Welcome everyone to our newest episode.

We are very excited to have a very talented lady here today.

Her name is Shay Wheat.

Her company is Grace and Ease Productions.

She is the visionary entrepreneur and CEO of Grace and Ease Productions.

She collaborates with leading coaches, consultants, and

experts to develop transformative one to many sales strategies.

She grew up on a ranch riding horses.

Love that.

And she learned resilience and determination, which she brings to

her work, empowering entrepreneurs and creating impactful events.

So welcome Shay.

We're glad to have you here today.

Thank you so much.

I'm excited to be here with you.

We're gonna have fun.

It's

good to be on your podcast and we just had such a great conversation and I feel

like , we actually have a lot of clients that ask us to host like a mastermind or

an event and I'm like terrified of it.

So I'm excited to see how you do that and how you help your clients.

So this is going to be a great conversation today.

Oh, we can get into some good stuff, map the whole thing out, right?

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

So let's unlock the secrets to scaling your business with hosting your own event.

So tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah.

So events are probably one of the best ways to scale and leverage your business.

Reason being is they allow you to really build stronger client relationships

and trust with your audience.

So it allows you to take that no like and trust factor and shorten the time, right?

So there's just something different about being in person or being in

a virtual live event versus just watching a bunch of talking heads,

or, , watching a replay of something.

When you're actually live, whether it's virtual or in person, you get

so much more out of it because you've got community, because you can ask

questions, because you can get real time feedback, you have interactions, and

you've got experience, It allows you to go deeper in the work that you do

with your clients and your prospects.

And in the world that I live in, I love it because , it allows you to

have a platform to actually have immediate conversions as well.

And events really support you in that client customer journey.

Like I said earlier, to shorten that period.

And we always know that there's a percentage of people that just

raise their hand and go, I love everything that you just told me.

I totally get it and understand it.

Will you please hold my hand and show me how to do it?

I want to work with you for the next six months or for the year.

What does that look like?

And so events allow you to do that as well.

Yeah, I love that.

I love I'm a conference junkie.

I like all the swag.

I like getting in there and meeting people and kind of seeing how they represent

themselves in their booth or on stage.

And yeah, it does make you feel like you get to know people.

Oh, absolutely., you've got a couple of different types of events, right?

So you've got the ones that are conversion enrollment events.

Then you also have like your mastermind or what we also know as fulfillment events.

So you're already a part of, , the world and it's like a mastermind.

So all of the mastermind peeps get together and you're building those

connections and you're having the meetings after the meeting and you're

doing the networking and you really get to know people, Beyond just like

the initial engagement and interaction.

And so a lot of the true meetings happen not only during the event, but also the

meeting after the meeting where it's like all the networking and all the business

and all the deals happen then too.

So tell us a little bit about the different types.

of events?

Because it was interesting, you were talking about conversion or

relationship about the different types of events that people can host.

And then like, what are the outcomes of those?

Or what are the goals for those?

Great question.

I've listed out 17 different types of events.

I think there's probably more.

So let me list out rapid fire and everyone can go and push pause and write them down

so you could do some 90 minute workshops.

This is like your, , masterclasses, webinar type things.

You can do a summit.

You can do a retreat.

You can do a mastermind, a one day sales and enrollment, a three day

sales and enrollment conversion event.

Seminars, podcasts, are actually events.

Meetups, Facebook lives, Instagram lives, people who are still doing clubhouse

rooms, those are events, conferences, challenges, hackathons, conventions, trade

shows, and I'm sure there's a lot more.

When and where are you utilizing these events?

Depends on kind of the phase of business that you're in.

So if you are just starting out in business, you're in phase one, that's

the validation phase, where your primary goal is to get more clients

and get them crazy awesome results.

In this phase, you are not doing events.

You are literally focusing on getting your first 10 clients and

getting them crazy awesome results.

Rinse and repeating have proof of concept.

Then you move on to phase two, which is visibility, where your

primary goal here is to do just that, increase your visibility.

You're using the free platforms, the Facebook lives, the

clubhouse rooms, the Instagrams.

You're being a guest on other people's stages, other people's

webinars, podcasts, summits, and you can start looking at being a.

sponsor at events being like a speaker sponsor at somebody else's enrollment

event or something along those lines.

But your goal, like I said, is to get more leads, book more strategy calls, have more

conversations, make more offers until you reach about 5k per month consistently.

That moves you into phase three, which is the grow phase.

where you're trying to constantly increase your visibility, but also

start creating your own stages.

You're hosting your own masterclasses, your own webinars, your own summits.

You're getting larger speaker sponsorship spots, , to the point where you're making

about a consistent 10k or so a month.

That moves you into phase four, which is scale.

Where you're scaling your business, you're having less one on one sales conversations

and looking for a one to many platform.

So you're wanting to maybe look at a one day enrollment event.

Maybe you're hosting your own retreats and workshops.

You have your own groups that you're bringing people together.

You're starting to make a consistent 20, 000 per month and beyond.

And then you move into Phase 5.

where you are completely staying in your zone of genius.

Your team is handling a lot of the work, and you are really leveraging

and utilizing three day sales and enrollment events, one days, you're using

everything, the whole book of events into your business plan to continue to

scale, grow, and leverage your company.

I love this step strategy because I think it is so important because I think

business owners, entrepreneurs, we get so excited because there's so many options.

But what happens is like you said, you're using all of those events.

So what you're saying is that person who's made it to the level five, I think

you said, they're doing the big three day events and their team's taking care of it.

But they're still leveraging those Facebook lives and the LinkedIn lives.

So it's like you start one thing and then you become very consistent with that.

And then you build on it.

That's what you're, that's what you mean by leveraging all of it, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And it makes it so you're also logically looking at it when you're starting out

in the very, very beginning, you don't have a whole lot of cashflow coming in.

So it doesn't make sense for you to do a three day event and

spend, 50, 75, a hundred K on an event when you have no clients.

We want to make sure you are growing your business accordingly and doing

the right events at the right time, because it can, , you do hear people

going and losing their shirt, if they don't do it in the right order.

So I will actually send people away going, you're not ready for it.

, we want to start you doing some consulting with me first to get you Where you need

to be to the point where then you want to go ahead and do a retreat or a workshop

or a mastermind group or let's tweak and adjust your high ticket offer or

whatever the case may be to get you to the point where we can run and produce

a three day event and create multiple six and seven figures in three days.

I think that's amazing., I know for us, you know, most of our clients

are either starting, , a typical talking head style YouTube channel,

or maybe they're starting a podcast.

And I think that's so important because I feel like through creating that type of

content and thinking about your keyword and your SEO strategy, and , if you're

having guests on your podcast , or you're being a guest on podcasts, you're having

all these conversations, which is really, I think, helping to dial in your message.

And so it makes sense that you would want to spend a lot of

time in that, those arenas.

before you move up to the next arena because that's going to help you

really get your messaging right your brand stories you know the client

stories all the things that you need to bring to the stage you're

developing in each of these phases

yeah you're learning to crawl to walk to run absolutely it all builds on itself

and so what we want to make sure we're not doing is having that Shiny object

syndrome and watching a guru that's doing this new latest fun thing and I

can do it too But the thing is you're comparing their phase 5 with your phase 3

Right.

And I think that's kind of sad that sometimes I feel like , in our

business, , we see all these people that are doing these amazing things

that we think I want to do that.

And the problem is we want to do it now.

But you forget like how much of that foundation has to be

built before you go there.

So I love that you really talk about the different phases.

And what I think is important is, , if you're listening to this podcast, it

doesn't matter where you are in your journey, you're at the right place.

So just enjoy that phase, master it, and then move to the next phase.

And eventually it's like running your own 3D events is what you want to do.

You'll get there.

Probably just not going to be overnight.

No, it can happen quite rapidly, right?

If , you have the plan, you just work the plan and you get on other

people's stages and you do speaker sponsorships and you get it to the

point where, like I said, you're hitting that number pretty consistently.

You've brought on team to help take things off of your plate.

You could do it easily within a year or shorter.

I've seen people do it.

, but you just need to know where you're at currently.

And then how do we get to the next steps?

That's amazing.

I love it.

So having these events built a lot of client trust and relationship.

Can you talk more about that?

Yeah, absolutely.

So, , especially now that we're seeing a huge shift in how marketing

is working and not working.

People want to know you.

They want to know you, the personal brand you, who are you about, what are you

about, what are you not about, are you my people, are you not my people, and a great

way for people to experience fully you.

is having an event, whether it is, , a free event, a summit event, a masterclass,

a three day, they get to experience you as a person and also the community

and tribe that you're attracting.

So what I see happen is people will walk into an event and they have

their arms crossed and they're like, I don't know about this.

We'll see what's going on.

And then I love seeing the transformation happen towards the end of the event

where they're like, Oh, my God,

this is my community, right?

Like that is the transformation that can happen within events when you create

it with intention when you create the arc of the run a show the agenda of

the event to take them on a journey.

And so we'll do this in our consulting, we'll do this in our done with you

program, where we're really reverse engineering what it is that we want

to That's how we do our marketing.

That's how we support you in attracting the right people.

So you have the right people in the room in the first place, and that's

what we want them to walk away with, whether or not they decide to move

forward with you and your business by your program by your year long.

What have you?

We always want them to leave with X, Y and Z.

And we call that the event promise from there.

We reverse engine everything so that they actually achieve.

We achieve that for them.

And that's also how we do our marketing.

That's how we support you in attracting the right people.

So you have the right people in the room in the first place.

That's amazing.

So what is the process of like filling in of that?

What does that look like to get all those right people in the room?

Yeah.

So the first step is reverse engineering.

What is the end result?

And then once we have the promise, we take a look at, what are the topics that

we're going to be Supporting them on that goes into your sales pages that goes into

your marketing, your social media, and then we do what's known as a ticket map.

So ticket map is filling out all the ways that we plan on connecting with our

audience, where they're at, where they're hanging out, how we plan on hitting

the number of tickets we want to hit.

So if our goal is, say, 50 tickets, We're going to map out.

How are we going to achieve those 50 tickets?

Are we, , going and emailing our current email list?

, are we planning on doing a couple of webinars?

Are we doing a couple of sponsorships?

Are we doing referrals?

Are we going to our current clients?

Are we doing a bring a friend campaign?

Are we doing a couple of speaking gigs?

We map out and we list out all the opportunities of where our audience is.

Then we want to take a look at, okay, we expect.

, 10 or 20 people to be at this speaking engagement.

I'm speaking on somebody else's stage.

They have my ideal client.

They say they're going to have 20 people that would possibly want

to buy a ticket to our event.

Great.

We expect, let's just say, 20 percent of them to pick up a ticket.

That gives us our number.

And so we do that for every single line item to map out how we hit our 50 number.

However, we don't just hit 50 in our map.

We actually need to go over because we want to account for no shows.

And it's a different number between if you're doing a

virtual live versus an in person.

There's a lot more that goes into either one or the other for the audience member,

but that's essentially how we map it out.

And then you just go and you take the map and you go and implement it.

I love that.

That's awesome.

, I'm curious how, , you just mentioned virtual versus in person events.

So how can you make a virtual event feel as friendly and warm and

community minded as an in person event?

80 percent of what we do in person translates to what we do virtually.

The 20 percent that's different is the technology and the engagement pieces.

So the engagement pieces are really huge.

So you're going to, depending on your audience and who they are and what they

like and what you like, it's going to be a little bit different, but we're

looking for ways to have engagement.

So when you're in person, you do mic shares and you do table

shares and things of that nature.

How does that then translate into the virtual world?

Breakout session rooms.

, people still getting up and sharing at the mic, but typing into chat and having

that call and response back and forth.

We've even had some clients do before the event started, you

know how you do the networking in person before the doors open.

We did the same thing on virtual.

We had a couple of different zoom rooms that people could go in based on whatever

topic they wanted to network about.

And we had those rooms open and then we moved everybody

over to the main session room.

So it comes down to being creative of how can we make it

so it's really fun, different, and exciting because we all know.

that virtual, you've got to keep their attention.

So you're doing a lot more of teaching content and having them do something

or get up or experience or write or share or break out rooms, right?

You're doing a lot more of the experiential pieces than you

probably would in person because you could lose somebody because the

dog's barking or, the children are screaming or, whatever's happening.

They will leave their computer, but how do you get it set up to make

it so they don't want to leave and they intentionally want to stay?

So that's when you're at the event, but then there's also a whole bunch of

pre event things that we do that are different types of stick strategies that

is also important to take a look at too.

Yeah, you're so smart.

I'm just like taking notes like crazy here.

I'm trying to give as much value as I possibly can.

You're so amazing.

Yeah, I was just thinking about when should people think about doing

lives because is that kind of the precursor to doing like a virtual zoom

event or, , which is kind of, to me, a precursor to doing a live event.

Yeah.

Your Facebook lives.

Those are in phase two.

We're starting to gain more visibility, , and you're being either

a guest on other people's platforms.

You're starting to create your own platform.

You have proof of concept from phase one.

You've got testimonials from phase one.

You know, it works.

You've built the confidence within yourself to now start putting

it out there to the masses.

I love that.

So do you feel like, some conferences or events are, you said it's a journey?

So tell us a little bit more about that.

Is it like a storytelling journey or, , how do you help people

work through those phases?

So when you're creating your run a show or your agenda for your event,

you want to, one, we're taking it from a reverse engineered aspect.

And if it is, let's say, a conversion event, the, one of the objectives is

to have them join you in your program.

And so you're going to be reverse engineering based

on what's in your program.

You're actually going to be teaching what is in your program during the event.

Right.

I mean, you can only teach them so much when you really start to look at it.

People are like, how am I going to talk for three days?

Oh my gosh.

You're really not talking for three days.

You're talking for, you know, maybe 20 minutes out of a 90 or 75 minute segment.

You're probably talking for 20.

You're having them do a writing exercise.

You're having them share.

You're having them be in, you know, pods.

You're having them be in breakout sessions.

You're doing the same thing in person.

So you're, , 20, 30, 40 minutes, depending on the topic.

of each session.

Now, when you're doing an event, you're doing two sessions in the

first part of the day, then you've got a lunch break, and then you've got

two sessions at the end of the day.

So when you really break it down, you don't have a gazillion amount of time.

You don't have a whole lot.

And so what I happen to end up doing is I'm pulling content out of the

event because I have to have it be experiential, but we're laying it out

based on taking them through a journey.

So it's having them be aware.

So when they come in, they probably think their problem is

X, but you being the expert know that their problem is actually Y.

They just think it's X right now.

And so part of the journey is showing them This is actually the problem.

So it's going, okay, here's what X is.

This is how you fix X, but when that happens, this is what Y is.

And this is how we start to move towards Y.

And we're starting to build a gap, , showing people , what is the difference

between where they are and where they want to go, and what needs to happen?

And as I mentioned earlier, people will go, okay, I get it, I understand

the bridge that needs to be crossed to get to where I want to go.

And I can go and do it on my own.

You've shown me how to do it in this event.

Or I can pay you to get me there quicker and faster and hold my

hand and not make the mistakes.

And it can be just simple mistakes.

For example, I was consulting with somebody and they wanted to do a webinar.

And so I'm like, great, so you're gonna go ahead and get on Zoom and this is what

you're gonna do and so on and so forth.

And for some reason, because she was doing a webinar, she needed Zoom webinar.

And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what we want.

Zoom webinar doesn't allow you to engage with the audience the way that we really

need you to be engaging with the audience.

And so that mistake alone, if she didn't have somebody like myself holding her

hand, could have cost her a lot of money, and going, Why is this not working?

It's not happening.

People aren't, , engaging with me.

Yeah, because you've used the wrong platform, right?

And so that's why you need your expert to support you in holding your hand to say,

Hey, This is how you get there quicker.

Don't fall into these mistakes, x, y, and z.

Now I'm dying to know, what platform do you use?

Oh, when I'm doing a virtual event, I use Zoom.

Absolutely.

I've done, I've, we had a lot of fun during pandemic.

We tried a ton of different stuff.

And we always come back to Zoom.

, I've even done it where I've had 15 Zoom rooms happening at the same time.

With less than 100 people in every single Zoom room.

All talking to one another.

That's And having the stage right so like you can do a ton with it.

, it you're obviously need a team like myself to come in and help you support

and all that technology, but the reason being is the subject matter.

And the amount of care and support and the container that the host wanted to

have happen was really super important.

And so we needed smaller rooms and we needed more team.

They had three team members in every single room to help coach

and support in order for that transformation to happen for that group.

Most people don't need that much.

You can get away with one zoom room and be completely fine.

But that's the experience that a particular host wanted to.

Yeah.

Kirsten zoom webinars different than a zoom room.

Right.

Yeah.

There's a workshop.

Yeah.

I was going to ask you, so with your company, , do you teach people how to do.

All of the aspects of , the presentation, as far as breakout rooms, or do you

educate the people who are in the breakout rooms or do you provide

the people in the breakout rooms?

Does that make sense?

It depends on the client.

we're either bringing in extra team or we're training your team on how to do it.

And so if we're training your team, obviously that's going to be a little

bit more cost effective than if we have to bring in our team to do it.

But regardless, we are the main point of content in regards to anything

and everything with the event.

So the, where I like to get my event hosts is their job is to show up to do what they

do best, Teaching the content, engaging with the audience, and I'm handling

everything else behind the scenes.

I'm leading your team.

I'm making sure that lunch is ready, or this is about, you know, the link that we

need to put into chat is about to drop, or the breakout rooms are open, or whatever.

I'm a couple of steps ahead of you, and so it becomes this yin and

yang, this, , partnership, where we're doing this dance, and then

we're also adjusting on the fly.

Because my visionaries, they have amazing downloads that happen on the

stage, and they're just going to be like, and this is what's coming through,

and this is what you need to know, and we're going off topic, and okay, great.

And I've got them.

I'm already tweaking and adjusting the run of show real time to

get them where we still are delivering upon the event promise.

We're still making sure they're getting the value they need to get.

So I'm essentially leading you, which is helpful for a lot of my

visionaries because they go, Oh, Okay.

I just had a download and I have no clue what we're doing next.

And I'm already on my prompter going, this is where you're going next.

And I'm like, Oh, thank God.

You're like the woman with the magic wand, making it all happen.

Wow.

Yeah.

Like a conductor.

Absolutely.

This is so amazing.

And I think what you're doing is awesome.

I do want to circle back to webinars really quickly, because I know a

lot of our clients are probably at that stage where they're thinking

about webinars or doing webinars.

When you're having a webinar, let's say, a typical webinar, 45 minutes

to an hour, how much time should you spend engaging with the participant?

, yeah, for sure.

I think a little bit of personality comes into play, and also what is the intention.

Are they coming in and paying to be there?

And I look at webinars slash masterclasses as kind of the same thing.

, masterclasses tend to be a little bit more engaging and conversational

and feedback and, , you call and response type of thing.

And those ones I feel have more.

, connection, they have more people leaning in, they get to see your personality

versus your typical webinar where it's like you just talking and giving

them a whole bunch of information about how great and amazing you are.

, and we're seeing the shift happening where it's like, we'll get to know me

more and what my problems are and what's in it for me versus you just telling

me how great and amazing you are.

And do you help people with like the after event, , the follow up, the,

surveys or, , that type of thing.

Absolutely.

So when we're planning an event, we're spending a good 17 plus meetings, , in

planning and producing your event.

, a lot of it is pre event and then part of it is the post event.

How are we engaging them?

What is the enrollment strategy during the event and post event?

What is the follow up?

What are the next steps?

And then we're also going to do a recap.

What worked, what didn't, what makes sense, what are the notes for next time?

Because regardless, I mean I'll do events four years in a row with

the same client and every single one of those events is different.

Yeah,

even though the content's the same, everyone is different.

One, because you know, we like to tweak and adjust it slightly or, the topic of

the theme, I should say, might be a little bit different, but who's showing up and

who you are as the host is also different.

And so we're, putting that into play as well.

Yeah.

I love that.

Cause sometimes I think the followup , is the part that people drop the ball.

Cause they're like, Oh, we got, , all these people to come and we did it.

And now I need a nap, you know, just

. It's so true.

I mean, one, you absolutely deserve to have a, what I call drool on the

couch day and you need to put that into, your schedule, just like

pre event you deserve to look at how you're managing your energy.

And I think that sets us apart a little bit is we are looking at the

event and energy management, , during the event, what that looks like some

of my clients will have massage and chiropractic or Reiki or what have

you show up during the event, just so they can be at their highest level.

But I think it's also important to realize.

So we had a client who ended up doing a virtual live event.

She ended up making, , 1.

1 million during the event and made an additional million

dollars in the follow up.

That's fantastic.

Same event.

They just had a plan to support, you know, following up with the people

that needed a little bit more time.

They had some more questions that they couldn't get answered during the event.

They, , needed to move money around or whatever the case may be.

, and so the team knew that we had a plan before the event, and

we just implemented the plan.

If you don't mind, what was the price point of what that person sold?

Uh, it was 15, 000.

So a larger ticket item.

Okay, awesome.

When you're doing a three day event, you're wanting to

utilize a high ticket offer.

In my opinion, anything over 10, 000 is a high ticket offer.

When you're doing a one day event, you can sell a program that's 5k or less, , just

to give some numbers around how you're utilizing the different types of events.

Now, do you host your own events?

I don't, actually.

I mean, I've done masterclasses and those types of things, but

a full on event, I have not.

Mainly because I don't necessarily have a group program that I would want to sell.

All of the support that I do is very customized.

It's one on one, done with you.

, the speakers, coaches, experts that are wanting us to be essentially

their outsourced event team.

Right.

That makes so much sense.

I love it.

This has been absolutely amazing, Shay.

I just, I think we could talk with you for hours.

Like I said, I've got a page and a half of notes and I'll probably go back

through when the transcript comes through.

It's you and I miss.

So hopefully all of you out there listening that you got a lot of

information out of this and events of what you're thinking about doing.

You know, Jeannie and I can't speak highly enough about Shea and I think

you have a gift for everyone, don't you?

I do.

So those of you that are looking to go, okay, I'm interested.

I want to like start taking a look at an event, but I don't

know quite what it looks like.

I just need some support.

, if you head on over to event.

org.

Free gift dot com.

I have my initial event planning playbook, which is going to go over

the initial planning document that I take all of my clients through.

What is the vision?

What does it look like when you open up the curtains?

What's happening?

You know, who's there?

What are we offering?

So on and so forth.

It also has your team roles and responsibilities.

There's 50 person or less.

Versus a 50 person and above what kind of team do you need for each type of event

as well as a profitable event calculator for you to map out what will your event

actually have the possibility of making.

That's brilliant.

So Shay, , tell our audience where they can find more information on

you if they want to reach out and, have you help them with their events.

Yeah, absolutely.

So on all of social media, you can find me Shea Wheat or Grace and Ease Productions.

Our website is Grace and Ease Productions.

We do a whole bunch of stuff on social media, giving you what's happening now,

, as well as, you can join our newsletter for a lot more insider types of tips.

This has been fantastic.

We so appreciate you spending some time with us, Shay.

Like Kirsten said, you are a wealth of information.

Now I'm excited to do an event, Kirsten.

Baby, you don't have to talk me into it, but baby, every time I talk with

Shay again, I'm getting one step closer, one step closer, but Jeannie

loves the stage and I do not, so that's part of the hesitation as well.

I love it.

Well, I look forward to supporting you all in reaching your audience,

however it needs to look, but regardless, the podcast is a great way.

It is an event, so you are rocking it already, Kirsten.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

I, I said, I never knew how much I would enjoy hosting podcasts

until we started doing it.

So now we have two podcasts.

I think we do five interviews a week.

I actually go on other people's podcasts usually once or twice a week.

So it just seems like the podcasting community is so amazing.

And so, yeah, it's fun.

I do like this part of it.

Well, thank you again, Shea, for joining us today.

We can't wait to, to talk to you more and, , don't forget to reach out to

Shea, , on all the social platforms.

So thanks again for being here.

Thank you.