Think Media’s $1M Branding Bet To Get Gary Vee—Did It Pay Off?

it's not me getting up and getting self-motivated that will help me grow the most it's me committing to something and putting that original money wire on the line you sound like a thoroughbred entrepreneur you sound like you're built for this kind of stuff if you want to keep being pulled into the future you're called to as an entrepreneur as an artist as a designer building a company you got to keep making bigger and bigger bets is Gary's True Value in his name brand or is it in the kind of content that he's going to deliver to you are you kidding I'm not here to talk to you about that not whatever I mean what are you gonna do there's some things that are more caught than they are taught taking risks for sure but not betting the entire Farm like this better work or else we're gonna have to lay off the think media team and this whole thing's over the report we got from attendees at the end of it was like wow this thing just came together man it's amazing and I was like oh yeah no no it didn't I didn't know this conversation was going to happen but here we are we're finally here Sean Cannell rhymes with YouTube channel I've been saying your name wrong all this time Sean and I'm glad that you said that so it's super clear he's written the book YouTube Secrets along with his friend Benji who we've chatted with so if you want to know all things YouTube and he also has his channel that we're chasing in full transparency I'm chasing you we're getting closer and then you put some distance between us and I don't like that until my team let's catch up to think media you review all kinds of camera gear you have tips you have a lot of different creators so there's a diversity of voices and talent I'm not here to talk to you about that not dude your generosity was able to attend grow with video Live this past I don't know a couple months ago in Las Vegas and first it was great it was a well-run production top to bottom yet Superstars Sean it's super star is like oh I don't know like Gary vaynerchuk Patrick Bet David the hermosis and Ryan Pineda you had a lot of people on stage with you and it was awesome to see and as a content creator I want to know what drove you to go to this scale well Chris thank you foremost for coming on the show love and respect your work so much and all the impact you're making in the world this could be a fun conversation because it's been such a journey to was officially grow with video live five and so it was our fifth event it was our fifth year we never missed a year ever since we started and we went to like you said scale we really scaled up way beyond our comfort level the story we're about to get into I guess in this conversation is the greatest leadership development Year of My Life The Journey to growth video live was painful challenging exciting stressful and I think just a little bit of backstory the first year we did it at the Red Rock Hotel in Vegas our friend Celine Johnson spoke and then it was mainly us a couple other friends cost us a hundred thousand dollars and I was terrified for the size of our business that that much money putting it out there we lost 20 grand about 100 people were you know came maybe 125 when I counted my mom and dad you know and and the people serving water in the room at the hotel and that was on the peak sessions it was like 62 on you know other other sessions then we didn't know if we want to do it again because events almost kill you you know they're tiring they're exhausting they could be hard to pull off if it's different but we did it the next year at another hotel we got better at it we were profitable the next year we cut the budget and we're able to increase attendance to about 250 in person and then we were gonna step up but it was the pandemic year so we then did 2020 it moved all virtual and then we did virtual two in a row and those two virtual years went very well and they were also very profitable because now cost was much lower and it was as we were Landing the plane on 2021 we wanted to sell tickets during that event to 2022 and we wanted to make it I don't know you might be able to articulate this better I think in like success or goal setting there's like something about making a decision sometimes people say it in the universe orients around that like once you just kind of jump off the cliff things starts to falling into place and leading to we knew the event was coming up virtually in 2021 and then we knew we wanted to promote we're back in person in 2022 and I thought to my mind who would be essentially a celebrity guest speaker who would be somebody that would sort of push our event to another level and who would also be that's most relevant for the brand and vision of our event and a few people we joked around with because we thought okay media we thought maybe we could get Nicholas Cage he lives in Las Vegas and he might only be like 20 grand because if he has to just drive over from his house like someone said that who knows if that's true and obviously that kind of makes no sense it might have been kind of funny or like you know would they be targetable in ads or whatever they were like you know what if like Arnold Schwarzenegger like it's interesting he's been in media he's been in different things and then of course one of our things was garyvee and we kept like just trying to brainstorm around even non-main of non-media Creator you know but when we thought like who not only has kind of like a list especially in the entrepreneur or social media World credibility and is the most known it really is garyvee like even you step into somebody else like Patrick David and he's actually like one of my heroes but he's actually in a lot of ways a lot less known really known but almost no one knows pbd a lot of people know garyvee there's crossover so that was kind of like that lead Domino decision was could we even get garyvee and at first I talked to my friend Pete Vargas and my fret Brett Knutson and they both knew Zack ultimately who is his guy and they're like yo you know we can get an introduction we finally got an introduction talked to Zach found out his keynote fee at the time was 150 plus 5K for travel and when we heard that I about fell out of my chair and then you start thinking you should negotiate speaker fees you should you know you can try at least or whatever but I just was like I don't know he's busy I like let's just go full feet and so we just were like okay commit so that's you know 70k that was more than your previous like the year previous we were able to pull the whole event off for like 40 Grand so like you know his total fee was more than I made in my first year of business like what are we talking about you know when we really launched think media and so we made that commitment and what's so funny was even someone was like dude you overpaid man like I've heard people have got him for less and I asked if he could do a book by because there was the 12 Rules book or whatever 12 and a half and his guy was like he doesn't need to do that anymore he's garyvee now dude be friends like he he just it is what it is like do you want him or not so we got garyvee turns out his keynote fee went up immediately after our event too so we ended up with like a 20 like a 30 40 50 discount because just supply and demand he's more in demand more busy and so that started the journey to then what it turned into so I'll let you you know ask more questions but like it was kind of the one thing we already knew about like we would of course be there and and some of the other things we were going to do but we locked in Gary coming to the M Hotel which ended up kind of becoming a problem like that hotel there's all kinds of stories I mean just capacity rooms restaurants but it was just actually stepping out and making one decision that led to the domino effect active then needing to back up that bold decision with a lot of other moves because to frame that the eventual cost was about nine hundred and fifteen thousand dollars to run that event so garyvee was the tip of the iceberg like I mean it just really started to add up from there and we were profitable in ticket sales which my friends in the industry let me know that that's incredibly rare if almost never happens and that also at that level to do a million dollars in ticket sales and to do and to actually be profitable and ticket sales without any kind of other offer apparently is a pretty radical feat and so yeah talk about intense though because these were dollar numbers I'm a small town kid College Dropout I thought back in the day if I made six figures in a year you could put a fork in me like as I've been growing in entrepreneurship so we're doing well as a business and we have been for a couple years but this event was terrifying we just started making bold move after bold move and just once that level of commitment is like man contract is signed it's all in and we got to push this thing to the max there's a lot to unpack there here but I want to highlight some of the mindset the frame of mind that you were in when you made some of these decisions now everybody can relate to the story we sit around and we what if we got all our dreams come true and and we're granted our wish what would we ask for and you're like well you started going up around names and then you said Gary vaynerchuk and this is where most people stop they stop the dream and like oh that was cool that was a nice fantasy role play exercise whatever it's cool but when you put into action actually getting in touch with his people finding out the fees and then that commitment check of 75 000 just get things going tell me what was going on your mind good and bad or otherwise am I going to really do this take me back there what was going on in that moment before you knew everything was going to work out a couple things one was as scary as this is it's only going to go up from here because I actually have been following Gary around meaning I've had friends a couple years earlier my friend Keith had him come and that was askgaryvee book so he was able to do a book by Daryl Eves has had him at vidsummit and like there was I think the mindset was you can always look backwards about like I missed it you know because quote unquote Gary or whoever it was more affordable yesterday buying a house missed it it was more affordable yesterday and uh current economy it actually might be more affordable in three months but like ultimately we can always go it was more affordable yesterday but the other way to frame it is someone like that in their trajectory he might be even more unreachable or probably will be more unreachable in a year it'll actually be more expensive and then turns out I would never could have known that we were actually literally had I waited a month his fee would have been different because of supply and demand so what seemed shocking and scary and of course we had to back that up with Revenue what ended up actually being a good deal the first thing was just not letting fear or hesitation once I had you know kind of wanted to make the decision the second big reason to answer your original question was also grow a video Live's intent purses this was a brand play so I've been around long enough I've done enough of the events to say what's the purpose of the event so you could say it's the purpose of the event to have Financial Arbitrage to make as much money as possible not a bad reason like okay how can we keep costs low maybe not even try to blow up attendance not even do pay ads that say let's do email marketing because our community that loves us could come out therefore expenses are low and we could have you know profitability could be incredible is the purpose profitability is the purpose brand building and that was the ultimate goal of this another question would be what happens if we lose what's the worst case scenario so of course we'd recover some income to pay off the fee and other whatever and I just started thinking would even 150 dollars just lost kill our business it wouldn't so thank God we're in a place where it would sting but it wouldn't be fatal so years ago 100K scared me but that would have been fatal then either we could have recovered so we're making intentional risks but taking risks for sure but not betting the entire Farm like this better work or else we're gonna have to lay off the think media team and this whole thing's over so it was a very scary move but it was reasonable within adding up and doing the math and so I was committed that if we ended up 50k negative 100K negative but the brand building and the exposure that came from it would that be worth it yes I think the other piece was not even the event itself that was valuable what I learned once we made this lead Domino decision that even in just the promotion of the event all of a sudden people started paying attention to thick media and Sean can't a different way like what you're having garyvee like what the heck's happening even to the point where a lot of people were more pumped about Alex yet they still kind of saw Gary first it was like wait they're both there wait a minute pbd Alex and Gary are all at the same event so it was this idea of there was the pre-e event branding the actual event was turned out great and people loved it but now we have all the content on the back end and so I started to realize okay that was the original intent and it completely so now in hindsight and of course easy to say in hindsight since we were not only profitable in ticket sales not only did the whole thing work out which is all astounding but then I also in hindsight look at it more I'd say I would do it again but it would encourage somebody else to count the cost but I would do it again to say it wasn't because we made more we made an offer but it wasn't even just the ticket sales at this point I'm like it was Roi was already there but now we have definitely the rest of the year but probably the next two years of this content being going out of vertical so it is one of my best investments I've ever made in my entire career and that was what I set out wanting to do much more terrified not seeing as clear as I see now at all it went according to plan it was like Gary is an awareness brand play and here's and I had friends telling me this too and I knew this intrinsically that the other key about Gary was leveraged to invite other speakers as soon as he's confirmed like for example Vanessa loud now she had spoken our event virtually the year before but literally this one I said hey would you be interested in speaking she looks and sees Gary's there and she told me later she goes as soon as I saw it I stopped thinking I just said yes and I was like I don't even know if I'm available those dates but I'm gonna figure this out and so it was also it's a it's that whole lead Domino idea really was my thinking and you know there's a recent book called be your future self now by Benjamin Hardy great book I love Benjamin Hardy and he says that if you want to keep being pulled into the future you're called to as an entrepreneur as an artist as a designer building a company you got to keep making bigger and bigger bets I remember early on in my career right there was bets I made that were terrifying then the BET could have been when I bought kajabi to host our originally to host our online course and I paid for the founders deal which was 997 dollars and you locked in for for life so they had all the bonuses and perks and they were just starting I just talked to the CEO of kajabi I just spoke for them at VidCon and I told them I'm a Founder I go I got the best deal in the world you know five years because now it's monthly and I have unlimited sites unlimited courses unlimited emails unlimited everything because I was a Founder but that 990 I didn't even have that stuff yet I was starting and I saw that it was a good deal I knew that if I put down that 997 dollars on the software the SAS to build that education side of our business it would also be a domino and humbly said like now I look back and there's zero Financial friction on a thousand dollar decisions for me now you know what I mean it's like yeah it's gonna make sense for the business like the team can make all kinds of decisions of more more money than that but it was it was a risk it was a bet it was terrifying you know 2015 when I'm starting think media for what this era of it so you got to keep making bigger and bigger bets and that was definitely one of them so the mindset was even pushing myself into personal growth I also knew it would push our team into greater leadership development I trusted that it would not kill them it almost did I mean in the sense of like you want to talk about exhaustion push to our limits of like our skills just playing the game at that level of doing the event was very stretching but I also had confidence and it proved to be true we were built for battle and we need greater challenges we need bigger you know mountains to climb Giants to slay within reason not Giants that we're not ready for but I felt like you know prayerfully that we all the intersection of all those things build the brand stretch the team make a bigger bet if we lose we will survive and we'll still be better for it because sometimes you win sometimes you learn and that was my mindset and then we leaned in once he said yes and we then had to wire the money so we knew we were we started the journey what's interesting for me to hear you speak about all this stuff is this is that you sound like a thoroughbred entrepreneur you sound like you're built for this kind of stuff I'm curious was there a coach a mentor who helped to change your mindset about making small bets to making big bets and you need to do this brand marketing play was there somebody in your corner kind of pushing you to do this or helps you to unlock a certain part of your mind or did you do this on your own definitely did not do it on my own I think that no man is an island and we need other people your circle matters you know show me your friends I'll show you your future and my commitment to lifelong learning has been helpful it's always been that so it's been books podcasts but over the last few years I have found that proximity to people at a higher level than you that challenge your thinking is incredibly helpful and I'll give you one exact example that helped me with this and then just a few a cluster of others one I'm a part the cluster of others is I'm a part of a men's Zoom prayer group with uh Christian guys that are in kind of like speaking or personal development leadership coaching authors and we meet every single Monday and this is what I've learned there's some things that are more caught than they are taught so you read it in a book and you can learn it head knowledge but when it's caught because of proximity from from someone that you've built trust with and there's a relationship there and and you kind of are getting to know them and it just challenges you to do big things as well it reminds me of a Biblical example of David's Mighty Man there was this guy banaya who went down in a pit on a snowy day to fight a lion which is a kind of just a very obscure story because you're like what the heck for but just kind of it's a guy who's just gotta do something he's like he's bored he's got to go fight a lion on a snowy day and you hear that you're like well maybe I can take on a lion you know you see David take down Goliath courage transfers to everybody else so being around guys placing bigger bets doing bigger events talking about budgets and then also hearing their mindset hearing that they're also sometimes we put people in spectacles they're terrified guys can you pray for me I just put the down payment on the hotel because we're doing this big event and and they came back to me and they needed another 30k for the VIP room and so things are really thin so that was that's been a big one for me I'm in another peer-led Mastermind which same thing whether it's just people making bigger bets and these in the last few years of my life have been the absolute critical communities but one particular relationship is and she spoke at our event chalene Johnson her husband Brett Johnson has been a powerful Mentor in my life and they've really helped me to think bigger and and here's the phrase red actually has this tattooed on his arm and it's scared money don't make money he literally I said written on his forearm and I've heard him say that but it wasn't even just the phrase it was watching them as well so I got to speak for chalene I'm one of her students of Market impact Academy from way back in maybe 2016. and so she also trusted me and believed in me it was it was the first time I spoke in an event that size I was terrified and and just having someone to give you a shot also you know I got off I was like how'd I do it like she's like you know all right you know I could be some good like I mean I knew you would be good enough for me to invite you but like and and I think she texts me as one of her students she said hey would you be willing to speak at my event if you would allow me to kind of coach and Mentor you through it and I'm like will it talk about the greatest gift in the world like any mentorship or coaching are you kidding you know and so from being exposed to the events they were doing the size of the stage the moves they were making you know scared money don't make money and so that ex that phrase has never left the vernacular of think media it's kind of one of our mantras to where you're really not going to have those big forward movements in your business if you don't take those risks and I think this journey is perfectly modeled that because a hundred thousand dollars was terrifying year one and then by year five that wasn't even the entirety of one individual's keynote fee so it's like we just continue to make bigger bets and I would think and hope that it gets easier and what I'm learning is it does not the numbers obviously the S they get bigger but like as we did this one I was like man it was good I think you have to be self-aware of your mental health your team's Health the season of life you're in not not every season is the season to go down in a snowy pit and pick a fight with a lion but I think that there's Seasons where you maybe need to self-identify are you have you been complacent for a while do you need to shake things up a little bit and simply the virtue of putting yourself in pressure situations I think is important in certain Seasons to force uh personal growth that is a mindset that I understand that it's not me getting up and getting self-motivated that will help me grow the most it's me committing to something and putting that original money wire on the line it was the greatest leadership development year of my life it started from a decision it started from a couple questions a few some inquiry and then it started from making a decision and so scared money don't make money that's the Mantra wonderful I'm trying to keep track of all the questions I want to follow up with you on so this is going to be complicated hopefully my team can edit this together so that there's the narrative sequence happens in the right way so I got this other question I mean it is a lot of work to put together an event especially one of the size of investment that you're making you're committing yourself to making a million dollar investment with questionable profitability Break Even lose money you're accepting of the consequences if it goes south it's a brand marketing play what toll does it take on your mental and physical health leading into this did you lose weight is the team stress out of their mind or is it just smooth sailing I mean the first thing that also happened was again I think about you have to soberly evaluate the health of all parties involved what they can take and I think there's something to say about do we have enough for today so like did we have enough money in the bank to make the first decision we do do we have enough skill sets to get the ball down the field for the first couple months leading up to this we did but one of the big things that happened was an absolute Legend on our team Melissa Caputo she's our marketing director she was basically our key Point event planner at first we knew that it was beyond her eventually but it started with being entirely on her shoulders and she's just an absolute you know checking in with her her she's ride or die think media but at first it was it was super heavy and we just would adapt as we we went meaning eventually mid-course we then hired an external event planning company Jesse schwartzberg who had worked with Tony Robbins and then other events kind of of that style over the last 20 years now she has her own company and her and her team kind of got involved and these are the kind of things that also started to become really scary because now we're spending multiple tens of thousands of dollars adding that on but what I started to realize was this kind of weaving through a lot of things but so yes there's my health but here's my greater concern be like Melissa's Health like if we keep going on this she would have a breakdown and also we probably we would not get to the end result we want to and so it'd be a lose-lose so then it would be like shoot we're already have a lot of money on the line but we got to bet even more money for multiple reasons the Android experience the quality of the event but also the team's Health then of course there's the AV side of things you know I will say actually this is a huge ingredient us pulling off this scope and deciding to do hybrid deciding to do virtual and and in person with a whole nother challenge was me going to my friend Pedro adeo's event and seeing that he had two companies Crescent as audio video and lighting and then Sage as handling the virtual side in Zoom rooms with like 20 MacBook Pros stitched together through their proprietary software and everything is more complex than you think but having spoken at his event and seeing both sides I go there's the key I go we could do virtual let's see if we can hire these two companies what ended up happening though was that Sage did not end up working out because of their schedule and we did not know that until way too late in the game so those are the kind of problems that started coming our way so in answer your question macro my health did not suffer and I think it's from the prioritization of of I continue to I kind of I have separate health challenges of some like repetitive stress injury from typing kind of a carpal tunnel I just went through uh 21 injections uh but that was sort of preceding this I maintained spending time with family you know running is one of my favorite things to do to protect my mental health health and and have ideas and and I think part of it was also there was a level of of letting go of things I could not control I think I could have just you know I heard worrying right as like chewing bubble gum thinking it'll solve like it'll change the situation or just like in a rocking chair going back and forth and there's no doubt about it these things were Weighing on my mind and the pressure the finances but I just had to I had to keep letting things go I thought most about my team's Health protected my own health and then I had to not be gun shy it was that first decision forced me to make a hundred more bold decisions and to not be slow about them that's one of the biggest things I learned leadership-wise I was like okay we're already in this it's kind of like the analogy of skiing where if if you've ever skied before there's something about you have to fully lean into the mountain to where it's scary where you're looking down and if you only lean in halfway you're still going to fall backwards and so it was sort of like okay we tipped over the edge of this slope we're going now but I can't actually hit the brakes now I actually need to hit the gas and from the other side of the coin that also could be delusional that could be like it's all sunk cost but you're so bought in I'm gonna keep going into Bitcoin it's just tanking I mean and who knows maybe it'll you know but it's like it could go either way I suppose because I could have been like let's go all the way up to a million and we just get crushed but I was making strategic decisions along the way we need to add the event people as well waiting waiting waiting we can't do Sage how are we going to do the virtual thing what software do we need to buy okay who else do we need to hire and so we started to Rally around the necessary people and that goes back to that whole thing where of of you make that one decision leads to a million other decisions you have to make but seeing things start to happen in your favor problems you start to articulate to friends and they go I know somebody that can help and every second of the Year leading up to grow video live matters and the other thing I should add to the equation that made it the most stressful on our corporate health of our team was also that like we basically kept our business running the same way runs anyways so I learned a lot that the idea and the audacity to go try to do an event of this scale and you're not an event company you are you know this is not something you normally do is extremely taxing and we didn't really hire new staff for that or anything in hindsight now I realized that okay if we worked with Jesse and her team from the beginning and of course we learned so many things that's what's really nice actually it truly leveled us up where we made a decision you know as much positive feedback as we got even before the event happened we made a decision that we're not doing it next year and we're actually not going to do it 2023 or 4 as a team director team before it happened and once it did happen half the team started saying ah just kidding we like look at how good the feedback was literally is off the charts but the self-awareness of what we are not an event company and yes even though it would be smoother now the other part was I was like I don't really know where we go from here because we could have Gary back but he's more expensive now and that wouldn't be as cool what is the combination of speakers what do we have Joe Rogan next you know like and are we just trying to one-up ourselves like it accomplished the purpose for which we set out we will keep doing events that'll be like send an email to our list and be smaller and more focused on like less going the celebrity speaker route more like friends but I I threw a lot at you there it for sure put some tax on our team and to throw a couple things that I thought about I think casting the vision a highly recommended book is called at your best by Carrie new off I actually had him on our podcast really great dude and it's about staying working your green zone your Red Zone your yellow zone and one thing though about if you're in a season that's an unsustainable Pace the key is a Finish Line so I think one of the things we said for our team was we're like there is a Finish Line this is too much like it's too heavy we couldn't carry this for life but we can carry this leading up to this event we're going to be thoughtful if you need something we'll purchase it if you need a break like we'll figure this out if you need help we'll staff around that temporarily contractor and there is a Finish Line though and another decision we made which was not simply based on this but for our team in general we just got back a month ago we took our entire team kids wife spouses everything to Disneyland and that was also on the calendar so we're being thoughtful we're like we know there's the side of this that is very heavy that could really what good is it if we get to the event and we're bitter me mean mad like we gotta Pace ourselves we gotta focus on this but how do we also invest in our team show our team that we value them when we're absolutely pushing them to the limits guard our own health and then the final thing I'd say though is again I don't look back with any regrets but my friend Pedro says it this way yeah events cause a lot of brain damage and he's like you got to count the cost of the brain damage and it's like it's a good way of putting it like it's just the mental pressure stress there's only so much running in like ashwagandha you know vitamin C shots you can take to try to you know knock down that stress like it's just real it's just heavy and I think uh you have to make a decision if it's stainable if it's something you want to keep doing but I am really glad we did it in this case because it did we did survive we made it through the other side I have some side questions here about Gary vaynerchuk he was your draw speaker he's the person that makes other things possible he's the person like people sit up and notice like oh my gosh because he's such a well-known entity and and commodity within the space right you add that to your event and all of a sudden you level up some things I've noticed I'm okay with saying this and you may not but Gary's often criticized and I said this when he was on our Channel Gary you're known for saying the same things over and over and he has explanation for that so is Gary's True Value and his name brand or is it in the kind of content that he's going to deliver to you that's a question for you think about one thing that I've noticed about him that bothered me more than it should is that oftentimes he's at an event and he speaks but he's filming for his crew I noticed you would ask him a question and he was looking at his camera guy which was the opposite direction of you and it made for a strange body language positioning and I was like Gary turn to talk to Sean because Sean's talking to you you know and he's a wild guy you can ask him something he can go off on his hands and do it his own thing he's hard to Wrangle but what are your thoughts on that was it all worth it do you wish it were different or do you have any thoughts on that these are great questions and I think I am a a very emotionally neutral leader which on its one's side has plenty of weaknesses but generally I think as a leadership of wiring is is helpful and for trying to just look at things the way they are so the idea that Gary well he says the same things that's pretty much what I expected actually in fact if you're a Gary fan and you realize he uploads all his Keynotes on his channel you would certainly get some of the same stuff so is that the value I didn't expect that that would be the value I've also heard other people say oh I don't bring in Gary vaynerchuk this person will deliver more tactical content this person will be better this one person who told me this they're like I'd be better and I'm like I see what you're doing there but I'm like it's not really helping your case because to simplify because it's exactly what you said like he knows his value because they're really especially in the social media now web 3 there is nobody else that will actually map towards selling tickets like a Gary vaynerchuk what I mean being just emotionally neutral yes I wasn't thinking like okay he's gonna be the most dynamic or bring the freshest or best content at the event to your point that wasn't the purpose and so being neutral of knowing what that is battling the criticism internally from our team not that there was really any pushback but same points you know what we want we want to be known for having the best of content well if we can't reach the 30 40 50 of people who would have never come to discover that there's also great content so I would even argue we were cultivating the entire speaker lineup a combination of known people who would draw people and a combination of people that now they're in the room people they don't know but then someone goes wow you know Jasmine star was the best speaker wow Heather Taurus ended up being my favorite session you know she was better than Gary and you go like that's a surprise but I'm looking from the emotional neutral like n from the beginning reverse engineer kind of thing like yeah exactly I mean that everyone was doing playing their part and and I think that not that it's a dishonor of Gary but even just that criticism it's kind of a mute point because someone's they're arguing from like uh you know well his content's not even that good okay well it is what it is like he other speakers want to be there as well and he will sell tickets I have total respect for both sides of the argument I think that's the key of I am emotionally neutral and trying to make a collection a successful event does not happen from any one thing it's one of of the most dynamic media formats it is the combination at all even to the point where someone could get offended of Gary style and the cursing and everything else but I that'll be forgiven if the net thing of the event if you have a horrible registration experience that would be brutal but people will forgive that if the content's amazing and their ultimate goal is to make it all amazing so on the first question very absolutely aware didn't expect to hear anything I hadn't heard before but also learned that when it comes to super fans as well that super fans you know they don't care if someone repeats the same thing over and over again and then I also it's an actual value of mine it's even a Biblical value of uh like the Apostle Paul wrote it's no trouble for me to say the same things to you over and over it's for your benefit like repetition is the father of learning and the mother of skill so it's like we need repetition anyways so yeah if he's saying like no stop overthinking you know be authentic post on Tick Tock I literally have heard that a lot but I also am I am overthinking and I'm not posting on Tick Tock well then you're obviously not doing it yet so even though you could say oh Gary says the same thing why don't you go do it and so that would be number one number two at the end of the day too I think that it was kind of funny hanging out with Gary because it's kind of a full circle moment my wife almost died in 2009 she's in the hospital for six days and this is such a transformational moment of my life naturally scary we'd already been married a couple years what's going to happen also we were crushed because of The Big Short that we had two homes a rental property in the house we're living in that we rented to another family to be able to for the mortgage that family moved out the rental home tenants lost their job foreclosure short sale that's falling apart I'm working part-time at a church some senior leaders still some money that thing crumbles that's falling apart and then my wife's Health's under attack and we're in this craziest hardest season of our life and I'm trying to now think about what are we going to do and how am I going to provide for my family and I had already started a YouTube channel for my church in 2007 it's now 2009 when this is happening and I started a freelance business called clearivision media doing videography for small businesses and building some websites for small businesses and so I had these skills kind of saw what was happening early on you YouTube and was thinking about where do we go from here how do we pay medical bills how do I take care of my wife where do we go next and during those six days in the hospital I walked across the street to Barnes and Noble and bought a copy of Gary's book Crush I had no idea who he was heard about it in Success Magazine on the CD so I bought a copy of the book and I read it while I was in the hospital what's so funny is similar to how Gary's known today I don't remember leaving the book with any tactics but I left the book with the fire lit that I need to crush it Now's the Time to cash in on your passion he did mention affiliate marketing and some things and that's how I originally was able to kind of get to Financial Freedom take care of my family was as a tech YouTuber talking about cameras doing camera tutorials lens tutorials lighting doing Amazon affiliate marketing and YouTube ads so Gary has this profound impact in my life what's interesting is over the years there's been a couple opportunities to go to New York Benji co-author of our book YouTube Secrets he had a chance because Judy and him had worked with Gary to go to New York and and be in an interview with him he's like do you want to go and I honestly said no because I we hired our friend John because I was like that'd be kind of cool but we're only you're going to be in there for like 30 minutes that's a seven hour flight I was like no man I'll edit the footage like Dropbox me the footage that night and so there was like that chat there was like another chance there was a couple times where like this is kind of what it was like I didn't want to like fan girl I just kind of had a piece over the last decade that there and by the way this also goes to also the original bet like I I it's worth bringing up that I am a fan of Gary in his strengths at his weaknesses and just grateful that a lot of where I am today has been influenced by that spark I'm not a saint like I understood the value and I was trying to monetize as well but it was also like paying a full fee from a place of honor like of like this is just finally a chance to have a substantial you know moment if you will and and all these things over all the years where I haven't tried to like force it or like rush in I remember one time we were standing outside of vidsummit and literally pulled up and uh Caleb who was his videographer at the time kind of a second drock like I've just never tried to be like calling a favor or anything or any of that I just tried to kind of have a more disc in approach and or just honoring at a distance knowing that there will be a time and this was one of those times there's a long answer to your second question and so I also realized this is interesting because what they have to he's so busy they are very optimizing with this time so it's not like you can have Gary come to your event and he's also gonna be hanging out in the lobby for two days and whatever else we essentially learned that we just have two hours in fact like whatever we wanted to do dude you got two hours and I'm sure that this is changing and constantly changing but it's like do you want to interview him is he speaking does he have you know is he meet and greet with anybody how long is that whatever and so all that to say was I had thought through the and planned out every minute of those two hours had spent so much time preparing for this event and gone to a place too of almost like letting go all of all expectations like even in that you know I could see he and Benji he actually talked about the book and he shouts out the book we have a clip where he's like YouTube Secrets by the book and now the second edition was out so I thought okay you know Gary's here here I could shoot a clip behind and like hold the book I'd be like hey Gary can you talk about the book again and I don't want to do anything like that there was definitely the things I just was kind of like wanting to be at peace with the whole thing I hope that our conversation will go a certain way or whatever I kind of just like let it all go and just knew the things like we have his keynote I've got my interview you know we upgraded him when he came out of the car like he's got photos to do with our Platinum Group or whatever and so to your point I good or bad I was kind of like emotionally detached I was present but like I think I just not an emotionally attached would be the wrong way to say it because that'd be unhealthy I just had worked intentionally to be free from expectations so like him pointing towards this cameraman I mean I respect it I mean he's garyvee he's gonna do what he wants like it was just sort of like being in and me and trying to let go of me hoping it went a certain way or like hoping it turned out a set in a certain way and just intentionally preparing for that moment to be at a place of peace there's no negative associated with what I'm about to say but like it was an interesting two hours like of him being present there that it was almost like it was not surprising to me and it was a lot less exciting than I thought it would be almost like purposeful sometimes the biggest crash that happens for entrepreneurs is after Mountain Top moments light growth video live or like meeting a hero and I actually wanted to be thoughtful of that in advance I wanted to kind of just downgrade the thing like it's he's Gary vaynerchuk he's cool but like he's just a guy and yeah I wanted to shout out my book but like I'm not trying to make anything happen and I hope our interview goes on stage it's kind of a funny vibe I did learn he really interrupts me but then I was also the way the banter ended up being and one of my biggest things when people interview people they talk over the person they try to insert or build their own authority and that's a whole separate conversation of that I've already have been interviewing people for years and hundreds of leaders and entrepreneurs and creators and influencers so I I guess I was just sort of like I was just trying to let the whole thing go I was like we've gotten this far the marketing has been great our brand has already been built the content will be the content regardless I want there to be meaningful connection I don't want to try to force anything and so to that end it was just letting go of expectation it didn't bother me in a way like nothing bothered me but partly because I also was building up my mental toughness and preparation for that moment so that I didn't overly I got offended I thought we were paying you so much money you should have like just none of that it was like whatever and and so anyways that's just a few thoughts of of kind of my inner game leading up to that moment it does explain a lot there's uh objectivity emotional neutrality are you tempering expectations going in and making a mindful practice of this and I think if it sounds to me like he already had done his job which was to be a draw for other speakers and also for people to show up because I know when I talk to some people in the audience they're not people that I would expect to be at a grow with video conference one guy was a plumber it's like what are you doing here oh because I just followed Gary wherever he goes and so to your point he bought a ticket just so he can be within the proximity of Gary and just Express his gratitude for him another thing that you said was you know what there was a dark moment that you're going through and you receive some value from him so it was your way to pay it back and to get value back so you're all square prior to him even stepping on stage probably yeah so everything else was just like icing it was all just a bonus at that point now I'm a fan of Gary but I'm not blind to it I'm like there's some things I just don't like and some things I do I try to keep the good and forget the bad but the part that really bothers me as a human being is that it's this cognitive dissonance that I have when he talks about being generous about being nice about being humble and I wish just for me and I know this is not true because I've seen him do this everywhere he goes can't you just forget about the media marketing and just be there for Sean with Sean as he's just talking to you and not cut him off and just answers questions and at least make eye contact with them versus no I'm gonna release this video in two days on Instagram and that's what this is about now I get he's earned that right he could do whatever he wants but I think as a leader as a person who's trying to potentially be a model for other people that once you achieve that level of success because you've earned their rights should not mean you should exercise it to me my respect would have gone through the roof if he had just stop with the media and just say hey man I'm here here to talk to you yes you did book me for two hours I will do whatever you want to give you the most value and to me he would have won over a thousand people in that room that's just my thoughts on that though I also noticed something here I don't know what role Brett Knutson played but he seemed to have a pretty important role being on stage interviewing people talking about his company what is your relationship was there a formal thing I don't know what's going on here because I don't know anything here so take me behind the scenes that was another connection point and how the event came together was you know I'm a person of faith and uh I mean I believe God works in mysterious ways and I make it my ambition to follow as a Christian the Holy Spirit and so there are certain moments when things get dropped like you know as have morning devotionals and just prayerfully you know thinking through things and as we had our the ship had already left the station we got the hotel we got Gary it's also growing bigger than that though we're like because then it was the decision I think to make it over the edge because Gary's a lot of places so Gary plus what else what makes this crazy unique you know what makes this Dynamic and unlike anything else and and to go back one other strategic point was you know my friend Daryl Eves has an event vidsummit now he's partnered with Mr Beast and it's much more angled there's a lot of overlap but it's much more angled Mr Beast could be more entertainers he has some gaming creators speaking kind of goes more that Creator side and so I was like okay what can we Blue Ocean strategy at least be more number one in and it would be if we go heavier entrepreneur side and that goes back to like if we add Ryan Trahan speak at our event who's blowing up going viral he just did the you know delivering a penny to Mr Beast for 30 days every video was getting three to four to five seven million all does it say though he's still a much younger Entertainer type of Creator so that's what came back to garyvee so our vision was we wanted to be basically kind of the number one video marketing event for entrepreneurs and small business owners and so early on a month or two in I heard clearly in prayer like you need a partner like you need someone else to help and and Brett wasn't like a partner in the sense of any kind of like 50 50 or anything like that but you need other places it turned out we needed multiple people that's kind of what I started to learn is you're trying to take down bigger goals like huge secret that I'm many seasoned business owners understand and that I'm learning is that you need to start rallying up these starches you're just realizing you know one could put a thousand a fight but two ten thousand like let's get other people with different skill sets so I don't remember maybe Brett initiated the combo or I did and there was just this idea and and the way it ended up what it ended up being was they just became the main sponsor of our third day called our Platinum day and so but helped in a lot of other layers and the big one would be also bread is very connected and monopolize works with a lot of high-end clients or guys like Jay Shetty and other you know people that are kind of in the influencer space and so Brett the initial thing was Brett let's what is that going to look like and by the way and Brett would tell you this too and his team you know Partnerships are not always easy they're messy or expectations even if the expectations are clear getting two teams working together this is also why it was the greatest leadership development year of my life is getting two different teams to communicate then multiple teams we ended up eventually having monopolize the event planners and then Crescent audio basically as like four different teams all needing to communicate trying to open up different slack channels trying to have meetings and one of the things people would tell you is like on the one hand they'd say yeah our communication kind of sucks and on the other hand as a leader you're like well yeah of course it does look at what we're trying to do I'm not trying to make an excuse like naturally and we've never done this before and none of our team has ever done this before so different people came to the table now the key thing there was they were going to run some ads for us we ended up dual running ads they eventually brought kind of a a sales team and we did some phone sales on a whole separate thing but it initially started out with they were going to build the website because they had that capacity and help with speakers and what was interesting was we went to tour the m and we sat down for lunch I my thought as a leader was let's get our teams together relationally as well on a tight timeline like there's a lot of challenges here we need to work together we need to get to a place where at least kind of liked each other but also like we need to it needs to be all business business but like relationships matter too like and we don't have a lot of time for that but let's get a lunch together so we got some monopolized together some I think media we're gonna tour the M walk around look at the you know facilities we're sitting down at lunch and I'm like Brett you know it'll be like really rad to have I go Alex hermosi would just be like a game chick because I I just noticed his YouTube channel is blowing up 100 million dollar offer we bought it for like half our team and I go obviously anyone who knows him like his stuff's just fires a whole nother level you want to talk about tactical like real scale principles and then Layla too like her Channel's fire he goes you know he lives in Vegas now I go what he goes yeah like we work with him and and we're friends like I'm sure he'd be down to come like and speak at the event I go please and then I started thinking like what Alex and Gary and then I started we were bouncing around other names and then I said pbd and again of course we could have reached out but like he introduced us to pbd and uh though as far as the big guys Alex Gary and pbd as you mentioned is was insane and then Alex and Layla are doing a 90 side a 90 minute fireside chat on the on the business day which is crazy so all that to say was that's really where Brett came in into play we had had a friendship too where we had known each other we go to the same church in Vegas and we had known each other for like year and a half two years so there was a level love and even that like was hard for our team these lessons I learned because like I knew him for two years but like who the heck you know like some people are just meeting him and so you're trying to like introduce you know people and what are the things and so I constantly was aware of my leadership being questioned not in like a dissenting way but and then just realizing like I needed to push forward I actually learned from Patrick David the 50 50 love leadership whereas if 100 of people like you you're not a good leader because you're obviously not really pushing you're very diplomatic if 100 of people hate you you're a jerk so you're also a bad leader because you know you're just not leading well but if you're really pushing not everyone's always going to understand some people will see the vision some won't but you gotta lead and I man I really learned it even with people and again it was never weird Vibes or like there was an ultimate lack of trust but there was just so many communication channels trying to get people up to speed trying to share the heart trying to realize that like why are we even do we're doing you know and all that so that was that was kind of nature so it ended up being you know awesome the whole thing you talk about an entrepreneur you know you you're painting the plane as it's in the air you're literally building a wing why it's flying this was that for sure because it was just one decision and of course you can always look back and question your decisions was it the right decision did I really hear God In Prayer but it was like I still traced the whole thing because it wasn't life would never be Problem free but our problems also can make us better these are challenges to overcome all I know is that this partnership we need more help and Brett really bringing to the table his relationship Network and then I started to realize we were just playing a bigger game it's bigger than think media and we learned a lot in the process so that was kind of the relationship ultimately they were a sponsor of the business day we used they had a couple sessions you know Brett as you saw in kind of the main days and yeah we were just painting the plane as we were flying man I don't know Heinz sites 2020 but we're just kind of figuring it out and there was a level of the Friendship there but also doing our best to make a simple not even like a contract I mean eventually there was one but I mean it's like a Google doc of like what are we expecting here it's like kind of work you through and the punch line would be also to their end we're not going to be able to pull event off this size think media is doing the heavy lifting think media's you know bankroll in this whole thing but I think we can bring value to the table can we bring value and that's trying to bring things down to their simplest terms in a business relationship like that was also to make sure as clear as possible and to your end like the thing already being paid when you get into the with Gary like because of the prior investment I liken Partnerships to try to distill it down into the absolute simplest terms of what winning looks like as I look back and I go locking in Alex and Layla I was like Fair like we're already good or you know different things like that and then hopefully the rest is gravy and so I realized that within the Motions with empathy that if two different design teams and two different website teams are trying to get communication going that the down chain communication friction can happen like why do we do this and you have to from the this 50 50 rule leadership you have to be like I know we'll solve that we'll cover that I get it it's probably someone's fault but it's also nobody's fault people are people and it's also my fault I mean extreme ownership everything's my fault I'm the one who allowed this whole hat all to happen but like we can solve that but if I'm trying to look from so a sober as simple as possible view of lenses that like do you understand the heat of having Alex and Gary now and Pat and we had some of our because our business day was very expensive five thousand dollar ticket we had guys like friction free one guy from Australia he missed the first day of the whole conference he goes I saw that you had Gary and then I saw Alex and Pat and I was like I'm buying a ticket I don't even know if I could get a flight from Australia and he goes and just being at the second day of the event and then being of the Third Day event I got 10 times my value so learning that even also making some of those bigger bets and having you know these influential players carries a lot of weight to it and so you know hoping that it'd be a win-win and and Brett they had an offer on that third day they were and throughout the event but they really shared it the third day so they were they were pumped too and you know and he would tell you the same it was not a smooth sailing nothing is especially at this scale and I think one analogy for that would be if you're gonna play a bigger game a leadership author and uh kind of acquaintance I know Sam Chan does a lot of stuff in the church world he has a book about the pain of leadership and he said the next level of leadership where you will stop in your leadership development is your threshold of pain like ultimately you're at level of how much pain do you want to endure so part of even tackling this it's almost like that's like bringing four different families together for a family reunion you know it's going to be an issue you know that like Uncle Frank is gonna get drunk and he's gonna be you know and he's gonna start talking about politics with like Aunt Sarah and that's just the nature of bringing people together but you gotta do it to take down huge goals and so anyways it's just some of the lessons I learned was like yeah it was a year of probably our greatest pain but then thank God for also I mean at the end of it all we all look back together this is kind of cool too I don't think if I climbed at the top of the mountain and we're just financially successful we could Define that as success because if we at least broke even or were profitable on the event but relationships were destroyed animosity was created which is maybe sometimes unavoidable here's what's it's cool to report as I think we're all better for it we're all closer to it like closer together after it lifelong relationships and friendships future collaborations will happen introductions happened that I think would be the greater measurement of success and through all of that friction that happens in the messy middle we just got kind of better for it and I think that all and I would attribute that to going back to that initial moment of a prayer and hearing you need a partner and then having at least enough context and relationships I wouldn't have jumped into something like that with Brett had I not had like years of some history which is not a guarantee that it would be successful right because plenty of Partnerships could go but it's like there was a thoughtful measurement of each step we took I was calculated in making a move like that even though it wasn't again it wasn't a 50 50 it was definitely a high level collaboration in their part that they were playing in the event I think I got it but let me just recap there was a lot to process there so the most fundamental level Brett sponsored some part of something he paid to be a part of this thing and I think he had and then not paid so that other sponsors would pay he would sponsor and not have to pay because he was bringing value to the table like the hermoses yes and the introductions build the website run some ads and then mainly the introductions and his Network and level of Consulting and there was he's done a lot of stuff in events and so bringing kind of his monopolizes strategy to it bringing the speakers running some ads and doing some ad creative and then building out the website and then eventually this was late stage but eventually helping us for a final push in ticket sales by working with a separate company called event sales agency that was what ended up the model which some don't like and again this was one of those leadership things I get it you had to opt in first to see the ticket price and if you didn't they'll buy a ticket in I think five minutes or ten minutes a sales team would follow up on the phone my friends told me yes so it's funny from my vantage point because people are saying they're think media which is true because they were us or their growth video live it wasn't like they were being dishonest in the sense of like we didn't allow that but even people were getting DMS of like this team and the seed we were at in our desperation for survival it was sort of like will this be a perfect solution do we have time to fully vet this it's also a weight of will this be 100 on brand for us and how far off brand will it diverge and then even what will this even be I don't even know all the answers to those questions but I heard Jeff Bezos once say right that if Amazon had at least 60 of the information they had they made the decision so this is why I was the greatest leadership because I was like we're getting feedback from it Etc but all that to say was that final push they were making like a thousand calls a day which is gnarly and we had nowhere near the infrastructure to do that and then the fact that not only do we get to the place we got on ticket sales but we also wanted to fill the event you want to talk about events are the hardest thing to do at a world-class level to get people in the room here's another thing we had about 40 didn't come I mean the tickets are non-refundable at a point and no complaints they just didn't even show up so the most people we ever had in the room was around 800. and we had like 1200 tickets sold so in my background doing a lot of different things and having a lot of mentors and friends the report we got from attendees at the end of it was like wow this thing just came together this is amazing and I was like oh yeah no no it did it you know like it was it may have been how it felt that was your experience in the restaurant it's a whole different experience in the kitchen where we were cooking it up it's Hell's Kitchen back here man we're shouting we're figuring things out I knew though actually you do need to oversell your events you know you want the room to be full for the energy in the room things like that and so that was one of those final gas pedal things too and so anyways that guy had formerly worked for Grant Cardone started his own thing the guy that runs Esa That's Not My Vibe it's not think media's Vibe but as the event was taking on a life of its own to a point and when we were pushing it was that's a leadership weighing of options do we not push the gas and not do this which fair enough could have been the right answer and things aren't so black and white it might not it might be not right or wrong it's just considering you know what do you want to end up doing but yeah that whole thing with Zone learning experience as well okay just the nature of the length of the answers I think I had three more questions for you and we'll see if we can land a plane on this I love it just quickly because there's a follow-up question was the fifth iteration of girl with video big win in your book oh huge win like I mean once it was all said and done it was an absolute win and I think by every metric I think monopolize would say that event sales agency would say that Crescent audio would say that Jesse would say that in fact Jesse who's been in event industry the event planner she said this about her attendees she said in 20 years in the industry I have never met a better group of people which speaks to maybe who we attract or who the speakers attract so she said this is one of the best events I've been a part of and the vibe and the energy she was like people were kind and respectful so like things like that were a win you always get a few complaints but they were very minimal I mean extremely minimal most people's report was this is the best event I've ever attended the content turned out great so we got the content out of the other side personally even I was doing so much Logistics and fighting other battles in our business and life life back in growth video live one so I was doing my slides and my sessions the night before the event started even just the runway by having enough team members so I still had plenty of pressure but I went into it as rested as I could ask to be and net net it really turned out smooth team loved it again challenging pushed some of us to the physical limits because events are like morning tonight you know what I mean like here's like six to 12 like every day for depending on who you are on the team so all that to say is like yeah it's historic we have all of our marketing for it especially the speaker's face but I want to turn it into a movie poster it is like a defining moment in my life career and for our team and for all the scars I think I speak for our entire team and I spoke for the other teams coming out of the other side we look back with gratitude humility appreciation saying it's a win and then financially saying and we made it we were positive and then some we were positive on ticket sales and we then made our own offer and I mean it's all relative but I've heard others that do crazy with it we've never really done an offer like that so that went well we learned from that but financially it was a win and brand building wiser to win and relationship building was win and I think from other speakers the speaker's feedback we there's there could be a part two of this podcast 10 part series it's helped me being in the church world but I really value something I don't see much anywhere else called uh which would be honor and I've spoken at maybe 100 to 200 events now I've never experienced like what we did for our speakers whether that was how they got to the hotel having someone to host them giving them gifts I shot videos for every single one of them and had video cards in all their rooms the way we treated them as Speaker lounge and all these different things and for us that's based in the principle of Honor which is one a reflection of the culture we want to create our company but also too the idea if we want to make an investment that was part of it too like if we can use all these dollars to invest in people and in brand and in content that's what we're investing in we're not actually investing in the financial Arbitrage of this one event so I'd like to spend like everybody that was a speaker on the video I said and hey if you wanted to use take advantage of the M Spa or whatever now again I don't know if other speakers are listening to this and you've been to some events I've been to some amazing events and have been treated decently well but I've also been on the other other side of the spectrum I've been shocked by how poorly speakers can be treated so we absolutely were intentional about every detail of this event for me being in all these different experiences I had we added them all together and we truly set out to try to do the greatest event from an attendee standpoint to having the volunteers take care of the attendees the result was I actually feel proud and that we got pretty dang near as good of executing our intent as possible real quick question I realize I actually have more than three questions real quick question for you so it would have been all right for you still would be considered a win if you produce this event and lost some money most people don't go into the event business because they plan to make a ton of money most they know it's a loss leader for other things for you it's a brand Play You also mentioned that there was an offer do you mind sharing with us like you did a million dollars in ticket sales what did you do in your offer sales so our offer was 5K and we did 80 units and we did not even all at the event but that this is part six of the 10 part mini course we should create like it also forced us this was part of the growing pains it forces to like rethink our whole business and customer Journey because one we didn't want to do an offer because if it wasn't right and we if we didn't have anything that's higher ticket than like a thousand in our business we also though and part of that not knowing we would have been profitable on ticket sales was also part of a not putting our company in a vulnerable spot by using that offer to fill in the gaps like that like worst case scenario maybe we break even with that or worst case scenarios maybe we are 100K negative with that but we also weren't just going to force something for the sake of that we were measuring our own energy our team's bandwidth measuring Brands we start a new brand do we offer like there were so many different things and through lots of plans succeed through like a multitude of white wise counsel through a lot of processing we actually found the iteration of I believe and I did not want to do something reactionary though just to solve one problem in the event so there's a lot of pressure when trying to plan a event to also like architect where I think our company should go but we found a Synergy of that so when we launched what was called the growth video live boot camp it's now something we'll just do quarterly which was our first time of doing coaching and accountability like time with Heather time with me six weeks cohort kind of environment and we really eventually dialed that in so it even had to do with reworking things we're sun setting our other membership program it became a domino that affected all these other dominoes that in the power of focus and essentialism was arguably not even the right time to try to even think about that stuff but it was all converging and so we ended up coming together with that so what is 100 units on that's half a Mill and so that ended up being you know 400 and not all collected at once but therefore we ended up at like one and a quarter with about 350k profitability which is actually incredible I have a friend that runs one of the biggest running events in San Diego year over year multi-million dollar budget and they're running on Advanced profit margins of 15 20 and so I'm not good at math you might be able you outperformed that yes 30 35 profitability and we checked all those other boxes and pulled out what we hoped to be no stops whether that was you know because you were part of the Platinum experience in the business days so whether that was the event and the food there I mean there were times when our VIP room filled and we had to move VIP which you were in those lunches to the Pavilion which was another 40K like we were just in a place where like I was just like numb to it they'd be like listen if you were packed here but if we move it to this next it'd be like another 40K and then food and Bev and so like you're just playing at that game you're throwing around 5K and 10K like it's a joke I mean whatever I just got to sign off on it and trust me I was numb to it but like I was still calculating it and it was like yeah no we got to keep making bold moves like so when we moved to the Pavilion there was only like one week but event sales agency was in place and they had and then I talked to Brian and I was like he's like yeah we have a lot of leads to still follow up with and I'm like well if we're full on VIP now how many more VIP or platinum tickets will we need to sell to pay off doing the Pavilion and if it's like well if we do two platinums and so I was like okay calculated risks at each step of the way and so anyways yeah so it's great so it turned out really good and that's a whole nother one the pressure my friend going all the way back to the lead Domino that was my intent I was like this pressure if it's not gonna kill us and it didn't will make us better it made our company better it streamlined our product line it just put us into a pressure situation that forced a lot of things of course it could have gone the whole other direction but that's a whole other aspect of the win I believe our product suite and our customer journey is more dialed and more clear now because of needing to get it right because of the pressure of this event here's something I remember that was really funny there's two moments quick answer two moments one was when Gary was doing his own thing how when he would finish talking you would just Soldier on like let's just go right back he's dropping f-ombs he's saying crazy things and then you just kept going on like the Terminator just having a conversation I remember it got a good laugh from the audience just because you're so determined to get through it the other part was you went to do a talk and you talked about something about fishing and there was a metaphor and then you were kind of stumbling through it was that a planned fumble or was that just you you know what I lost my place in it I'm just gonna own it and just move on because they both got like really good reactions it's funny you remember that fishy moment no that was an absolute blunder because that was my most underdeveloped talk like in terms of showing up prepared I also felt the stakes were higher lots of you know people that didn't know us if you will cold traffic or whatever that came to the event from other people so I wanted my talks to be good I felt like my first one went really well in hindsight I felt like the second one was all right as well but like as I Was preparing part of it was I had notes in the PowerPoint so on the confidence monitor at notes in the PowerPoint and I kind of knew where I wanted to go with those but it's for the listeners it's like I was trying to use the example of getting attention online and fishing you have different lures for different fish so you're creative your thumbnails your title your things should be thoughtfully intentional and different lures attract different fish but really if I had more time I could have watched two hours of YouTube videos and actually absorbed I have like zero fishing knowledge and so I tried to tie it into a story which was true my stepdad Phil had taken me fishing a couple times and I learned some stuff there and so I arguably was a strong analogy it was just very underdeveloped and eventually I hit a point in preparation for growth video live where that was not my main battle to fight and once I found myself in stage it was part of my deck but like I had zero rehearsal I kind of like lost my place and felt like I was floundering and absolutely sinking and so I was like oh whatever the boy so I'm glad it went over well but literally and I'm a pretty smooth speaker and normally you know like there may be like kind of a zero blunder at least maybe I know I'm at the blender but like that was one I literally just like dead end and I was like okay you know what forget it whatever and kind of move on and definitely was disrupted from my Cadence and so you were dropping jokes and doing your thing that my friend MO and I were I'm like no I think Sean lost his place but he just owned it and it's very lovable that you did and then Mo turns me no that was scripted he did it on purpose just to win the audience over but either way the impact whatever it worked it really worked I could tell the Gary thing oh I was gonna say the Gary thing I didn't it was kind of a weird vibe I mean all I needed to do was the question I asked him but what was also funny was it's the way my mind works I am asking a question also out of curiosity I'm asking questions based on the audience questions based on what I think will also be good on social media later or whatever I'm thinking about questions that are relevant and because of my I it's the desire to close the loop so it's funny as you said you're right there was times where I'd ask a question and then he would just rant and let me ask it again and there was like six deviations do and I would just keep coming back it's because I needed to work I didn't know where else to go I was like okay yeah but the question's still but Gary like the loop is not closed so I I am going to persistently fight and to close the loop not that he did and actually yeah you never answered it so I was like uh all right that's so funny and so yeah no I mean I love hearing your observation from viewing it from that vantage point that was it was a very interesting interview and I think what I learned there though was just letting the margin happen and letting things kind of breathe and ultimately letting Gary be Gary the one one of the big frustrating points there was me giving the ground rules for the Q a and wanting to get to as much q a as possible and as you might remember I was like okay like don't pitch your thing don't tell your life story pre-write your question be very concise and then that guy gets up there it's like seven minutes it's literally like life story it's literally an uncle and then like not even a question because some people just once they get to the mic they're like I want to tell Gary my story all that to say I mean I'm in my own mind too mainly I'm just sad for other people I go all I know is this is up time I go on and because I had given up expectation it wasn't that I was I was like whatever I mean what are you gonna do and then I'm deeply trying to weigh do I interrupt him is it my place now I was trying to be a good leader of the whole con conversation by giving ground rules he's breaking them I'm sure the audience has empathy for that I avoid confrontation I like being diplomatic I don't want to be passive though and be so I you know and the amount of things going on in my mind of like just constant moments where I feel like the ship is sinking this is the Titanic I'm lost on this illustration we're going down is there hope is there any recovery you know and trying to just like smile and push through but like in your mind the building's on fire and man it's an emotional roller coaster up there sometimes the thing about q a is It's tricky because people do not listen to the rules and it was broken from the jump the first guy goes up does the testimonial just doesn't even ask a question and then it sets the tone so the next person is like fine they got away with it I'm gonna get away with it it's tough because you don't want to be rude and you're trying to be respectful and you feel the heat from the audience like oh you know what's going on and you do what you've got to do I personally because I'm more confrontational I'm like stop stop what's your question let's go you know nope you're selling stop we're done next person I should have I would do it for you guys yeah I just like that yeah okay I would love to be able to drop in a little bit of the funny clip somewhere into those podcasts so that people can hear because I think you have to release this the way that you would ask a question Gary would do his thing but Gary he'd do his thing and you but Gary we were just all watching this feeling your pain like what do you do with a person who has his own mind and but you're still trying to get it back on the tracks if you will but the train left a long time ago you're so good at like um let me try this one more time you just didn't give up and and it's very admirable and it's it's very I don't this is kind of a weird term but it's kind of very endearing it really is like look at Sean he's just he's gonna just keep trying and then eventually okay time is up we're not gonna get that answer I think my mentality was also from my experience uh on stages and events and speaking elsewhere is also like is to keep your cool keep smiling and just keep pushing through because what I have seen is on the other side I've seen speakers lose it like their slides aren't working and I've been in these situations like AV teams letting them down or something on their own they that you messed your own deck up and you lose it in the middle and just also remembering or also you know resting B face what do you look like when you're not asking the question I mean I I really take or when you're not talking even what is your expression on panels a lot of times people especially I know in your industry as well like they might go to like an industry event and they're typically not panel people they have no clue so it's like when they're not being asked a question they're just like looking off because why would they know and it's not something but on the opposite side of it and so all that to say was part of that was like me and my mind being like you know what like here's my job keep it cool like don't what I'm necessarily thinking don't show it on my face because it's not gonna be helpful if I look annoyed or if I get mad or if I look frustrated or if I lose my cool and so that was at least the vantage point I was trying to get in that Zen place like that generally realizing that especially at the event once we had so much team around me and people we'd hired and so on and so so forth my number one job as the leader of really the whole thing is actually just to protect my heart like above all else to guard My Heart Guard my mindset and just stay in an emotionally empowered spiritually Strong place even when it's just the train is off the rails right and and and I think great leadership is to keep your calm and I've watched people like lose it or they lose it because he never knew what to expect from the other person because there's so many curveballs you get into a territory of like okay where even are we I have no idea where we are and then just trying to navigate back all right let's keep it going uh let's stay on track here smiling and and like and not let's stay on track here from a frustrated like oh man you know so anyways that was that was that's kind of where I was coming from let's reflect back on this big gamble that you just what we've been talking about for the last hour and a half I would like to ask you this question of all the different things that you did to drive ticket sales and to try to sell out the event what was the number one biggest driver in your opinion or based on the data well there's a couple things we did I think very strategic I don't know which one was the biggest I should mathematically as as the leader but I think there's just like five strategic moves maybe the first one was pre-sell the year before I had a really low ticket rate and I think we did 250 ticket sales now this also spokes speaks to maybe how how many people show up because I've heard if you sell under 497 uh and even at that price point people go yeah I mean it's not even worth it to get on the plane now life has changed my kids or whatever and we also had VIP and those are these are like 200 tickets a year ahead of time and then VIP met you got lunches and we sold like 75 of those which was created that initial momentum the second thing we did was challenges as a separate note we did challenges that had three ticket levels normally we do a challenge we sell our online YouTube course and what we did was you could get our YouTube course and a virtual ticket at no extra charge for like a thousand but the three offer levels during these two challenges we did six months out and three months out at a 1500 level you could get a ga ticket and at a 2K level you get the course some other bonuses and you also get a VIP ticket I would argue those were the biggest move you want the juicy marketing nugget I knew that most people burn up way too much money marketing events ad spends going through the roof it's what pushes it not into profitability so instead of wanting to do the majority of our ad spend on marketing the event I we did the majority of our ad spend on challenges which we already knew worked and tied the event to the challenges another way to put it would be when we do our challenges we have spent 50 100 150 200k on ads maybe more than that maybe quarter mil and we already knew we could do them profitably so then my thought was I would rather do that also have also have the email list build also have the digital course which we can scale profitably and also promote the event so if there was one thing it was the two challenges where you could call it it's all gravy too does that make sense like so we spent maybe on the second one we spent like 100 Grand but like I wouldn't even count that towards the ad spend budget of the event because the challenge in of itself is profitable with the offer yes of course we had fulfillment and I'm not even sure how we did the math like we did not calculate that ad spit because it was unnecessary to calculate that ad spend and then you finally get into the last push organic would be a big one I mean think media people who know us the videos on think media there was definitely some strategic creative or podcast listeners so we hit all the organic child our email list educating and one guy who is worth studying I don't even know where you could get this content but Dan Kennedy is a legendary direct response marketer and he does have some teachings out on selling out events and his first thing is events selling out an event or getting butts and seats as he would say is a hundred times harder than you think it is take whatever marketing efforts you think you should do and literally 100x them we were not passive about this integration and podcast organic YouTube content reels tick tocks like and I also think overcoming the idea of are people gonna be upset if we talk about it too much if we post about it too much and letting that mindset go if that offends you then great this is the time that this is where we part paths because this is a no fail thing we got a push for this and we need to do a hundred times more activities than we think we need to do and then the final push would be like the actual ad spend on ticket sales which was like maybe 50 Grand which would be it was low so like the ads been to the challenges was even more but was done profitably so I think that would be a huge for any listeners where it's relevant that's a big unlock was Market something that in and of itself is effective and have your event on the back end rather than try to go like cold traffic ads just to the event I think it could be too hard of course it depends on so many factors of how good your creative is how good your event is how good your speakers are how good your ad buyer is how good a lot of things how good follow-up or retargeting so many distinctions another way to put it is like literally we did it all there's a verse in Ecclesiastes that says you know plant your seed in the morning and water in the evening because you don't know which thing will actually produce the results and and that's kind of what we said we're like What are effective marketing channels or things we could do let's do them all at as best level as we can 10 times to 100 times more than we think we should do them and then mind you Chris this is crazy right at most we had 800 people in the room the 1200 tickets sold the amount of reach that and by the way virtual is a thousand people about concurrent you know kind of like seven eight so there's the whole virtual side and that's amazing too there's recordings and all kinds of things but like to level garyvee Alex and Pat like Vegas like Communications and by the way you're in a pandemic World flights are up life is happening do I actually really want to get on a plane am I even gonna show up in every session I'm just going to go to the pool and just go to Gary's session the level of like difficulty and as Dan Kennedy would put it getting butts in seats is absolute Insanity so it's not for the timid if you want to on the back end say like room is full though you know event is fire things are amazing yeah and here's what it took uh you know to ultimately reach that level you mentioned challenged can you tell me one of the challenges that you ran just so I can understand what you did because that seemed to be an integral part of how this became a success for you so we do like the two tube 1K challenge how to get your first 1000 subscribers and earn your first one thousand dollars with YouTube five days of free content and in a Facebook group it's challenges were made popular back when it'd be like a fitness challenge like a seven day boot camp to lose 20 pounds it's one of the best marketing methods for almost any business and people do three day challenges five day challenges that's another podcast episode in itself too we found them to be very powerful it's the focused intensity it's the level of free content it's the actually a challenge like we're gonna give you daily homework and all that kind of stuff and we had done them fortunately this might have been challenge eight or nine for us or ten for us so the confidence that was my marketing strategy was like the challenge Works let's get more virtual tickets at the exact same price point of what we've done in the challenge in the past and then let's add these other two ticket levels and so that then is just a push forward to say and then by the way so here's the cool thing you can watch online from anywhere in the world at what it already has we knew how to do we already had the content on the challenge which we always try to improve and make better but we already had ads sequences is down in The Branding so we've repeatedly done we've done the tube 1K challenge the YouTube influence challenge the I think it was called tube influence challenge we've done and they've been similar we've done a seven day we've done a five day we just keep kind of we do maybe three a year once we had like our one big thing that our business was mapping to not at the expense of everything else it was just like orienting our energy towards well simultaneously but all being towards growth in your life so grow a video live became the countdown so is this chance of like if we do this let's also tell people about growth video live if we have a challenge that's also you know tie this in in some way if people meet us somewhere else you know buy the book or you know join somewhere else like let's let's just hit it from different things and so it was the intentional weaving in of growth video live being a part of that and so that's that's what a challenge that's how we did it what's one thing you would do differently one could have been meant I hustled harder so the even better thing would have been to reduce things on our calendar so the biggest mistake I made was whenever you say yes to something it is a notice something else right and actually whenever you say no to something you're saying yes because having more free time because you just said no to this I could have really discerned how heavy this was going to be and given us more margin because rather than just allowing us to basically keep our day-to-day the same I think media while also trying to run a million dollar event which is insane in of itself that's its own business by the way if all the business did there's a seven figure business with a 30 profitability like if all a business did was like spend a million and come out at 1.3 after you pay all the staff and everybody else then that's an incredible annual seven-figure business and the 48 other things that we do in think media so for myself and the team if I would have said allowed us to say no to a couple projects to create a more margin which kind of affects the second mistake which would have allowed me to make key decisions sooner like if we would have got Jessie's team on sooner there would have been more peace about it like the event planner sooner so in the first three to six months by being like I'll Grow video lives a year out and not neglecting it in that regard but realizing there are just some strategic decisions if I give myself less or the team less said less to one or two projects so that some clear thinking and some just hustling through to make some key decisions earlier that Downstream consequences would have just meant more peace of mind more Health not only do you have to own that but that's a big lesson of the pressure of leadership is trying to think through of the second third fourth fifth sixth order consequences of making a decision or delaying a decision and who that's going to affect six months or nine months later and not that I need to justify or give myself Grace in it but this is why I hope that this episode's also been valuable is this is what's been like the greatest leadership year of my life because the grace that I would have for myself is just like yeah and I what do I know like how do I what I know about running a million dollar event what does our team know and so the list of lessons um this is why it's so hard to not do it over the next two years is because I literally feel like we're built for battle now like we just know so many things we do different and I do believe again we will still do events and it'll look different and maybe we'll come back with a major bang in 2025 and who knows 10 000 people Mandalay Bay you know Arena Team Mobile Arena Las Vegas like who knows but you sometimes like that that'd be my encouragement for the team oh we could have done this better I'll be like are you kidding yes it was a growth of your life five but this was literally the first time we ever attempted something like this so the fact that it came out the way it did how much more if we were to do it a second or third time all the artists and designers listening to this know that their first attempt or that you know your first time trying something it was nowhere near you becoming the master Craftsman of a little while later and so definitely thinking through making hard decisions creating the margin to make the right decisions earlier and not delaying because the downstream effects are heavily affected by important decisions it sounds to me if I were to sum up the two lessons that you just shared with us I could probably say it in one one word would just focus doing too many things you focus in you would have caught whatever decisions needed to be made but you you had too many different things to do and it is a Herculean effort to try and produce an event of the scale and what you did which takes me to my final observation reflection on all this and a little backstory that you may or may not know about which is I'm in Las Vegas like a month before I'm at a mograph Meetup and our mutual friend Jace says hey are you going to Sean's thing I'm like I don't even know what Sean's thing is tell me about this and he told me about this million dollar gamble that you're gonna make I'm like why would he do that you're not gonna be financially whole this is the craziest thing ever and I wonder what the media play is going to be like okay I understand the brand play I get it I understand and so you and I were alive but different in several different ways we're similar in terms of our YouTube channel in terms of our subscriber a similar amount of time building our content online I started in 2014 kind of just as a hobby I think you were 2015 and seeing your growth and all this stuff this would be an interesting case study to study how two entrepreneurs work you saying make bigger bets you got to go for it and scared money don't make money and me just like tried and truly is as steady as as she goes I'm super curious what happens in a year two years from now we look back on this moment where you made these huge game animals had this greatest year of leadership growth and how that transforms you we did we'd even get into those bits because we're just so focused on the event itself you have changed as a person because of the event so forget about the money or the profitability if you built a second business or not I'm just super psyched to plant that seed here today to kind of just Market in time that a year two years from now we'll look back in this moment like oh show me some big moves he's balling now and here we are we we didn't make those moves and we we took a different strategy so I'm just super excited I'm happy for you you're a man of Faith you're a family person you've overcome adversity and you're a person who is you described like College Dropout and you did your thing and here you are kind of in your groove in your moments doing the work that is important that's meaningful that's impactful to you and it's evidenced by the community which is coalesced around you because I've never seen a more enthusiastic generous audience they literally did a standing ovation for almost every speaker before they even walked up on stage that is nuts to me and so that observation by Jesse was spot on I've never seen an audience like that I've seen generous audience before but not quite like that they're 100 there I think to support you and they wanted to see you do well so congratulations to you Sean thank you so much I really appreciate your kind words and uh man it's been super fun talking about this and I appreciate the detail of your questions and uh this is kind of some geeky content but uh it's uh it's been quite a journey and I look forward to continuing to connect and building together over there guys and my my community when they heard about you coming on I'm like like when is this episode just relax everybody this is coming out so they're geeking out too and I told them I'm gonna ask you all these questions that oftentimes I don't get an opportunity to ask but also because the person doesn't want to tell me the answers and this is one of these perfect moments you're very transparent I am too you're very open about everything uh strengths and weaknesses you're super humble and grounded and I love that I appreciate you thank you for your time today now Sean if people want to find out more about you how do they continue this conversation with you yeah I mean you said it Sean Cannell rhymes with YouTube channel at Sean cannellon and Instagram and I think YouTube Secrets if people are interested in YouTube the second edition book just came out and it's uh new 80 new pages updated for a new decade and then yeah you can look us up I think think media is the YouTube channel and think media podcast is a weekly podcast that we do on YouTube and audio so anywhere would absolutely love to serve love to help and we're on a mission honestly to double the Creator economy and uh specifically through the vehicle of of YouTube and we're a team of creators now trying to help people with the best practices of starting channels growing channels growing your business with YouTube marketing and so check us out think media and Sean Cannell on social media and for everybody who's listening to this we'll include those links and references in the show notes so make sure you check those out if you're watching this on YouTube they'll be right below just please start there before you ask the question we'll include that in the show notes in the description once again thank you very much Sean my name is Sean Cannell and you are listening to the Future