WEBVTT

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Those who don't know digital marketer, it's not some rinky dink business. It's been around since 2014.

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You and that company have kind of educated an entire generation of marketers, including myself. Our sales for courses and certifications

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dropped to 20%

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of what they were over the previous period. They they didn't drop by 20%.

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They dropped to 20%.

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We were willing to take an 8 figure business down to the studs and say every single product we've ever sold, we are no longer selling anymore. Nobody was buying it as much anymore. Sales had fallen off so dramatically,

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and we didn't really know how to fix it.

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Okay. Ryan, thanks for coming on. I wanna get right into it and

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talk about your retirement.

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So I I think it's about a year ago now you announced you're retiring from creating

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and selling courses about marketing certifications about marketing. And for those who don't know, you've been doing that for a long time, almost twenty five years with digitalmarketing.com

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and more. So what happened? Just walk me through that. Yeah. I mean, so

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I mean, if we go all the way back, I mean, I started my first business from my college dorm room, and I promise I won't take you from then all the way up until now. But but basically,

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the beginning, I was creating content about what I was doing. And I was doing this because that was just the culture of the Internet back then. I mean, there was forum culture. If you were doing stuff, you were sharing it.

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It was how I was learning. It was how I was building my network.

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And then at some point, I realized, oh my gosh. I can sell this stuff stuff that I'm talking about. People will give me money for it, and that's a way that I can actually fund my different business ventures.

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And so, yeah, you're right. I mean, I literally have been creating content related to marketing and selling things online

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since the year 2000.

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And so, I mean, I went back and I and I looked, and I've been doing it every year since in different

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formats, and it started out very informal.

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I've got this email list. You can sign up for it. All the way up to,

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you know, hey, maybe we should actually treat this like a real business because it kind of is. And that was when digitalmarketer.com

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was formed back in, I think, 2013

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maybe,

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with really just the goal of let's bring all of these disparate products that I have under one roof, under one brand,

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and then that developed into,

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you know, let's start offering more professional certifications

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and things like that. So I've been doing this

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basically my entire adult life,

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but yeah, around about April

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2025,

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realized, and really even before then,

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realized that this business model isn't working, and we're gonna have to make a really significant

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pivot and change, and I'd actually decided at the 2025

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that we were basically gonna let digital marketer die a slow and profitable death. We weren't gonna really invest all that heavily in a bunch of new product creation. We were gonna continue serving the members and the customers that we had,

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but

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we weren't gonna try to innovate because just

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nobody was buying it as much anymore. Sales had fallen off so dramatically,

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and we didn't really know how to fix it.

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We ultimately wound up pivoting the business, which we can get into, but yeah, that was the reason that I said, I'm out. A lot of people thought it was just kind of a marketing gimmick, but here we are. A year later, I still haven't created another marketing course,

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and

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my, you know, the company's better for it. Yeah. I wanna talk about why that happened, because it was that you weren't the only person

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that this was happening to, that there it's not just marketing courses or marketing certifications. It's everybody who's selling any type of information product

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or course or or educational product

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has felt this impact, I guess, since

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2023,

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2025.

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And that's I kinda wanna part one of our conversation will be about what that impact is, how you're addressing it, how people should.

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And then part two will be about a little bit of a still related, you know, how to how to build a durable business in this space. So,

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like, why did the why were sales declining?

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What do you see as the the market headwinds that are impacting people who are building

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media information or education type businesses?

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Well, so the first big

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pullback that we saw was really just

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the post

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course

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business bubble bursting after COVID,

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because really it was during COVID,

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when everybody stuck in their house, that this is when we saw just the course business explode. I mean, I've been, again, in this business in this

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publishing business for a really long time.

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I I'd never seen anything quite like what I saw in 2020 and 2021 in in terms of just not just sales skyrocketing, but everybody coming into the market wanting to go and produce their own courses because they realize that everybody's

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buying things.

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So there was sort of like that Clubhouse effect. You remember that app Clubhouse?

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Yeah. I mean,

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the same way that Clubhouse just absolutely fell off a cliff and died because when nobody was when everybody wasn't forced to be inside, they actually wanted to get on and talk to real people. They didn't want to be on a twenty four hour

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live podcast type thing.

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There was a pullback from the course business, and so we saw that. But I just thought, okay, this is kind of temporal. We had a bubble, the bubble burst, it's gonna it kind of came down, but it's gonna go back up. I've seen this before.

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I've seen this game before. But it didn't really come back as fast as I thought it was, and the first big reason that that happened

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I think is simply YouTube. YouTube is the first major

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headwind

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that the course business has seen. Information has always been out there, it's always been freely available,

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but the amount of information on YouTube, the quality of information that is available right now today on YouTube

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is

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like nothing I've ever seen before, and I think the next phase of consumers

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of content realized,

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we can get a lot of this from YouTube, and many of them were YouTube first. That was where they watched their first video content. Whereas when I first got started, was selling to people who were used to buying books on tape, and I mean literal frickin' cassette tapes.

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Right? So that was that was the first big shift that that we saw where I was like, this is gonna be, you know, changing.

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The next thing though that really hit, obviously, in in 2023 was AI,

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and that was the ultimate headwind that I realized,

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you know, okay,

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this probably isn't gonna come back

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in some areas. There's other factors. You you and I have kind of talked about GLP ones and the impact of just,

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you know, as people are taking some of these drugs, as crazy as that, you know, may sound at first to people,

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there are a lot of people who buy courses,

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and they buy them,

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and they binge them,

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and

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it's it's like

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their drug of choice.

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You know, I know I'm kind of that way. Like, I like to buy courses, and I like to binge courses, and I think a lot of the people who are out there buying courses are buying everybody's courses.

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And just like GLP-1s are really effective at breaking the habit cycle when it comes to food or alcohol or some of these other things, I think it did the same with a lot of people and their course buying habits.

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But the biggest ones, and YouTube, AI, without a doubt, biggest headwinds

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that aren't going anywhere, that aren't going to change anything.

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We were talking a couple months ago at New Media Summit about

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how, you know, it's like AI is not perfect.

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People, like, they're asked all their business questions. Does it give them the right answer, the perfect answer, or the complete answer, as well as a great course or program could? Maybe not, but you were saying like people are still choosing that alternative over buying your product. Can you break that down, and like how AI is competing directly against educational products? Yeah. If the consumer believes

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that

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AI will do the thing that your course is going to teach them to do,

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they're going to take the AI path

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every time.

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Right? We would always just rather have the thing done for us than learn how to do the thing. Most people. There are some people who are professional learners, we love to learn, but okay, cool. Once you've sold to those nine people,

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how how are you gonna build your business? How how are we gonna scale this thing? That is the promise of AI. Now, often that promise falls well short, but it's not going to stop people from trying that one first.

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And so when somebody's really excited to do something,

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and they're doing their research, they're like, okay, need to figure out this new skill so I can do this thing,

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they're always gonna start with the path of least resistance. They're going to start with the path that's going to be the easiest, and they're going go down it a good long ways.

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If

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your path isn't the first thing they try, there's a really good chance that they never circle back around

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to

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your business and your course and the amazing work that you do. I know it's frustrating, and I talk to a lot of people who sell courses, and they're like, but that's not right. That's not how it should be because my course is so much more complete than anything that you're gonna get from AI.

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And they're right, and I understand their frustration, but it doesn't change the reality.

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AI doesn't have to be better.

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People just have to believe that it's at least as good, and they're gonna do it first because it's already there, it's pretty much free, and it has the promise, none of it's going to teach you how to do it, but it's just gonna do the thing for you. I think you've got to ask a question if you are in the course business.

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Could somebody reasonably believe

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that

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AI would just do the thing that you're teaching them to do? And if the answer is yes,

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your course business is in trouble. It likely already is in trouble, and that was the reality that we had to accept at Digital Marketer.

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One of the promises of AI is you don't have to know how to write copy. You don't have to know how to write an ad. You don't have to know how to create a campaign or to put together an SEO strategy.

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AI is just gonna do all that for you. Well, yeah, it does. It creates really crappy copy and, you know, boilerplate ad cam pains and all these things that kind of suck, but it's not gonna stop the person from saying, oh, if I got ChatGPT or I got Claude, I can just do this. I don't need to buy that course.

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Yeah. It doesn't mean the skill's less valuable. I've talked to so many people who have

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education businesses about how to be a copywriter or how to write SEO blog posts, and they're a zero now.

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Doesn't mean you shouldn't learn copy, but this is how the market reacts. So I think we've set the stage, and I think anybody who who has a a 7 or 8 figure

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info product business has already seen this. When I talk to people about these market headwinds, the only people I get pushback from, the people who don't see it, are either

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selling how to use AI or stuff around that.

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Yeah. Exactly.

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You're teaching people how to use AI, then you can still sell courses,

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which is kind of funny because the reality is AI is pretty good at teaching you to use AI. But, yeah,

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if you are doing AI stuff, you can get away with it. I know people who have

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one of the businesses that we're in, one of our portfolio companies, is actually a guitar lesson,

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chord. And, you know, it's still doing fine because

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AI

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is not going to play the guitar for you. At least you don't want it to. So if

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what you're teaching people to do still needs to be done

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in the real world, if it still needs to be done with

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atoms and not bits,

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then I think you still probably have a decent shot.

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The challenge is over

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time,

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do you think more people are going to say, let

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me just see if I can get the answer from ChatGPT, or let me see if I can get the answer from

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YouTube,

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or do you think more people over time are going to stop using those and go back to saying, oh, let me just buy a course on this? I think the trend

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is definitely gonna be towards more people saying, you know, hey, Chad JBT, teach me how to play the guitar. And it's gonna do it, and you can argue that it's not gonna do it as well as you, but that's where people are going to go, there and YouTube. And I mean, just to give you some numbers around this, you know, a digital marketer, we saw in twelve to eighteen months,

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our sales for courses and certifications

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dropped to 20%

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of what they were

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over the previous period. They didn't drop by 20%,

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they dropped to 20%.

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That's a massive

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fall off, like nothing I've ever seen, and that's when we knew, okay, we just we have to do something different. I don't necessarily wanna ride this thing all the way to the ground. Yeah. And for those who don't know digital marketer, it's not some rinky dink business that's been around since 2014.

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It's you in that company have kind of educated an entire generation of marketers, including myself. Like, when I got started in my adult career,

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I was going to digitalmarketer.com

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and taking certifications and using those. So it's not some little player. And then the the other pushback I get on this from people who are like, oh, this is YouTube, AI. It's not really affecting you. It's just like they just have really small businesses, and they're not big enough to see the impacts yet. If you're doing you know, if your course did 50 k in sales, like, you're not quite at that level where a a macro impact like this would matter to you, but if you wanna build a scalable business, it it definitely does impact you. Yeah, that's exactly right, and where you're always going to have

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an edge

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is if you've built some kind of a brand, company brand or personal brand, there's always gonna be a contingent that are going to want to go straight to the source that is you.

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And so there there are opportunities there still. I think the question we have to ask in this new age is, is the traditional course format the best way for us to monetize

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our

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wisdom?

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Because we're finding increasingly that no, it's not. I wanna talk about the the best ways to monetize that that knowledge or that expertise in a second. And one question I've always wondered,

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kind of unrelated to this, is how do you refer to this market? Because

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I've always struggled with this because I talk to a lot of people who sell these types of products, courses,

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information products. Like, I've heard people use the term, like, info and coaching or info products or education businesses.

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Have you is you've been in this space. You know a lot of people. Have you ever found, like, the right term for this? Because the info products has a little bit of a negative

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connotation,

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but

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I don't know quite what to say. I've always thought this was silly because, yes, people used to call it info info businesses, info products, course businesses,

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and I do think the category that you pick for your business is really, really, really important.

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I looked at it and I said, this is just publishing.

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That's all that it is.

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Right? Book publishing is not a new concept,

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and when publishers decided that they were going to

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publish books on tape, for example,

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that was still just publishing.

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When universities

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publish

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research papers,

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it's publishing.

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So to me, this is all just the publishing industry. That's what we're doing, and so what segment of the publishing industry

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are

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you landing And within kind of, you've got media and you have publishing, so are we more on the media side,

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where we're not so much selling our IP, but we're

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gathering an audience?

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So those two business models frequently

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do go together. Events frequently come along to the media publishing events. I mean, all of these around one another, but I always thought that info publishing

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was a stupid

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name for the category, and yeah, did wind up sounding super scammy.

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I thought the

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course business

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was just astute. It's like, come on.

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It's the publishing

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business. That's what it is. Yeah. I think we'd all be better off if we all went over your definition and actually started saying it. It's

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hard to get that to catch on, but We would also, by the way, come up with better business models. So one of the reasons that I was able to be successful, more successful, and build a more scalable company at Digital Marketer is because I didn't define it as a quote unquote course business. It's like, okay, we're a publishing company. How do publishing companies work? Well, if you're the publisher, that doesn't mean that you're also necessarily the author.

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So there's publishers, there's authors, there's this whole infrastructure, so I could actually look at companies that had been around for decades

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that were doing ten, twenty x what I was doing and say, well, how are they structured? What's their business model? Who are they selling to? What, you know, what do their teams look like? And I could learn so much from that. Whereas if you define yourself by these narrow little categories, you're just looking at people who are the same size as you, and it's the same group think, and nobody's getting any better at any of this stuff.

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Good point. To go back to

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how to monetize

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knowledge and expertise now,

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you know, this is a big topic and a good question.

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What do you think is the new meta? So are we talking about for an individual personal brand, or are we trying to create a larger

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corporate brand?

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I think what what I wanna do and what a lot of listeners wanna do is they wanna build a publishing business that can scale to 8 figures. You know, they're

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maybe stuck at six or 7 figures right now, and they want to build something durable beyond that. Okay. So everything's gonna have to start with

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building some type of a media presence,

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because

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paid traffic mean, when I first got started, my very first business that I ever started online, I was selling an ebook on how to make your own baby food. I had one product,

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one

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one page website,

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and I could buy ads,

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and I could optimize

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for the search engines to rank and get free traffic.

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And that was all I needed. I'm gonna buy ads, traffic's gonna come to this page, people are gonna buy. I didn't need media. I didn't need an email list.

00:17:23.880 --> 00:17:28.440
I didn't need an audience. There certainly was no social media back in 1999 or anything like that.

00:17:30.120 --> 00:17:32.840
Media was readily available and inexpensive.

00:17:33.080 --> 00:17:34.840
Today the exact opposite is true.

00:17:35.160 --> 00:17:35.960
Today,

00:17:36.200 --> 00:17:37.800
if you want to build

00:17:38.135 --> 00:17:40.215
some type of an

00:17:40.535 --> 00:17:41.975
education publishing

00:17:42.295 --> 00:17:47.095
media type, you've got to start with, okay, how am I going to create my own

00:17:47.655 --> 00:18:03.830
media? How am I going to own my own media brand? At its core, that's obviously building an email list, something that you're very, very familiar with, but where we have to start now is pulling people off of the channels where everybody is right now, and where everybody is right now is they're on Instagram, they're on TikTok, they're on YouTube.

00:18:04.275 --> 00:18:06.915
So it starts with obviously just publishing

00:18:07.315 --> 00:18:22.470
free content, like good stuff out there that people see it and they go, okay, this person seems to have something unique and valuable to say, and I cannot stress enough how important the uniqueness of it is. And it doesn't have to be that you're necessarily saying something that nobody's ever said before,

00:18:22.950 --> 00:18:28.870
but you do need to have some type of unique insight, some type of unique perspective, a unique point of view.

00:18:30.575 --> 00:18:33.775
Usually this, by the way, is driven by unique experiences.

00:18:33.775 --> 00:18:35.615
You've actually done something

00:18:35.855 --> 00:18:38.575
that the average bear has not done.

00:18:39.375 --> 00:18:43.055
If we can get there and we can start talking about this stuff, and we can now bring them into

00:18:43.820 --> 00:18:48.780
an email list and newsletter where people are excited to hear directly from us. So

00:18:49.580 --> 00:18:50.620
it's not that

00:18:50.780 --> 00:19:00.475
in somebody's feed we happen to show up, and they were like, well, was interesting, like. But it's like, no, no, no. It's the next level. It's the difference between being seen and being followed.

00:19:01.355 --> 00:19:07.675
Right? It's I want to specifically hear from this person and what they have to say. This is the first and most difficult

00:19:08.155 --> 00:19:15.150
challenge to solve for, but that is where it all begins. Right now, it's an ecosystem where you kind of need to be in different places,

00:19:15.710 --> 00:19:20.190
driving into one, and we can kind of get into the tactics of how I've seen that be most effective.

00:19:20.750 --> 00:19:21.950
Once you've done that,

00:19:22.910 --> 00:19:24.110
now congratulations,

00:19:24.190 --> 00:19:27.385
you've built your own media. You have owned

00:19:27.545 --> 00:19:28.345
media.

00:19:28.985 --> 00:19:32.665
Once you have owned media, and you are a media company,

00:19:32.905 --> 00:19:34.745
you get to choose how you monetize.

00:19:35.065 --> 00:19:39.145
And the nice thing is is media companies have been remarkably consistent in their monetization.

00:19:39.225 --> 00:19:41.785
They monetize through advertising and sponsorships,

00:19:42.390 --> 00:19:48.470
which is not my favorite, but it can be effective depending on where you're in. They monetize through premium content access,

00:19:48.550 --> 00:19:52.790
of which courses fall in that category, but it could also be a premium community.

00:19:53.350 --> 00:19:55.190
They monetize through events,

00:19:55.830 --> 00:19:58.935
so let's get everybody together. Right? Adweek

00:19:58.935 --> 00:20:00.295
magazine does their

00:20:00.615 --> 00:20:05.975
Adweek events, and you got all these different companies that do their big events, lots of different event models.

00:20:06.375 --> 00:20:16.440
And then lastly is licensing, and this is where your core IP that you have, you license it, you let other people utilize it in different ways. But those are the four primary

00:20:16.920 --> 00:20:18.120
means through which

00:20:18.440 --> 00:20:20.600
media companies would monetize,

00:20:20.680 --> 00:20:22.760
and you're probably gonna start with just you,

00:20:23.080 --> 00:20:26.040
and then eventually if you really do wanna expand it to 8 figures,

00:20:26.575 --> 00:20:34.575
the goal should be to expand your media empire from just being a single person media empire to having multiple people

00:20:34.895 --> 00:20:35.695
where

00:20:35.775 --> 00:20:37.375
you are one of

00:20:38.095 --> 00:20:45.120
the faces on your media team, but then there are others as well. And if you just look at any media organization,

00:20:46.160 --> 00:20:57.755
that's that's the playbook that they have all run. So I know that's a lot. We can kinda double click on any of that stuff. Let's do that. So I I think we know the four categories,

00:20:58.315 --> 00:20:58.875
and

00:20:59.195 --> 00:21:00.795
most people listen to this,

00:21:01.035 --> 00:21:03.515
they've they've done well with premium content,

00:21:03.915 --> 00:21:16.170
and they're probably not we'll talk about events later. They might explore in events. They're probably not a good fit for licensing yet. And then just like you, they're not super interested in advertising. They definitely wanna build an advertising dependent business.

00:21:16.810 --> 00:21:23.050
But like we talked about, premium content, like, it's been maybe the best model for a lot of media businesses

00:21:23.315 --> 00:21:26.915
in the past five to ten years, but these headwinds have

00:21:27.155 --> 00:21:35.155
impacted a lot. And there's a lot of people who I'm kinda speaking to someone who has they've done 6 or 7 figures of some type of premium content offer membership course,

00:21:35.700 --> 00:21:40.180
but they're struggling on where where to go next because it doesn't feel like it's working anymore.

00:21:40.580 --> 00:21:43.620
So we could take this a lot of different ways. One way we could

00:21:43.940 --> 00:21:44.820
is

00:21:45.060 --> 00:21:50.335
how have you taken your content offers and adapted them to the new market,

00:21:51.055 --> 00:21:52.495
and recommendations

00:21:52.495 --> 00:21:54.335
for what other people should do too?

00:21:54.735 --> 00:21:58.095
Yeah. So two big opportunities right now that I think,

00:21:58.575 --> 00:22:06.160
especially if you've been dramatically impacted by AI, so nobody wants to buy your course anymore because they think AI can do it, there's two plays that you can run.

00:22:06.560 --> 00:22:07.680
The first play

00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:10.720
is actually kind of a modified licensing play.

00:22:11.040 --> 00:22:12.800
So what you do is

00:22:13.040 --> 00:22:14.080
you take

00:22:14.480 --> 00:22:17.040
your amazing content that you have,

00:22:17.760 --> 00:22:18.800
and you essentially

00:22:20.365 --> 00:22:25.165
stuff it into AI. You wrap AI around it, and instead of selling content,

00:22:25.565 --> 00:22:26.365
you sell

00:22:26.765 --> 00:22:31.325
access to your kind of pre trained AI, and that can take a lot of different forms, whether you're

00:22:31.820 --> 00:22:33.020
directly selling

00:22:33.340 --> 00:22:34.220
GPTs,

00:22:34.220 --> 00:22:35.500
or you're directly selling

00:22:36.380 --> 00:22:38.620
skills, if it's Claude,

00:22:39.180 --> 00:22:45.820
or you're maybe selling prompt packs and things like that. This is what we've done at Digital Marketer. So at Digital Marketer, we've stopped saying,

00:22:46.595 --> 00:22:47.795
buy this course.

00:22:48.035 --> 00:22:49.395
We've started saying,

00:22:50.115 --> 00:22:58.595
get access to this community, premium content, that has all a library of AI assistants, I. E. GPTs and skills,

00:22:59.235 --> 00:23:00.115
a library

00:23:00.275 --> 00:23:00.835
of prompts,

00:23:01.540 --> 00:23:06.820
and all the different tools that we use to train our own internal AI tools.

00:23:07.380 --> 00:23:11.140
And so now what people are doing when they log in is instead of getting a bunch of courses,

00:23:11.620 --> 00:23:18.215
they're getting AI that's essentially already been trained on our courses. So you could buy, for example, a course on how to do email marketing,

00:23:18.455 --> 00:23:27.655
or you could just buy an email marketing skill from us, or prompt pack from us, or a set of GPTs from us that will just do all the things that you would need to do as an email marketer.

00:23:28.260 --> 00:23:28.980
Now,

00:23:29.220 --> 00:23:32.820
those were enabled by the courses, and so arguably this is licensing,

00:23:32.980 --> 00:23:37.860
because what we're doing is we're taking our IP, we're packaging it up in another way, we're giving people access

00:23:38.180 --> 00:23:40.660
to it. So that's kind of the first play.

00:23:40.980 --> 00:23:42.020
The second play

00:23:42.375 --> 00:23:45.095
is you can pivot into services.

00:23:45.335 --> 00:23:47.255
So services historically

00:23:48.055 --> 00:23:50.055
are not a monetization

00:23:50.855 --> 00:23:55.495
mechanism in and around media companies. They can be in some cases,

00:23:56.540 --> 00:24:05.580
but in general a service company is more likely to be an advertiser to a media company than a media company is to say, let's spin off a services division. But you do have it,

00:24:06.140 --> 00:24:08.140
and we're seeing now

00:24:08.460 --> 00:24:10.300
this is becoming far more viable

00:24:10.825 --> 00:24:13.305
for people who maybe they don't want to have a service,

00:24:13.545 --> 00:24:19.385
you know, they don't want have a service component to the business because they don't want to, you know, have a large team and have to deal with a bunch of clients.

00:24:19.545 --> 00:24:24.665
If what you can do, and again, we haven't done this at Digital Marketer, but we could. So at Digital Marketer, we could say,

00:24:25.550 --> 00:24:26.990
if you just want us to

00:24:27.230 --> 00:24:35.790
build out your marketing campaigns for you, we will do that. Just give us money and we'll do it. And the way that we would do that is we would leverage the AI tools that we built,

00:24:36.110 --> 00:24:38.110
which have been trained on our courses,

00:24:38.615 --> 00:24:49.895
and we would just deliver the finished end result. This is what we're doing at my other company, at the Scalable company. Started out as a course business. Nobody wanted to buy the course. We said, all right, screw it. We'll just do it with you.

00:24:50.455 --> 00:24:56.580
We'll just do it for you. And we work one on one with clients to build out their operating systems for their businesses

00:24:57.060 --> 00:25:01.460
instead of having them go through a course to do it, but that process,

00:25:01.460 --> 00:25:07.815
which is a twelve to sixteen week process, is heavily enabled by AI. So it's our people

00:25:08.695 --> 00:25:10.215
working with clients,

00:25:10.775 --> 00:25:15.895
but they're gonna do an interview with a client. All that interview stuff is gonna be fed into

00:25:15.975 --> 00:25:20.455
AI that, again, has been trained on our proprietary IP, what in the past would have been called a course.

00:25:21.030 --> 00:25:25.830
And now it's just doing the thing for him, just delivering it for him. So I think those are the two

00:25:26.230 --> 00:25:34.710
vehicles that you have today, the paths that we're taking. That's great. That's a really concise breakdown. I haven't heard you break it all down that way. I think that'll be super useful.

00:25:35.195 --> 00:25:49.920
Do you think so the way I like to learn is by kind of case studies, looking at examples. And so, like, I've I've, you know, go buy I've bought what Digital Marketer sells, and I've learned a lot from that. You can you can go look at getscalablescalable.co,

00:25:49.920 --> 00:25:58.320
right, to learn more about what you do there. Are there any other people you think have have made this pivot well? You know, like, someone comes to mind like a Cole Gordon who's

00:25:58.720 --> 00:26:01.280
done, you know, services and productized services really well,

00:26:02.295 --> 00:26:06.535
but also has a great media presence. Who else do you look at for inspiration?

00:26:06.775 --> 00:26:08.455
I'm honestly not seeing a lot of

00:26:08.855 --> 00:26:17.970
course first businesses doing this very well right now, which is why I think it creates phenomenal opportunity. And I'll tell you, man, I've been looking, cause I'm looking for inspiration myself.

00:26:18.290 --> 00:26:21.170
What I'm seeing some course businesses doing

00:26:21.570 --> 00:26:24.690
is they're starting to leverage AI tools

00:26:25.250 --> 00:26:27.010
in things like lead magnets.

00:26:27.250 --> 00:26:30.290
So here's a little simple, you know, GPT or prompt pack

00:26:30.745 --> 00:26:31.785
that will

00:26:32.585 --> 00:26:36.985
You can have it for free in exchange for a name, email address, in exchange for opting in

00:26:37.225 --> 00:26:42.825
to my newsletter. So they're using them on the front end as like middle of funnel content, gated content.

00:26:43.860 --> 00:26:45.380
They're incorporating

00:26:45.380 --> 00:26:49.140
AI into what they're doing in terms of I'll teach you how to use it,

00:26:49.700 --> 00:26:51.300
but they're so stuck

00:26:52.020 --> 00:26:52.900
in the

00:26:53.140 --> 00:26:55.460
I'm a course business game

00:26:55.780 --> 00:26:57.620
that they just won't

00:26:58.055 --> 00:27:07.255
break that. That was the big thing that we were willing to do at Digital Marketer, and we were willing to do it, man, for an 8 figure business. We were willing to take an 8 figure business down to the studs

00:27:07.335 --> 00:27:11.495
and say every single product we've ever sold, we are no longer selling anymore.

00:27:12.070 --> 00:27:14.630
The only thing we're selling right now is

00:27:15.030 --> 00:27:29.375
access to our AI tools that have been trained on our stuff, and I just don't know a lot I haven't seen a lot of other people who are willing to make that move, and I've checked. No. There's not. I think, you know, Hermosy, it's not that he had a chorus business before, but he had, you know,

00:27:29.775 --> 00:27:33.535
what was it? Jim Launch was more education and and coaching,

00:27:33.775 --> 00:27:42.340
and I like what he's doing with his workshop in advising business. I don't have to get into that, but I think it's a unique model I'm seeing more people copy, of course, because everybody copies

00:27:42.500 --> 00:27:46.260
Hermosy and especially someone like him. But it is a cool,

00:27:47.140 --> 00:27:51.380
you know, model that's maybe less impacted by AI. It's so in person. It's it's different.

00:27:51.620 --> 00:27:54.420
And and I think that's that's another thing that you could do. You could flip it completely.

00:27:54.875 --> 00:27:58.875
Again, this is something that has already existed, but I am seeing course businesses

00:27:59.195 --> 00:28:00.715
shifting away from

00:28:01.035 --> 00:28:03.275
selling access to content, and instead

00:28:03.435 --> 00:28:06.315
pivoting much harder into community, especially in person,

00:28:06.875 --> 00:28:10.235
and they're having some success with that. There's scalability challenges

00:28:10.550 --> 00:28:12.470
there, and certainly logistic

00:28:12.630 --> 00:28:13.590
challenges,

00:28:13.830 --> 00:28:15.350
but that can also be

00:28:16.390 --> 00:28:34.845
a phenomenal model. And I'm not saying, by the way, that courses won't kind of come back around to a certain extent. I think right now it's really depressed because people believe that AI will just do it. Some of that will turn out not to be true. I just don't think it's ever gonna come back to where it was. So if you were running a sizable business back in 2022,

00:28:35.430 --> 00:28:43.990
and you're like, I just want to get back to there, I don't think it's gonna happen from selling courses alone. I think you're gonna need to figure something out. And even if you look at Alex, Alex

00:28:43.990 --> 00:28:44.870
now has

00:28:45.190 --> 00:28:48.710
a I forget, think it's like a thousand dollars a month or something like that, but they've

00:28:49.110 --> 00:28:50.230
got what is essentially

00:28:51.165 --> 00:28:55.005
a group coaching type deal. There's no in person, there's no services.

00:28:55.645 --> 00:29:01.485
Yeah, ACQ Advantage if people want to research it more, like keep going. Yeah. One of the main reasons that people

00:29:01.965 --> 00:29:04.925
buy that is because you get access to his

00:29:05.325 --> 00:29:09.360
AI CFO tool, Right? So even there, AI is critical

00:29:09.840 --> 00:29:10.720
component,

00:29:10.880 --> 00:29:13.520
and these internal AI tools are a critical component

00:29:13.840 --> 00:29:20.160
of this. And I think we're gonna see this more and more, people just wanting the different AI tools built for them because everybody wants AI,

00:29:20.875 --> 00:29:23.915
they want to use AI, but most people aren't getting

00:29:24.235 --> 00:29:26.475
as much as they know they could out of AI.

00:29:27.595 --> 00:29:37.450
AI just out of the box is an idiot. It's pretty smart, but it's not that smart. So if you've got great IP, if you've got great content, stop trying to sell the content.

00:29:38.170 --> 00:29:39.370
Train AI,

00:29:39.450 --> 00:29:42.090
sell access to the AI that's been trained on your content.

00:29:42.410 --> 00:29:57.655
It's a lot more sellable. It's gonna get a lot better results for your people. That's a good point. It seems like his Alex's marketing angle there is mostly around the primary benefit is getting the ACQ AI trained on all of his content, exactly what you talked about before and what you've done. And then the secondary benefit is, like, community,

00:29:57.895 --> 00:30:25.685
some q and a with their team, stuff like that. It's all it's all in a membership product, and they built almost like a small language model all around Alex's stuff, and I heard heard good things about it. I wanna shift to the, like, maybe the other path, which you mentioned, which is kinda like events, live experiences, and one second. I wanna get your take on, like, other things people have tried to kind of pivot away from courses. I've seen a lot of people, like, they had a, you know, one of these nine nine seven courses, and then they kind of built a coaching program on top of that, and they're charging

00:30:25.925 --> 00:30:29.525
five, ten times that price. That's been a very common trend.

00:30:30.565 --> 00:30:34.410
Do you think that can be a sustainable model if people pivot?

00:30:34.570 --> 00:30:44.570
I mean, to me, that's a services business, right? And again, it's the terms that we use. So we use the term coaching, and coaching is a category, like, that is a thing, but to me, coaching is a subset of consulting,

00:30:45.290 --> 00:30:46.010
which is services.

00:30:46.605 --> 00:30:57.805
And so I would just say, okay, so they're doing a services business now. Now, it's a spectrum. There are some services that are hyper bespoke and one on one, and then there are some services that are a bit more productized.

00:30:57.885 --> 00:30:59.405
And so I do love

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:05.200
productized services. That's effectively what we're doing at the scalable company, so when somebody comes in

00:31:06.080 --> 00:31:11.040
as a client for us, that first twelve to sixteen weeks is incredibly productized.

00:31:11.645 --> 00:31:18.285
Somebody comes through, and they're going to go through a process that will be identical no matter who you are.

00:31:18.605 --> 00:31:20.045
It is customized

00:31:20.285 --> 00:31:23.165
for each one of them, but the process itself

00:31:23.245 --> 00:31:26.845
that they're going through is, and what the output is,

00:31:27.420 --> 00:31:29.820
is the same for everybody,

00:31:29.980 --> 00:31:42.925
which means that we can actually begin to scale it. And then if they stick with us, now we get into more just kind of bespoke services and consulting type things, but at least for that first twelve to sixteen weeks, heavily productized,

00:31:42.925 --> 00:31:45.085
which allows us to get our clients a quick win,

00:31:45.565 --> 00:31:48.125
and it just gives us a lot more economies of scale

00:31:48.445 --> 00:31:53.165
on the front end. I would just see that as kind of a subset of the services

00:31:53.500 --> 00:31:59.900
arm. It can be effective. I think what a lot of people try to do is they try to just sell access to the course

00:32:00.220 --> 00:32:05.020
with some calls, like group calls and stuff like that to go along with it and charge 10x.

00:32:05.260 --> 00:32:11.235
I think that's gonna be a really, really, really difficult sell once you've sold to all your true believers.

00:32:11.715 --> 00:32:16.915
New people coming in who don't yet know, like, and trust you are gonna be less likely to spend 10

00:32:16.915 --> 00:32:17.875
for something

00:32:18.195 --> 00:32:18.995
if

00:32:19.155 --> 00:32:20.515
what you're selling

00:32:20.675 --> 00:32:21.395
is

00:32:21.715 --> 00:32:22.995
access to a bunch of stuff.

00:32:23.570 --> 00:32:33.170
Ultimately, the closer that we can get to selling the promised end result and delivering that, the better we're going to be. Very true. I've seen that too. Another pivot people have made is cohorts,

00:32:33.170 --> 00:32:39.635
and I wonder, live cohort based courses or boot camps, I wonder if you think that can be a scalable 8 figure business.

00:32:40.515 --> 00:32:46.595
There's not a lot of examples out there. Yeah, know. I mean, and there were a lot of those that were doing really well two or three years ago, right? And they're not doing as well today.

00:32:47.075 --> 00:32:51.235
So I think that it's something that you definitely can do. I think it's a good model.

00:32:52.140 --> 00:32:58.220
I don't believe it's a business model unto itself, because really, you think about it, a cohort based course sort of sits in between

00:32:58.460 --> 00:33:00.700
a pure course business and a coaching business.

00:33:01.820 --> 00:33:02.540
And so

00:33:02.860 --> 00:33:04.380
it has all of the

00:33:05.215 --> 00:33:10.335
sales constraints of coaching, because at the end of the day, when you're selling coaching, you're saying,

00:33:10.655 --> 00:33:12.415
I'm going to help you do this thing,

00:33:13.215 --> 00:33:16.415
but you're going to do it, and I'm going to be there while you do it.

00:33:16.895 --> 00:33:25.000
Now, that's better than I'm going to give you access to the thing you figured out for yourself, but it's still not really what people want. They just want the thing. They just want the end result,

00:33:25.320 --> 00:33:26.120
most people.

00:33:26.920 --> 00:33:37.055
So with the cohort based thing, have the same issue, you're just now bringing in friction of, well, I can't make those dates, and I'm busy at that time, And so what it does is it creates these spikes

00:33:37.215 --> 00:33:39.775
in the business that can be just very

00:33:40.255 --> 00:33:53.590
difficult from a cash flow perspective. I know lots of people who've had really good sized cohort based businesses who they basically love life a couple of months out of the year and hate it the rest of the year because they're either starving to death or they're working themselves to death.

00:33:55.190 --> 00:33:58.950
But it I think it's a nice addition. I don't I don't believe it's a business model unto itself.

00:33:59.715 --> 00:34:10.515
Cool. Okay. I wanna get your thoughts on all that, and we got two different paths. Maybe a third path you've done successfully is events and conference businesses and things like that, so I'll try and move a little bit faster and kinda get to

00:34:11.235 --> 00:34:18.320
your your frameworks around events. So for those who don't know, you've built, scaled, and sold some really big events

00:34:18.560 --> 00:34:22.720
or or really maybe one really big event business and and multiple other big events.

00:34:23.360 --> 00:34:35.525
Can you kind of tell me what that is and, like, tell us the scale that that was at so people can be aware of it? Yeah. Sure. So Traffic and Conversion Summit was an event that we launched back in 2008,

00:34:35.525 --> 00:34:37.685
really before digital marketer was even a thing,

00:34:38.325 --> 00:34:40.645
and it started out as just a very small kinda

00:34:41.125 --> 00:34:50.010
let's see if we can get some people on the email list to show up for this event, probably kinda how your event started, right, a couple years ago. Team Traffic Conversion Summit was the same way, and it just

00:34:50.330 --> 00:34:51.930
it grew year after year.

00:34:52.490 --> 00:35:05.915
People loved showing up. The content was good. We didn't it wasn't a pitchfest, which a lot of the other events were back in the day, which is sort of its own which is its own model, and we ran that event. We sold that event after year nine.

00:35:07.115 --> 00:35:12.635
You know, COVID and just, I would argue, some mismanagement by the acquirers. Part of the is no longer around anymore,

00:35:13.170 --> 00:35:16.530
but that was an 8 figure business just by itself.

00:35:16.850 --> 00:35:22.930
And, yeah, we were able to sell that event for, I mean, truly a life changing amount of money for for me and my and my partners.

00:35:23.170 --> 00:35:24.370
So they can get big.

00:35:24.690 --> 00:35:26.130
Events are highly,

00:35:26.290 --> 00:35:33.935
highly scalable if you pick the right model for them. Yeah. I'll talk about the model in a second, but TNC was was it 15 or 20,000

00:35:33.935 --> 00:35:38.095
attendees at the peak? I forget the It was actually it was right at 10,000

00:35:38.495 --> 00:35:40.495
at the peak. Paid,

00:35:40.495 --> 00:35:41.855
ticketed attendees.

00:35:42.190 --> 00:35:50.830
Now, in and around the ecosystem of the event was at least 12 to 15,000 people, because there were events popping up around it kind of just

00:35:50.990 --> 00:35:54.670
sucking off of it, which is what, at scale, it's what you want to have happen.

00:35:55.070 --> 00:35:56.510
Now, you'd like to own those events too,

00:35:58.565 --> 00:36:00.885
but that was kind of the ecosystem that was there.

00:36:01.205 --> 00:36:03.365
You were telling me a long time ago about

00:36:03.925 --> 00:36:05.445
there's kind of two different

00:36:06.085 --> 00:36:07.205
event models,

00:36:07.605 --> 00:36:10.005
and so if someone's kinda considering launching an event,

00:36:10.860 --> 00:36:21.500
tell us about those two models. And if there's more than two, let me know too, but I think that's a great starting point for this. There's basically three, I would say, kind of big models. The first model of an event is the expo

00:36:21.500 --> 00:36:23.820
event. And so the expo event is

00:36:24.620 --> 00:36:25.580
it's basically a trade show.

00:36:26.265 --> 00:36:29.065
Right? I mean, if you think about a Comic Con

00:36:29.305 --> 00:36:30.025
or

00:36:30.105 --> 00:36:31.385
a gun show,

00:36:31.625 --> 00:36:33.625
you know, or any

00:36:33.625 --> 00:36:38.185
of the baseball cards, any of these events, or really large trade shows, those are expos.

00:36:38.760 --> 00:36:44.920
People are coming because there's a trade floor, and people are coming because other people are there. There's some type of two sided marketplace.

00:36:45.240 --> 00:36:50.760
You've got buyers, and you've got sellers, and they want to meet each other. And this is kind of a very classic

00:36:51.080 --> 00:36:52.440
It works in B2B

00:36:52.520 --> 00:36:53.320
and B2C,

00:36:53.625 --> 00:36:54.905
but the expo,

00:36:54.985 --> 00:36:56.825
if you've got that kind of two sided

00:36:57.385 --> 00:36:59.785
marketplace, think, these can be incredibly

00:37:00.105 --> 00:37:01.625
profitable. They're hard to build,

00:37:02.425 --> 00:37:07.945
they're expensive, they take time to get going, but if you can pull it off, really valuable. The other type of event is the convention.

00:37:08.370 --> 00:37:10.050
So the convention event,

00:37:10.450 --> 00:37:13.490
this is the event where people are coming mostly for the content,

00:37:13.650 --> 00:37:15.250
and they're coming for the networking.

00:37:15.330 --> 00:37:19.410
So there might be a little trade show there, but mostly people are coming because

00:37:19.810 --> 00:37:24.875
other people are there, and this is where all the best ideas get get shared. That's what digital marketer

00:37:25.035 --> 00:37:31.115
I'm sorry, that's what Traffic and Conversion Summit started as. Eventually, these models can get blended into what's known as a convex,

00:37:31.115 --> 00:37:43.510
so a convention expo, where you've got a really good sized convention component, and then there's also a large expo floor. That can definitely be a model, but it's usually gonna be more convention y than more expo y, or more expo y, more convention y. The third type

00:37:44.150 --> 00:37:44.790
is

00:37:45.350 --> 00:37:46.710
the community event,

00:37:47.190 --> 00:37:50.150
or the sales event, for lack of a better

00:37:50.585 --> 00:37:52.185
term, and this is where

00:37:52.905 --> 00:37:55.625
it's a single track, typically one stage,

00:37:56.025 --> 00:37:59.785
and you're getting your community, your audience to come in

00:38:00.105 --> 00:38:07.980
to with the goal of monetizing not necessarily through ticket sales or through sponsorships, but through sales at the event

00:38:08.300 --> 00:38:10.700
of your products and your services.

00:38:11.260 --> 00:38:15.980
That's the main thing. So you talked about Alex Ramosy and his workshops that he's doing.

00:38:16.300 --> 00:38:19.260
That's actually that kind of event in smaller scale.

00:38:19.820 --> 00:38:21.340
What we're doing now at Scalable

00:38:21.895 --> 00:38:24.215
is that type of event in,

00:38:24.455 --> 00:38:25.975
you know, larger scale.

00:38:26.535 --> 00:38:30.455
Trafficking and Conversion Summit started out as that, and it shifted into

00:38:30.695 --> 00:38:34.135
a convention which is gonna monetize through ticket sales and sponsorship, same with

00:38:34.630 --> 00:38:50.945
an expo style event. So the model that you pick is important, and you really wanna be thoughtful about that. Yeah. And I wanna just maybe break down convention events a little bit more, because that's what I'm building, so I'm gonna be selfish, and a lot of people listen to this have that too. If someone wants to you know, see a good community event, they should go to GetScalableLive

00:38:50.945 --> 00:39:01.265
or go to her Mosie workshop and just that's the best way to learn how to do one or any event really is just to go there. I mean, what what's the business model of convention events? Like, is the real money made through ticket sales

00:39:01.750 --> 00:39:03.430
or the sponsors

00:39:03.430 --> 00:39:04.630
or exhibitors?

00:39:04.870 --> 00:39:13.910
Yeah. A healthy convention event is half and half. So you've got about 50% of your revenue coming in through ticket sales, and about 50% of your revenue coming in through

00:39:14.950 --> 00:39:15.590
sponsors,

00:39:16.145 --> 00:39:25.905
which may or may not They might have a booth if you've got a little expo floor, or they might just have their name on a building, or they might be getting a speaking slot, which I don't always love,

00:39:26.545 --> 00:39:35.170
but that can be another way to do that. And if it's fiftyfifty, it's really, really healthy because it means that people are willing to pay to come to this event, they value the content,

00:39:35.810 --> 00:39:48.115
but also the types of people you're getting are high enough value that other people want to pay to have access to these people. So that's the that's the best model for that. Whereas like an expo event, it might be eightytwenty

00:39:48.595 --> 00:39:50.115
sponsors and exhibitors

00:39:50.115 --> 00:39:53.315
to ticket holders. There's lots of expo events where they basically give away the tickets.

00:39:53.475 --> 00:39:54.355
Very true.

00:39:55.075 --> 00:39:55.875
Tell me about,

00:39:56.460 --> 00:39:58.220
this is a big question, just like all my

00:39:59.100 --> 00:40:00.700
sponsorships and exhibitors.

00:40:00.700 --> 00:40:05.500
But, like, for me, getting someone to buy a ticket and delivering a good experience is not easy, but it's straightforward.

00:40:06.060 --> 00:40:07.740
Working with exhibitors,

00:40:07.740 --> 00:40:09.660
there's feels like there's more moving pieces.

00:40:10.465 --> 00:40:13.185
And also, there's a difference between a sponsor and an exhibitor

00:40:13.265 --> 00:40:14.705
from what I understand.

00:40:15.665 --> 00:40:21.665
So is if you're talking to someone like me who's got a year, like, one to three event,

00:40:21.985 --> 00:40:25.185
who's trying to figure out how sponsorships

00:40:25.540 --> 00:40:29.380
work, how to sell, and how to fulfill on them, what would you recommend?

00:40:29.860 --> 00:40:42.705
You are going to if you're looking at doing a convention style event, and you want to create the place, because that really is your goal. If you're creating an event a convention style event, you want this to be the place, Not just for your people,

00:40:43.025 --> 00:40:43.985
but for

00:40:44.385 --> 00:40:45.345
an industry,

00:40:45.905 --> 00:40:48.705
for a cohort, like people need to say,

00:40:49.025 --> 00:40:50.545
because I'm a this,

00:40:50.705 --> 00:40:53.665
I go there. That's the key to a convention.

00:40:54.340 --> 00:41:03.940
Because I'm a this, because I'm one of these types of people, I go there because my people are there. Now, that doesn't just happen overnight because you decided it could happen. You could do a community event

00:41:04.260 --> 00:41:07.860
overnight because you got your audience, hey, I'm gonna be here, and you wanna be here because I'm here.

00:41:08.845 --> 00:41:10.205
A good convention

00:41:10.205 --> 00:41:15.085
event, people come because other people are there, not because of the person hosting the event,

00:41:15.485 --> 00:41:17.565
and that's the shift that needs to take place,

00:41:17.805 --> 00:41:19.645
but they usually start looking at community

00:41:19.965 --> 00:41:25.020
events, and that shift, that pivot, takes three or four years. The reason that's important is because

00:41:25.340 --> 00:41:27.900
until it starts to become the place,

00:41:28.220 --> 00:41:30.780
sponsors and exhibitors don't want to be there either.

00:41:31.980 --> 00:41:35.500
So you're kind of in this chicken and egg scenario

00:41:35.580 --> 00:41:36.700
where

00:41:36.855 --> 00:41:48.375
you've got to get enough critical mass built up to where it makes sense for a sponsor and an exhibitor to be there, and it's not until you're getting to around about 3,000 attendees

00:41:49.030 --> 00:41:49.830
that

00:41:50.550 --> 00:41:56.470
it really makes sense to charge, you know, ten, fifteen, 20,000 and up

00:41:56.630 --> 00:42:02.790
to sponsor that event, and really where you want to get is you want to get to where you have 50 and $100,000

00:42:02.790 --> 00:42:03.910
sponsorship

00:42:03.910 --> 00:42:04.230
levels.

00:42:04.965 --> 00:42:06.245
By

00:42:06.245 --> 00:42:09.525
the end at TNC, think we had a $250,000

00:42:10.165 --> 00:42:11.045
sponsorship

00:42:11.125 --> 00:42:11.845
level.

00:42:11.925 --> 00:42:19.240
That's gonna be really difficult to justify if your event is 400 people, 500 people, unless it just happens to be some

00:42:19.400 --> 00:42:23.480
of the wealthiest people in the world, and the average order value is crazy high. But, you know, drawn from a

00:42:24.360 --> 00:42:26.360
speaking in generalities,

00:42:26.680 --> 00:42:32.840
you need about 3,000 people. These become the place. This is gonna take a good number of years. You need to have multiple stages

00:42:33.160 --> 00:42:37.215
so that there's room for people to go. So we're talking about more

00:42:38.015 --> 00:42:58.910
room for people to sit, so that's increased complexity, and you also need to create flow where people are walking around so they're not just all stuck in the same room all day because exhibitors don't necessarily like that. So that's why right now, I mean, you just had your third year, right? Second year. Oh my God, yeah, yeah. I mean, you're right just in the suck of it, right? Year

00:42:59.550 --> 00:43:01.710
two is the worst, because year one,

00:43:03.455 --> 00:43:05.855
it's fun and everything's new and people are coming out.

00:43:06.255 --> 00:43:07.295
Year two,

00:43:07.775 --> 00:43:12.015
it's when you're trying to grow and you're trying to get bigger, but it just hasn't gotten

00:43:12.335 --> 00:43:15.855
that much bigger yet. It doesn't become a habit

00:43:16.440 --> 00:43:22.680
until about year three, and it's in year four where you find out, okay, are people coming because it's there?

00:43:23.080 --> 00:43:29.320
They're not coming because we asked them to come, they're not coming because we advertised it well, they're not coming because of the amazing speakers,

00:43:29.480 --> 00:43:30.920
they're coming because it's there.

00:43:31.655 --> 00:43:33.255
And when that happens,

00:43:33.415 --> 00:43:36.855
it really is that if you build it, they will come. If you will build the convention,

00:43:37.095 --> 00:43:49.430
you will now have sponsors just asking to be there. And I was thinking at TNC, we were able to tell everybody, we got one premium booth and one premium sponsorship. Somebody's gonna buy it. Do you want it to be you? Yeah. You don't really need to have a sophisticated

00:43:49.430 --> 00:43:50.950
sales process or

00:43:51.110 --> 00:43:54.950
or a 30 page deck to to do that when you when you build that type of

00:43:55.885 --> 00:44:15.090
you know, cornerstone event. Well, you're still gonna have to have a sales process and a sales team to, like, sell these things. But I guess what what I'm saying is, like, I may be obsessing about some of the tactics when I need to look at the big picture like you'd like, you just broke down and focus on that first, and then I'll I'll still get those details as we go. Our goal for Traffic and Aversion Summit,

00:44:15.410 --> 00:44:19.250
you know, years one, two, and three was we didn't care how much money we made.

00:44:19.570 --> 00:44:51.580
We just wanted everybody to leave and say, holy crap, that was the best event I've ever been to in my entire life, because we knew if they thought that, that they would come back, and they'd probably tell somebody else that they needed to be there too, and that's exactly what happened. So we just focused, and this is cliche, right? How do you a large audience? How do you succeed on YouTube? There's all these tactics and stuff like that, ultimately it comes down to like, do you have good stuff? Do you have good content? Do people like watching you? If you do, you win, and if you don't, you could have the best hook and follow all the perfect thumbnail formatting and all this other stuff, but if your content sucks, it's not gonna get traction.

00:44:52.085 --> 00:44:55.205
And so you just need to put on an amazing event,

00:44:55.525 --> 00:44:57.845
and you're probably going to lose money

00:44:58.085 --> 00:44:58.645
the

00:44:59.685 --> 00:45:00.805
first two or three years.

00:45:01.125 --> 00:45:04.005
We did. I think we maybe broke even year three,

00:45:04.950 --> 00:45:09.110
and it really didn't start to take off until about year five or six. That was when it got

00:45:09.430 --> 00:45:10.790
incredibly profitable.

00:45:10.950 --> 00:45:16.390
Yeah, and it's almost like you should be breaking even, because there's a correlation between how much you spend and how great the event is.

00:45:16.955 --> 00:45:25.995
So if a year one or two event is super profitable, the attendee experience probably wasn't as good as it could have been. I think that's a great point. You should be putting it back in there,

00:45:26.315 --> 00:45:28.315
but saying, okay, we're spending this money.

00:45:29.035 --> 00:45:29.755
Are

00:45:29.995 --> 00:45:38.420
the attendees going to value it? And so maybe you don't need to spend as much on the AV budget in the beginning, but maybe you want to spend a little bit more

00:45:38.660 --> 00:45:47.955
on having some incredible speakers that people are gonna be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe they're here, you know, and we got access to them, if that's something that your audience cares about.

00:45:48.435 --> 00:45:51.155
Maybe what your audience cares about are the parties,

00:45:51.715 --> 00:45:56.675
as funny as that sounds. And so you say, we're gonna spend more money on just an amazing,

00:45:56.675 --> 00:45:57.875
phenomenal party

00:45:58.540 --> 00:46:05.900
the evening after day two of a three day event, because we want everybody talking about this party and how they wanted to be at this party. So understanding

00:46:06.300 --> 00:46:12.940
what your audience values and where you should be allocating those resources so that it becomes the thing that they talk about and the reason they want to come back,

00:46:13.765 --> 00:46:18.245
that's the secret. That's the magic. And for Trafficking and Conversion Summit,

00:46:18.565 --> 00:46:20.165
we invested heavily

00:46:20.565 --> 00:46:21.125
in

00:46:21.525 --> 00:46:38.870
speakers and celebrities when everybody was like, that's stupid. You shouldn't do that. None of our peers were doing that at all, but it was such an elevation of the event. Now, if I were doing that event today, probably wouldn't do that. We would probably take a different path, because just speakers and celebrities we found aren't the elevation that they once were,

00:46:39.475 --> 00:46:43.795
but that was where we chose to put our budget, and we overspent there dramatically,

00:46:43.795 --> 00:46:44.755
and underspent

00:46:44.755 --> 00:46:46.275
in a lot of other places.

00:46:46.995 --> 00:46:48.355
So that was the

00:46:48.755 --> 00:46:49.235
idea.

00:46:49.555 --> 00:47:02.970
Yep. That's really helpful. Maybe if I can get two or three more tactical event questions in because we we're gonna wrap up soon. Sponsorship tiers, is there anything that worked well for you? Like, you see the kinda, like, the one, two, and three or the platinum silver gold or

00:47:03.945 --> 00:47:05.785
that work well. And I guess what I'm

00:47:06.825 --> 00:47:17.065
what we're struggling with is every sponsor wants to speak, and every sponsor wants more and more stuff. They want you to send an email or this or that. Right? And then the best sponsors for

00:47:17.370 --> 00:47:21.210
not the best, but great sponsors are people who are just they'll pay

00:47:21.850 --> 00:47:28.810
just to exhibit and just be there and just have booth space. Right? It's it's a easy sell. It's easy to fulfill as a event organizer.

00:47:29.050 --> 00:47:34.485
And so we're trying to to to figure that out. Like, what are our tiers? What do we offer the higher tiers?

00:47:35.125 --> 00:47:36.885
How do we make that worth it without

00:47:37.285 --> 00:47:41.045
putting everybody on stage? Because we're not gonna do that. You know? Again,

00:47:41.365 --> 00:47:47.180
big question, but anything that's worked for you would be interesting. Yeah. So you want to be crystal clear on what's

00:47:47.180 --> 00:47:48.860
the highest tier

00:47:49.660 --> 00:47:50.540
of all,

00:47:50.780 --> 00:47:53.340
and what does that work to you, and you're gonna sell that to one.

00:47:54.860 --> 00:47:56.540
There's gonna be one that is

00:47:57.260 --> 00:47:59.180
they are the presenting sponsor,

00:48:00.060 --> 00:48:12.075
and so it's gonna be their name on all the stuff, and you're gonna say, okay, what does this sponsor get? And the reason you want to do that one first is because that's essentially gonna create the category of all of the things that somebody could maybe get.

00:48:12.800 --> 00:48:13.440
So

00:48:13.920 --> 00:48:15.040
they're gonna get

00:48:16.080 --> 00:48:23.440
So for us, it was Traffic and Conversion Summit presented by whoever our presenting sponsor was, and we actually always had two because

00:48:23.840 --> 00:48:26.080
one of the presenting sponsors was always digital marketer.

00:48:27.015 --> 00:48:30.215
Made sure that our own company was a presenting sponsor at

00:48:30.535 --> 00:48:31.415
our event,

00:48:32.375 --> 00:48:35.095
we made it clear to the other presenting sponsor,

00:48:35.495 --> 00:48:41.255
yeah, it's shared, but the other one is us, so you're in good company, and they were always fine with that. That's what's gonna create the

00:48:41.930 --> 00:48:43.290
list of deliverables

00:48:43.370 --> 00:48:45.130
that they're going to get, and that

00:48:46.250 --> 00:48:54.490
sponsor's getting all of them. So you've got to decide what are the things that you're willing to do. We were willing to give a speaking slot to the presenting sponsor,

00:48:55.015 --> 00:49:01.495
but we got to approve the topic, and we got to approve the speaker. And what we always sought to do, because

00:49:01.815 --> 00:49:03.415
putting people on stage,

00:49:03.895 --> 00:49:15.060
to me that is the riskiest and the most valuable thing that you will give away, So you want to be very, very, very careful with that, because if they go up there and they do a crappy session that's just a pitchfest,

00:49:15.380 --> 00:49:20.500
now all a sudden the talk of the event is, uh, all these the whole thing's just a pitchfest, everybody's just paying to be there,

00:49:20.820 --> 00:49:22.820
sessions aren't any good, and they stop coming back,

00:49:23.635 --> 00:49:28.275
and that's where it rots from the inside. So we were hyper protective of the stage,

00:49:28.675 --> 00:49:40.490
because that's what people valued. Now, if people are coming to your convention and they don't really care that much about the sessions, they more care about the networking events, it doesn't matter as much. So I want to make sure I'm not coming off as dogmatic,

00:49:40.570 --> 00:49:46.330
it just depends on the model, but for us at Traffic and Conversion Summit, people were coming for the content that was put up on there on the stage,

00:49:46.570 --> 00:49:53.035
so that was the thing that we were the slowest to give away. But you want to look at every single thing that is out there.

00:49:53.755 --> 00:49:54.875
So you have a stage,

00:49:55.355 --> 00:49:56.315
you have a room,

00:49:56.555 --> 00:50:03.390
does somebody get to put their name on that room? They get to spot Is it So we would have, you the You might have the beehive stage.

00:50:03.630 --> 00:50:18.350
They get to own that stage and get it branded around that stage. You're gonna have coffee. Who's sponsoring the coffee? Is there a brand on the cups themselves, or is it just a sign around it? You're saying, hey, thank you. You might have some, you know, obviously you should have some booth spaces somewhere. How big is it?

00:50:19.125 --> 00:50:27.365
So all of these things factor into it, and we would always have one kind of presenting sponsor. We'd have the level below that where we would have two or three,

00:50:28.085 --> 00:50:33.205
and they would usually get a stage named after them as well. They'd get the largest possible booth, and they'd get a bunch of other things

00:50:33.760 --> 00:50:34.560
thrown in.

00:50:34.880 --> 00:50:41.440
And then below that, now you're talking about, you know, the gold and silver, and that had almost everything to do with

00:50:42.480 --> 00:50:44.080
booth size and location.

00:50:44.400 --> 00:50:47.120
So the better locations got the bigger areas,

00:50:47.675 --> 00:50:49.115
those sold for the most.

00:50:49.915 --> 00:50:54.555
The ability to send email communication to attendees before and or after

00:50:55.195 --> 00:50:58.635
was another thing that we would, you know, at times throw in.

00:50:58.795 --> 00:51:09.400
So just coming up with a list, and AI is really great at this, by the way. I wish we'd had that. Hey, I'm doing this event. What are all the things I could possibly give away, you know, included in a sponsorship deal? It'll be hugely helpful.

00:51:09.800 --> 00:51:13.240
Yeah. I mean, And just creating the package and prompting

00:51:13.240 --> 00:51:15.320
it and saying, ask me details about the event

00:51:15.885 --> 00:51:30.605
so that you can help me brainstorm additional ideas, I would definitely do that. For us, though, going back to stage time, we made sure that we approved the topic, we made sure that we approved the speaker, and what we said is, we're not gonna let you just go up there and do a pitchfest. It has to be content,

00:51:31.380 --> 00:51:36.740
and then at the end, we will come up, and we will sell your thing for you.

00:51:37.220 --> 00:51:38.980
And you want us to do that,

00:51:39.460 --> 00:51:42.900
because then you get to maintain total authority during the event,

00:51:43.555 --> 00:51:45.475
because all you did was give content.

00:51:45.715 --> 00:51:47.315
When we come up, we'll say,

00:51:47.715 --> 00:51:52.675
you should definitely go up there, you should use them out here, here's a special thing that we got them to do for you,

00:51:53.155 --> 00:51:53.715
and

00:51:53.955 --> 00:52:00.780
it's just way more effective and way cooler for all involved, and that's how we got around that. Even if they wanted to do content, sometimes we'd

00:52:00.780 --> 00:52:07.260
say, well, do you need to do the content, or would you like to have somebody on our team do the content about how we're using your tool?

00:52:07.820 --> 00:52:09.580
Wouldn't that be even more effective?

00:52:09.740 --> 00:52:11.820
We would build content presentations

00:52:11.820 --> 00:52:12.540
for them

00:52:12.940 --> 00:52:15.345
because it was just better for all involved.

00:52:15.505 --> 00:52:25.665
Yeah. Those are those are all fascinating things. Definitely gonna listen to this later. But, like, I've always wondered, like, what's the perfect event format? And I've obsessed over, you know, should we or should our sessions be forty five minutes

00:52:26.100 --> 00:52:31.860
with fifteen minute breaks, or should they be thirty minutes? Or just I don't wanna get too nerdy, but

00:52:32.420 --> 00:52:37.300
maybe as the last thing, have you have you found for someone who's building these types of events, convention events,

00:52:37.540 --> 00:52:45.965
what type of programming schedule has worked well for you, or just what what do you like personally? Yeah, I mean, and this matters. This is a phenomenal question, because this really, really, really matters.

00:52:46.125 --> 00:52:47.645
Break time at events

00:52:47.805 --> 00:52:53.325
is critical, because if you don't have long breaks at events, your exhibitors will get pissed,

00:52:53.565 --> 00:52:55.805
and we made this mistake at TNC.

00:52:56.090 --> 00:52:59.290
So we would have forty five minute sessions with thirty minute breaks,

00:52:59.610 --> 00:53:01.770
and our session times were all the same.

00:53:02.330 --> 00:53:03.850
We made the mistake

00:53:04.810 --> 00:53:06.490
one year, and then we

00:53:07.050 --> 00:53:21.245
repeated the mistake a few years later, because I guess sometimes we gotta learn We do the same crap over and over again and have to relearn it, but where we would say, okay, we're gonna have forty five minute sessions, and then we'll have thirty minute sessions that'll be a little bit tighter and more concise,

00:53:21.645 --> 00:53:23.245
man, it was so hard to manage

00:53:24.330 --> 00:53:25.690
just logistically,

00:53:25.770 --> 00:53:27.930
especially when you get on to different stages.

00:53:28.250 --> 00:53:32.490
So when you have multiple stages, you really need everything starting and stopping at the same time,

00:53:33.210 --> 00:53:33.850
and

00:53:34.650 --> 00:53:37.210
when you got into those tighter

00:53:37.645 --> 00:53:42.525
sessions, it's just really, really, really hard. So the only exception that I would make is

00:53:43.245 --> 00:53:52.100
we might do a double session, so if there was gonna be two people back to back and they were gonna be two twenty minute sessions, then we would kind of clump them together.

00:53:52.260 --> 00:53:57.540
But when you have multiple stages, the problem is is people will get up in the middle of this one to go over here, and it just creates

00:53:57.860 --> 00:54:13.655
this weird visual of everybody leaving when a new speaker's coming up. So I'm a big fan of there's a session, there's a break. There's a session, there's a break. There's a session, there's a break, and on and on and on just like that. You can typically get three in in the morning,

00:54:14.055 --> 00:54:16.615
three or four in in the afternoon depending on how late you wanna go.

00:54:17.560 --> 00:54:28.360
Call it six sessions. We would run and do sessions over lunch, the way that we would stagger lunch. At scale, you need to do that so you don't overwhelm the facilities at the location anyway,

00:54:28.680 --> 00:54:31.225
and people are sort of picking and choosing

00:54:31.385 --> 00:54:35.305
what they want to do. But aside from we might have the opening keynote,

00:54:35.465 --> 00:54:37.625
that might be a longer hour long session,

00:54:38.025 --> 00:54:40.265
and I do like the idea if you have multiple stages,

00:54:41.065 --> 00:54:43.865
you can have the first session

00:54:43.580 --> 00:54:50.940
be everybody in the main room if you have room, and then after that you go into breakouts, and then the last session bring everybody back into the same room.

00:54:51.260 --> 00:54:56.620
Yeah. If you can make it you can make it work. Yeah. I really like that format when I was at TNC,

00:54:57.055 --> 00:55:05.855
and beginning and ending there. You have to do long breaks for two reasons. You want people to network with each other and the sponsors, you want them to reset

00:55:06.255 --> 00:55:07.055
themselves.

00:55:07.135 --> 00:55:09.215
Bathroom lines at scale get really long,

00:55:10.060 --> 00:55:12.780
so we've just found that thirty minutes

00:55:13.180 --> 00:55:22.140
is about what you need, and again, people are not just there for the content, they're there for the networking. So we value that time and create spaces for networking within

00:55:22.460 --> 00:55:22.940
your event.

00:55:23.455 --> 00:55:26.815
Yeah. What I didn't realize is if you just give a fifteen minute break,

00:55:27.215 --> 00:55:33.695
they keep there's not enough time to network. It's basically bathroom or check your phone and come back. It goes by super quick, so so you need that longer.

00:55:34.175 --> 00:55:37.695
I saw a couple cool things at TNC where it's like during those breaks or lunches,

00:55:38.370 --> 00:55:42.450
there's almost like different activations, like a meetup for agencies or any

00:55:42.690 --> 00:55:47.010
last question would be like, any cool things, like, in the actual convention space

00:55:47.250 --> 00:55:53.090
that you did outside of breaks and actual onstage sessions that people really enjoyed or that you would recommend,

00:55:53.605 --> 00:56:00.405
I do or other people do? Yeah. The first thing I would look to do, if you can pull it off and if you have the space for it, if you can have some kind of a stage

00:56:00.725 --> 00:56:02.885
out on your expo floor,

00:56:03.845 --> 00:56:06.005
that's really great because it kinda creates

00:56:06.440 --> 00:56:10.200
just some noise, and will draw people out to the expo floor.

00:56:10.520 --> 00:56:14.600
You obviously don't want it to be right next to somebody's booth, or that's a little bit obnoxious,

00:56:14.600 --> 00:56:25.125
but if you have the space for it, having an additional stage out there, that's also a place where you can run demos, and you can give sponsors access to that stage. We started doing that I think year

00:56:25.765 --> 00:56:27.845
eight or nine at TNC. That was a

00:56:28.565 --> 00:56:29.445
big win

00:56:29.605 --> 00:56:32.565
overall, because it did create an activation. It wasn't running

00:56:33.045 --> 00:56:36.005
always at the same time. Frequently, we would have it run during breaks.

00:56:36.860 --> 00:56:45.500
And so how you program that stage, it's the only stage that could be on a totally different schedule than all of the other ones, you know, by design. If you can have sponsors

00:56:45.980 --> 00:56:46.940
who will

00:56:47.260 --> 00:56:50.620
give things away, like we had a sponsor every year who gave away a car,

00:56:51.375 --> 00:56:55.375
and that was the deal. If you're going to sponsor, you're like, you're the car sponsor,

00:56:55.695 --> 00:56:57.775
and so you're gonna be giving away a car,

00:56:58.255 --> 00:57:01.535
and your price of admission to be a sponsor

00:57:01.615 --> 00:57:05.470
is gonna be reduced by the fact that we know that you're giving away a car.

00:57:05.790 --> 00:57:07.950
So maybe it's a $75,000

00:57:08.110 --> 00:57:10.590
sponsorship that they only pay 25,000 for.

00:57:11.070 --> 00:57:26.095
Now, why do you want to do this? Well, again, if you've got the space for it, and if you've an Expo floor, can. They won't let you just do this in any hotel, but if you park a car in the middle of a floor and they wrap it with their logo and stuff like that, that's something that people will walk around and look at.

00:57:26.415 --> 00:57:29.375
So that does create kind of a separate activation.

00:57:29.615 --> 00:57:35.230
Also, you do the drawing, that's a phenomenal opportunity. Everybody's in the room, they want to find out who won the car.

00:57:36.350 --> 00:57:46.185
Not something you're probably going to do year one, and it doesn't have to be a car, but just think, what is something really, really, really cool that is a visual that we could give away, that our audience would desire?

00:57:46.345 --> 00:57:48.345
That creates an on the floor activation.

00:57:48.905 --> 00:57:50.025
Just different

00:57:50.265 --> 00:57:50.985
little

00:57:51.705 --> 00:57:53.945
events and things that are out on

00:57:54.265 --> 00:57:58.160
the floor, like having a pop a shot. We had one

00:57:59.200 --> 00:58:00.400
of those electronic

00:58:00.400 --> 00:58:02.400
bowl writing deals,

00:58:02.800 --> 00:58:05.120
but every single one of these activations

00:58:05.520 --> 00:58:07.040
is sponsored

00:58:07.440 --> 00:58:09.200
by one of the exhibitors,

00:58:09.785 --> 00:58:12.425
so it's not something that we just are paying for.

00:58:13.145 --> 00:58:19.065
It's something that a sponsor is paying to be there. Coffee, like having a coffee stand, a bar

00:58:19.465 --> 00:58:30.430
on the floor, where people You're creating now a networking space for people to gather, You could say, hey, from this time to this time, this sponsor's hosting a happy hour, where they're doing and they can have a special drink named after them.

00:58:30.910 --> 00:58:34.110
So anything that you can do to create these opportunities

00:58:34.270 --> 00:58:34.910
that

00:58:35.310 --> 00:58:51.685
just make people feel like, well, that was fun is good. In addition to that, want to think, how do we get people together? How do we connect them? And so creating meetups from this time to this time, everybody who's in this type of space, they're gonna be gathering in this spot, and having somebody on your team who's there to sort of facilitate

00:58:51.925 --> 00:58:52.645
the networking.

00:58:53.390 --> 00:58:56.510
And then another thing that we would do for our highest level sponsors

00:58:56.750 --> 00:59:00.110
is we would ask them, who is your ideal

00:59:00.110 --> 00:59:04.990
person that you absolutely want to connect with while you're here? Who's your ideal client profile,

00:59:05.150 --> 00:59:08.030
avatar, all that? And we had a team

00:59:08.805 --> 00:59:11.445
that would schedule meetings for them,

00:59:11.765 --> 00:59:13.445
for our highest level sponsors.

00:59:14.085 --> 00:59:15.685
So if they wanted to meet

00:59:16.165 --> 00:59:19.525
CMOs of companies in this industry of a particular size,

00:59:20.405 --> 00:59:21.525
we had our

00:59:21.765 --> 00:59:23.445
partnership and networking team

00:59:23.820 --> 00:59:24.860
who would

00:59:25.020 --> 00:59:27.340
review the folks who would come to the event and say,

00:59:27.900 --> 00:59:28.540
hey,

00:59:28.940 --> 00:59:31.740
the good folks over at XYZ Corp would

00:59:32.060 --> 00:59:33.980
really love to connect with you.

00:59:35.260 --> 00:59:38.405
If we can facilitate a meeting. They're

00:59:38.405 --> 00:59:41.365
looking to buy lunch and all this other stuff, and sort of create a thing that

00:59:41.685 --> 00:59:46.565
both mutually agree that they're gonna show up. So whether it's direct one on one connections,

00:59:46.885 --> 00:59:48.405
creating meetups for

00:59:49.440 --> 00:59:51.360
subgroups within your larger group,

00:59:51.680 --> 00:59:55.040
and activations in and around the event. Parties are another

00:59:55.520 --> 00:59:58.400
good if you're the top sponsor results in the sponsor for a party.

00:59:58.880 --> 01:00:02.720
All of these are things that you should look to do so that your event isn't just what happens

01:00:03.275 --> 01:00:11.515
when the emcee walks up on stage at 09:00 and when they dismiss everybody at five. The things that are happening between and around, that really is what makes an event.

01:00:12.075 --> 01:00:15.115
Yeah. That's really good advice. The the meeting thing is

01:00:15.530 --> 01:00:16.330
one thing we definitely

01:00:17.130 --> 01:00:20.090
among all that stuff is one thing that was highly requested.

01:00:20.250 --> 01:00:23.450
And and there are people who that's all they do, by the way.

01:00:23.930 --> 01:00:34.945
And they're a company you can hire temps that that that's basically all they do just, you know, just for that event. Yeah. It seems like there's some events where some are just built around that where some people attend for free, but they have to schedule meetings.

01:00:35.265 --> 01:00:50.510
It's a whole another can of worms we don't need to get into, but Yeah. It's important. This this has been great. Ryan, where can people find you if they wanna learn more about Scalable or any of your other stuff? I'm posting all of my content for free on YouTube because I'm like, nobody's buying it anyway, so let's just put it out there for free. So

01:00:50.830 --> 01:01:00.875
if you go to YouTube and just look for you know, search for Ryan Dice, d e I s s, you'll find find me there. I do also have a newsletter at accidentalmba.com,

01:01:00.875 --> 01:01:04.395
so if you wanna subscribe to my newsletter. I've been consistently publishing

01:01:04.635 --> 01:01:06.155
now for over a year,

01:01:06.475 --> 01:01:08.315
every Sunday for over a year.

01:01:08.795 --> 01:01:09.835
It's all me.

01:01:10.155 --> 01:01:11.675
I don't have outside writers.

01:01:12.420 --> 01:01:20.340
I use AI for the brainstorm, but I mean, it's me actually writing the thing, doing all the all it's the only thing that I do where it's just a 100% me.

01:01:20.740 --> 01:01:25.220
And so I'm I'm very close and personal to that to that newsletter as well. So

01:01:25.685 --> 01:01:30.965
Yeah. I'm a big fan of both, and we'll put a link for both and and more down below. So thank you, Ryan. Yeah. Thanks, man.