that is literally just being built it's not even built yet how do you market a show for that um and it was like half children's theater half uh professional right so like there's all these elements to it so what i what i did essentially was kind of i call it demand hacking where you know things normally sell out because they know people know who's going to be there they know the artist they know the show they know who's playing or whatever um but if you don't have any of that how do you do it well that's that's kind of what i developed through through that was how to hack that demand to get people excited even though it was something they didn't even know existed right like it was brand new so yeah you know and i love that concept too and and as soon as you mentioned grace showman my mind got got like locked on that concept right if we think the movie uh and the the way that pt barnum at least in the context of this movie obviously it's not 100 historically accurate but let's let's stick to the story of the movie that we can understand right where what he does to build demand um is he uses the resources around him i mean he kind of he basically lies to the bank to get a loan to invest you know so he has the venue right which for many could be zoom right like where are you gonna be hosting this um what kind of webinar workshop maybe it's on facebook a private group but like he has a venue that's kind of the easy part but then you got to create the man right building up to it and so he literally had his family his two daughters his wife going around and with himself and trying to sell people with like in person handing out flyers and that was basically i mean maybe they put newspaper clippings in or like little ads in the newspaper but that that was seemingly it and and uh and so there's and i i'm i'm definitely preaching the choir for for you because you know this so well um but like there's that demand but then there's the aspect of like that first time that was complete failure was his offer wasn't fitting right with the audience who was available to attend right where he was trying to sell like to kind of like a wax museum like dead things and then what does his daughter say she's like hey you need something that's live here and that was like yeah that was really ignited like a complete pivot and so like as you mentioned early on you know there's the ideas right of the the offer to creating demand but but what you know maybe inspired by the greatest showman or other aspects like what are some key features you would say of a successful uh event yeah man so it's it's funny you're describing like exactly what i tell people walk people through so it's yeah so like i before we can even talk about getting people to show up i like to think about those things first of all what is what is the event about who is it for and what is their like prop like what do you what is the event going to solve for them if so and i like to tell people too like let's think about it from this perspective no matter what it is people are starting over here and you're going to take them over here so how can your event bridge that gap right and what are the elements that need to be in place and so once you think about that then you can think about the offer and how can what is what is the problem you know what what am i going to solve with this solution so they get excited about showing up and saying yes and then is there anything else that this solution is going to a problem that the solution is going to cause for them you know what i mean like let's say i have a dish like i have dirty dishes right and somebody says well you need a dishwasher cool i'm going to go to get a dishwasher but now i have like all these other problems like what kind of pucks do i buy like what kind of settings do i use do i how do i make sure it gets clean right there's these other issues that come up and so when you solve something from somebody a great offer it a great offer describes a problem well and it uh it delivers it shows that that you have the solution and then it operates objections by also solving those follow-up problems um and so i walk people through that and and then after you do that then we start taking that out like just like you said with pt barnum like you people we have to know if people are going to buy this or not so like let's go test it out with real people and say here i got this event so like you go i suggest that people go first to the their like ideal market right because the first virtual event i threw i was just trying to throw it out to everybody and nobody was buying it was a 97 event and then i took it to my ideal client and i started selling them right so and i'm not talking about with facebook ads i'm talking about in groups things like that free stuff maybe even individuals like if you have an idea of somebody who might attend this event message them and be like here's what i'm thinking here's how it's going to be what do you think you want to go and uh if they say yes then you're onto something and if not maybe it's time to go back to the drawing board right so that's that's kind of where i start but then you know it's it's it's equal parts like creating a great offer and being able to deliver on it because i know that you know this being in this marketing world like there's a lot of people who can create really great offers and that can sell really well but then being able to actually deliver it like that's that's crazy important um yeah because you don't want to just do it once and then flop right you want to you i i think that people i encourage people to make something that's going to be repeatable something that's going they can use in their business something that's going to grow their business um things like that yeah you know and that's it's powerful to really consider each step right and i think it's i believe it can be overwhelming and frustrating especially if you're just starting out um trying to figure out like how do all these pieces fit together i mean yeah granted even you know based once again on the movie not the maybe actual history but based on the movie pt barnum didn't really know how all the pieces would fit together but yeah there that there's that showman aspect too where it's like um you know i feel like one incredible thing is he was able to stand out very quickly uh bit andy who's very unique through the process so i mean how would you say i mean you're sharing some really like saw like gold and good stuff here uh i'm curious to hear like what what are like how can people stand out and be unique um because at the end of the day there are so many especially now there are so many virtual events going on just another there it feels like there's just another business event or just another marketing event um how yeah how do you stand out i think there's something to be said uh for having your own proprietary um and when i say proprietary i just mean to you uh you don't have to get it trademarked or anything before you start because i think people get caught up on that kind of stuff of like i maybe i need to i need to get like no no let's just figure out your ideas and see if it's going to work and then worry about that stuff but what i mean is there's something to be said for that of like i'm going to create my own proprietary framework that's mine that i can call mine that i can teach that you can lean on right um so that's that's one thing like to stand out and make yourself different but dude i'm just a firm believer just like i was saying like russell's on stage he's talking to these 4 000 people and everybody's listening to him and taking in and they're he's impacting their life like even if they know everything he's saying because i've heard everything russell's ever said so like i don't know anymore of that right right but because i sat there with an open mind and listened to whoever's on stage i was impacted and i think i think i i encourage people to to do that all the time to like and i'll tell a story about a second but those other people in the crowd the 4 000 people i just i just see them as different i just see them as different personalities that can attract different people and help in different ways and tell different stories like how many times have you um you know have you heard about something like can you think of anything that you've heard a thousand times and then one time somebody told a story about it you were like oh what a different yeah right right and so i think that's i think there's something to be said for that and so what that looks like i think is just to start standing up on your virtual stage like i encourage people to do that of like i'm gonna i'm gonna go on facebook live it's uncomfortable i'm gonna go facebook live talk about something or i'm gonna start a podcast or i'm gonna start being on podcasts or whatever it is and just start telling your story and if you can if you can do that you're the only one who has that story that's one and then if you have the proprietary framework that you can put your stuff in then that helps even more and people start to remember that and then you're you're your own thing right and that that's a long haul a faster way to do it is to you know come up with a cool hook for an event and run facebook ads to it and see if people show up right yeah yeah i think it's a both hand situation though oh for sure well and i think one thing that's interesting too is uh the the concept uh you know one of the first one we said in that last segment was this idea that you got to have repeatable messages in place i'm a big big believer in this and uh i mean how many times have we heard the same like topic like maybe something is simple but yet it's pretty big topic is like build a marketing plan or marketing or storytelling and we hear those terms and key phrases all the time but i would say um we receive different like creative inspiration based on the timeliness of that message and what we need in the moment and so like there could be a time that let's say we're learning about um how to tell a good story um and we're like oh here it goes again so we we blank out but maybe we're like here listening to this presentation at a virtual event or in any kind of presentation right and it's how to tell a good story yet we're in this moment like i've been really struggling to tell my story lately like we're we're relevant to our pain and so hearing that that presentation is timely and so um on both ends right as a participant to the message but as the message giver uh particularly those who are right hosting virtual stages uh i believe there's so much importance with um creating repeatable messages even stuff that you can almost memorize right whether it's a mix of your brand's story um some some key messages that you're able to share again and again so people uh can hear it multiple times before it will stick um you know before they'll listen and so uh that's yeah i mean i and you think of it like uh you know you gotta love to bring it up but like politicians right um love them or hate them um you gotta respect the campaign approach they take to how they do things to get attention and a lot of times they come up with slogans or repeatable phrases or it's like uh you know now it's like you know a drama show happening all across the media you know makes a propaganda a mix of like well done messaging you know um a mix of truth and falsehoods but at the end of the day like you're recognizing that those who are most effective whether it's politician a business leader can be most successful when they have a message that resonate with people that they can repeat and just ingrain in your mind like you kind of have it imprinted and memorized in your mind again and again and i and i believe like virtual stages stages of any kind uh as you believe is uh is it really essential for doing that like if you're not doing that then you don't have the attention you need to grow your business yeah man you're exactly right and it's all it's all about being like you said i love that of like having repeatable stories that you can go um it's gonna help people connect with you it's gonna help you like communicate your ideas like people don't really they need that like that's why it's like you know that's why the work you do is so important like it's all about having having these stories that are that are repeatable that people can latch on to because it does something to your brain right it makes you it's it makes you listen and and people need that to get out of their own way it's not like i think people sometimes feel like it's manipulative or something um to be like to to sell to people or whatever but using stories to do that makes people listen and that's good because they need to they if they want this result they have to get out of their own way and nobody's going to do that on their own right well it takes it takes a longer time but if you your job can come can come along and like help them form this belief or arrange this belief to benefit them that's a that's a like a noble thing to do and you're still i was listening to a podcast the other day

they would ask it's almost like the interviewer was asking these really like pointed questions that were very specific and it's like they would listen for trigger words in the question and respond with the pre-roll story right and that's like that's that's so frustrating but also it's so consistent that you have like you said you have to respect it like there's zero deviance from message um and the lesson that you can take away from that as a business owner is just that of like having these consistent things to keep the message thriving and and churning forward it's like russell with the potato gun story like i you know i don't want to hear anymore but he doesn't want to hear it anymore but like it's still helping people right so that's why you keep doing it yeah well and at the end of the day there's only so much in our um in our tool kit that we can deliver right like we can't have unlimited sources of knowledge and words um and we shouldn't um deliver that because then it can just over overwhelm people it's like a fire hose of information and you're just trying to we're trying to soak it all up right and so um having a consistent and simplified like kind of your uh your toolkit of messages that you can reuse uh and it's i've gotta admit something too so um i i've adjusted this uh this show lately visionaries you know that we're doing and uh the the fact that i'm doing it live and i don't have um all of my my key phrases or messages memorized i i literally you know with this camera i literally have my teleprompter set up and i read off maybe people could tell because eyes are scanning but i literally read off that little intro segment because i want to make sure it's repeatable eventually i'll get it memorized and that way it's ingrained and expected when people you know join the show and uh and it's something that connects to my personal values and vision but also that of my business and how we are helping with messaging and so um i've got no shame in bringing off a teleprompter because sometimes that helps with brevity you know when you go live and i think this is the issue many people have you know be that in a webinar virtual event stage that if you don't if you're not rehearsed and basically have a presentation memorized or if you don't have slides and you literally like i want to go live and talk about this topic you tend to ramble you know i don't think anyone's perfect with not rambling unless they have practice even comedians who have like sets they've practiced material so many times that yeah they can read and play off the audience but they're so good at like hey i'm gonna go to this segment in this segment and they also repeat throughout many different shows the same um jokes and things that hit and so uh i think it's important to have um consistency in like a script in your mind even if you have to read it word for word for a little bit 100 man my first webinar that i did i uh forgot to turn off my little window in the zoom room and i was literally like i was doing slides and the phone in front of me was just clicking through and somebody commented hey i think you should get a teleprompter and i was like damn it uh i mean you're right but like honestly i don't i don't it didn't matter because i was delivering exactly what i wanted to say um and i again i had no had no shame in that because i had specific things i wanted to hit and i didn't want to miss those just like you said so i feel like it's important to keep that in mind yeah yeah for sure uh so what would you say for people who are um working on building their first or next virtual stage um what are some what are three easy steps someone can take to get started on that path yeah i um i like to i like to tell people in that in that order of like um let's think about what the result is that they're going to get because result based events um sell and so if you can think about what the result is so what they're going to walk away with that's step one and then organizing your event in there that you can you can do there you take it to leave it right now but you can you can use your content to lead them to that just like a story right like how can i use the frame of a story to lead them from a to b and that's what i teach people to do but then creating a killer offer that's going to solve the problem um and then at that point you can start marketing marketing it like not you're not selling it not selling the event necessarily what i teach people do especially if you don't have any um a following is to um say hey guys this show is uh or this the show this this event is is coming up here's what it's going to be about here's here's the details about here so it's for whatever you put up a landing page and start sending people to it and say all right we can't buy tickets yet but here join the early access list right and this is that demand hacking part so if you don't have a following or anything this would be great for you if you have a following it's totally different we can talk about that but um you're getting people onto your list but then the magic happens on the back end of that where you're constantly communicating with them maybe asking them questions you're you're sending them valuable content you're getting them excited about the event and then when they when you open the tickets up you sell to those people first so the idea is to get generate some some built-in demand and scarcity because now you're going to go to the public and say hey guys tickets are selling because i just sold i just sold some to this list back here so tickets are selling so you may want to go ahead and jump on this and so at that point people like i i tell the story like i was i was in paris one time um and i was walking down the street it was the day before halloween giant line of people wrapped around this building for a house for a costume shore and my wife looked at me and she's like have you read that article about lines and i was like no she's like there's there's this psychology of like waiting in line and there's this whole like subset of people who just jump in lines just because there's a line and it's just because they want to know what's happening something must be going on here let me go ahead and get in line so they get in line they start asking people questions and things like that it happens all the time yeah you see crowds and you were like what's happening over there yeah exactly so you'll be a part of it and that's that's what we're trying to hack is that bone in people like it they they if that that is kind of proof that that this event is going to be real it's going to happen like if you have if you shield some to these this early access list and you take it to the public say tickets are selling then people are more likely to pull the trigger so and then you just market it and like um i think so that that's like the demand hack part and um i i find that like i said it's it's two two parts right being able to create the results-based event that people are going to be excited about and being able to speak about that well and then being able to deliver it well and so i think i think if you put too much like if you're brand new and this is your first event like i'm talking to somebody right now who's in my program who is throwing a podcasting event over like podcasting 101 and so he knows all the tech stuff and what my program teaches people how to market right so he is in that process right now but i was just talking about that with him last night like he doesn't know nobody knows him but like podcasting is so like hot like if you can just say here's what i'm going to teach you in this right i it's good people are going to show up and i think that's the biggest thing of like creating creating that result-based offer and then being able to deliver on it and if you're brand new and it's just like 10 people show up that's great because now you can get testimonials you can really show up for those people you can get testimonials go market again you have even more and it just starts to build on itself does that make sense um that's what i recommend to people yeah yeah i love that plan i love that process and and i i believe it really distills it down right to like feel like oh okay it is possible and and you know you say demand hacking uh you know i i think there's success hacking too right like if you're not a successful event why not follow someone who's done that as well right and i think that's why what you're up to is so impactful especially now it's so relevant and i i believe with so many businesses turning virtual this idea of a virtual experience is not is just only going to explode further um there's still going to be eventually there's going to be more and more in-person events again but the virtual experience is going to be even more improved think about like zoom right the video conferencing app how much business have they gotten over the last six months insane amount of business new business yeah yeah and how much music was that i said so much so that we can't use it anymore yeah yeah it's like it's overwhelming their system it's and so but but that's demand right so like how can you demand hack that in a way that's like oh and not necessarily you have to build a software but you can build a product around uh anything inside your business you know present that and then hopefully it doesn't take a pandemic for that to create demand however um you know there are plenty of ways to do that and i i even love like going back to like i love this concept of demand hacking and and one thing that i'm i'm working on um implementing more into um the marketing side of uh of my strategies and and my products is reverse engineering effective marketing campaigns behind movies uh movies are a powerful product that are sold like a show you know would be and i'm a huge movie lover and um i think the process is fascinating the campaign that's built around it and so uh that's something uh that i'm going to be doing and showing behind the scenes more in the future and it is this idea of like how can you build demand in some movies um even if their story is not that great it can still be successful at the box office if the demand and the curiosity and the marketing is done right in the front end totally man i totally it's all about the it's all the same same stuff and something i forgot to mention

most people and this i think people get overwhelmed how do i get people to show up and what does the tech look like i one of the things that i like to get out of the way with people is the tech stuff of like let's just let me tell me about your event and then i will prescribe like a tech stack for you like but it doesn't have to be complicated um and to go along with that though when you're delivering the event it also doesn't have to be complicated like i remember i said how like you follow the arc of the story and like people from point a to point b to get the result well that is that what i teach people to do something called the minimum viable event so it's like you you come in you teach the content and then i like to do like a workshop on the back end of it where i actually help them do that so if we're talking about a paid event and you have um you have something that you help people with or like some sort of course or whatever you could teach a part of that or the whole thing over a whole day and then on the back end of it like actually help people questions and you're just answering questions for people like it's not that tough right you just answer their questions they get on with you and it does two things it helps people stay because of the story thing and because they get their chance to ask a question it helps people stay on and then it doesn't take as much effort for you because you know your stuff and if you map it out like that it's super simple to just teach it and then you can just answer questions i mean and that's incredibly valuable for people you're going to get great testimonials and you're going like you maybe you could use it to build course you could use it to start a podcast you could use it to um i i don't know sell a new program like there's all kinds of stuff you you could do so that's that's that's the other piece of it it's like keeping that part crazy simple too you don't need eight live stream cameras like tony robbins to have uh you to have a crazy good event right and yeah like people are going to tony robbins event because he's tony robbins right and like we're doing something different we're reimagining what that can look like you know that's so powerful well chris this has been so good i'm like you've shared so much good wisdom and knowledge uh where can people learn about uh launching their next live event in virtual stage yeah man so i'm actually doing a weekly webinar right now i don't know i will cut that off but if you want to check that out you can go to sold outsecrets.com forward slash event and i actually teach like the top three things that i learned i call them theater hacks that are basically the stuff i outline but i go into detail very very heavily especially marketing so yeah i think that would be a great place to start secret.com

awesome so good hey thanks so much for doing this thank you i really appreciate that yeah thanks so much for listening uh once again if you would like to learn more about how you can use your unique message and share with the world through video and create videos that actually are professional and perform bring you money and all of the results and influence that you want to make then i invite you to learn more by going to contentsupply.com again for listening and we'll talk to you very soon

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How To Build Your Virtual Stage

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