Speaker A
I'm gonna help a complete stranger build a $5 million per year business in 90 days, step by step. And at the end of the 90 days, we're going to check in and show you exactly what happened. This is
Alex Hormozi helps Joey scale his event planning business to $5M/year by fixing pricing, sales, and demand strategies in 90 days.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
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Key Takeaways
- A scalable service business requires a clear, structured offer and pricing model based on real costs.
- Dynamic pricing that accounts for variable and fixed costs improves margin and sales efficiency.
- Sales processes must be optimized with training, cadence, and instant quoting to increase conversion.
- Understanding customer segments and willingness to pay (zip code tax) is critical for pricing strategy.
- The event planning industry has massive growth potential, making it a promising market to scale.
What the video covers
- Alex Hormozi commits to helping Joey build a $5 million per year event planning business in 90 days.
- Joey's business, Utopia Experience, specializes in event planning with an average deal size increasing from $34K to $44K.
- The main challenge is unclear acquisition strategy and pricing that lacks structure and margin clarity.
- Alex emphasizes fixing the offer first, then pricing, sales motion, and finally demand generation.
- They discuss creating a dynamic pricing model based on true costs and multiplying by 5-10x for profitability.
- Tiered pricing based on headcount and vendor/sponsor management is introduced to improve margins.
- Sales process improvements include standardized pricing, instant quoting, and better sales training.
- Alex highlights the importance of understanding customer wealth and zip code tax in pricing strategy.
- The event industry is growing, with a market cap projected to reach $3.5 trillion by 2033.
- The video includes practical advice on operationalizing pricing and sales to scale the business effectively.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Business Overview
- 02:09Pricing Process Challenges
- 04:10Fixing Offer, Pricing, and Sales Motion
- 05:56Understanding Customer Segmentation and Pricing
- 07:39Implementing Dynamic Pricing Models
- 09:44Sales Training and Conversion Optimization
- 11:45Demand Generation and Lead Management
- 14:04Final Thoughts and Business Momentum
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Joey. Enjoy. Joey, what's up? All right. Tell me about the business. Yes. Um, so my name is Joey Goon. My business is Utopia Experience. We are an event planning company out of St. Louis, Missouri.
Speaker A
Sail or fail. I am with 400 of my closest friends. So last year, the average deal size for event planning was 34,000. This year, uh, trailing 12 months is 44,000. Audio visual average, uh, spend is between 20 and 150k per event. Video production is
Speaker A
more of a pass-through to just make it easy for clients. Got it. Okay. What's holding you back right now?
Speaker A
I'm just not really sure what the strategy is that we should pursue when it comes to the acquisition channel. I'm at an inflection point in my business where I know if I don't do this, we are going to take massive steps backwards.
Speaker A
We need the strategy to scale to the next level, and that's why I'm here.
Speaker A
So, why do you think this can scale? That's a great question. I just, I'm just like in awe. I love you so much.
Speaker A
It's mutual, man. Um, why do I think this can scale? So, before I came here, I actually flew here from my sister's wedding in Mexico. I asked a hundred people on that trip with us. It's like the entire wedding party.
Speaker A
What's one thing in your life that you can never have enough of? And I thought I'd get some silly answers because people were drunk doing whatever in the pool. And I thought I was gonna get sex or money. And I got some of that. But
Speaker A
mostly what people told me was some version of connection, community, tribe, family, belonging. Yeah.
Speaker A
And that's the industry that we're in. So our industry, what we're selling is fundamentally what people need. It is a human need. It's wired into our primal DNA. And so that's why I think it could scale. And the market cap on events
Speaker A
right now is 1.5 trillion. It's projected to hit 3.5 trillion by 2033. So those numbers back up our industry. I'm so convicted on my quest that I'm going to persevere. I've been resilient since I was that 9-year-old kid.
Speaker A
I know this business is going to grow with your help. I'm ready to scale it.
Speaker A
Sweet. Walk me through how your pricing process works because it's very, it's very like make-believe, right?
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. Little abstract. Yeah. So yeah, and since you have a margin issue, I think it's a margin issue, how do these numbers get pulled out of thin air? 'Cause right now it sounds like they just say we want x, y,
Speaker A
and z. And then you create some line items and then make up numbers on those line items and then come up with a number at the bottom and then send it to them. Like I come to you and I say, I'm
Speaker A
doing an acquisition.com event, right? We're going to do a thousand-person event here in Vegas and we want full AV and some on-site support. What go like when you hear that, what actually goes through your head? What's included in
Speaker A
every package is a $15,000 or overall retainer to retain our services. Okay. So, that's the first thing, like a one-time upfront fee that gets added on to the other make-believe prices.
Speaker A
Exactly. Got it. Um, and then after that it's, you know, sponsor management. Um, that's about 15K.
Speaker A
Then there's vendor management. Vendor management is, um, like managing all the contractors. So, it's the, um, the photo booth, the video production team, all, all of those elements that, that you know sort of come into the event. It's the
Speaker A
venue procurement strategy. So if you guys, if you're taking your team to some other place outside of Vegas, you need a hotel. Which hotel are you going to work with? How are you going to get people to and from the airport?
Speaker A
And so you'll bill for the logistics of managing that as well if it's part of the scope of work or whatever, right? And that's 7,500.
Speaker A
Is there anything about headcount? That's the thing. So we learned the lesson. We put the guardrails up. And so now we're actually deploying like tiered structures where if you have over a certain number of attendees or over a
Speaker A
certain amount of vendors or sponsors, then there's a tier that where you pay more based on the number of people that you have.
Speaker A
Got it. Okay. I think I know what to do. So you want to hop on the side?
Speaker A
Sure. So, um, there's a demand issue for sure, but I think that part of it is because you're mispriced. And so the pricing has to do with the offer. And so we kind of have to start with the offer and then
Speaker A
fix price and then go sales motion and then go demand increase. Does that make sense?
Speaker A
Got it. Okay. We got to fix the thing we're selling. Once we fix the thing we're selling, we'll fix how we're selling it and then, uh, if we're selling it well, we can price it the way we want to price
Speaker A
it. Okay. So can't believe I'm sitting next to you right now. It's mutual. Um, okay. So the first thing that has to happen is you have to cost out what true costs are for different levels of delivery. And then whenever
Speaker A
you have that price, I want you to five or 10x that cost. And then that's what your price is. Okay?
Speaker A
And so you'll probably have to create, um, like a dynamic sheet, which you could either code with AI really easily or just have like an if-then type Excel sheet. Either way would work. But as you're going through it with a, a
Speaker A
customer, it should basically pop out what that price for that thing is going to be. And it's all dynamic. So I have headcount of the event.
Speaker A
And then from there, we're going to have our, uh, variable costs, which are what are the costs that scale with headcount.
Speaker A
So we have sponsors, vendors. Yeah, exactly. So these are, these are the costs that scale with this and are going to be proportional.
Speaker A
Sure. And then we're going to have our fixed costs, which is going to be Amber can only she's it's one quarter of Amber.
Speaker A
So, it's like great, that's going to be 15K is one quarter of Amber because she can only handle four. And then what other fixed costs do we have that are probably going to be more, uh, fixed payroll stuff versus kind of the other
Speaker A
costs that are associated that are going to be more like the AV related or whatever.
Speaker A
Does that track? Yeah, for sure. Okay. So, once you have this, it's like you're going to have a sheet that has a cost number that comes to the bottom.
Speaker A
You're not going to show that to them. Um, and then at that point, you know that your range is going to be 5 to 10x this number. And that to me would be like how rich is the person I'm talking to.
Speaker A
I'm, I'm like, I'm just being real. Yeah. Like bigger company. Like if you, if you, if you get, if you get lawn care in one of the top 10 zip codes in the United States and you have the exact same
Speaker A
amount of grass and you have it in, uh, a really poor part of the United States, the price difference between that lawn care as somebody who knows.
Speaker A
Oh, for sure. It's, it's two to three times difference. And I just called it a zip code tax. Right.
Speaker A
This is the privilege I get to have is to pay more for the exact same thing.
Speaker A
I love that zip code. Can I just say to all the future clients out there that you're going to pay, you're going to make, it's going to be a great price.
Speaker A
Whatever you pay is going to be, you know, you're fine. Um, at the end of the day, everyone else is doing this, too.
Speaker A
They're just not being organized about it. Um, so that's number one is that we need to have standardized pricing so that you can actually get your sales guys to be able to quote without having this super long delay in the process and
Speaker A
so at the end of the year, you're not like, "How much money do we make?" We should know exactly how much money we're making on every event.
Speaker A
Sure. This, yeah, this, this seems like a programmable AI thing that can be done in a couple hours.
Speaker A
Yes. So, hey, this is Alex from the future. Um, I've already given Joey his verdict, but I think what's more interesting for you, independent of what that verdict is, what actually happened when he implemented what I told him to
Speaker A
do. So, what we...
Speaker A
either that feels like a lot or my needs have changed and we like we weren't able to handle those things via email. Now we're handling it live during the call.
Speaker A
um which has just like it's been more consultative and our clients prospects are really appreciating that because they're able to surface like any objections which we can handle live on the call and if they have like additional things that they need from us
Speaker A
we're able to add those into scope and give them a real time like here's how that impacts your overall investment with us which they they love and and they appreciate.
Speaker A
All right. I I have very few rules of law but a rule of sales is never present an invoice via email. should always be over the phone because they're going to have questions and you want to be the
Speaker A
person who can answer those questions aka resolve their concerns and then get them to buy. Now, to make this kind of offer better, so this gives us our cost basis. Um, what I want to do is add um
Speaker A
basically a price lock guarantee, which is like as long as you don't change anything about this, this is going to be the price. and uh we give a you know 10% discount um if you prepay all ahead that way you can pull cash forward cuz
Speaker A
right now I'm sure you're getting paid some now some in the middle some at the end or something like that. Does that sound true? Yeah. And something that um that I'm going through is I've never been through a lawsuit
Speaker A
um suing a client right now who didn't pay us and now we're having to hunt down that money and uh do they have money?
Speaker A
Nope. They just file. There's no point in suing. Oh yeah. Voluntary bankruptcy. There's no point in suing. Yeah. just save your save your dollars, call it a cost of business.
Speaker A
Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Just let me let me save you some time. Let me save you some money and some headache. It's not you're not gonna get the money, so there's no point navigating that. So, like getting it all
Speaker A
up front. Yeah. Uh helps us avoid having to chase it later. 100%. Um there's also the value of money today. If you if you have a year from now, if you just suck that money into a bond or whatever, you know what I mean?
Speaker A
Or the stock market. Well, stock market is probably not the best way to put it, but uh something that's, you know, a fixed income asset, you'd be able to make make the money back, but you also get the value of speed of money today.
Speaker A
And most businesses have higher returns on capital than the stock market does, especially small businesses. And so you're going to get better returns on that. So it makes sense to at least give 10 or 20% to pull it up. Now we've
Speaker A
already built this padding in. So we're fine. Yeah. Now I want to also create a separate opportunity which is on the events that are B2B. Now that's not going to be a lot of them, but the ones where the
Speaker A
audience is the customer, I want to have a separate approach to it. So this is our standard way of billing. If someone is B2B, they're basically throwing an event for you.
Speaker A
Okay, not actually, but like they have uh a you have to take not that you wouldn't take extra care with a normal event, but if there's ever been a time to blow people's socks off and have an amazingly run event, this would be the
Speaker A
time to do it. Sure. Because everybody in the audience is a potential customer. It's the franchise or associations where you've got 1,500 of them in in the audience that are all doing conferences.
Speaker A
Love it. So with these people, it's like number one is or rather a um I would say uh we want to get the booth for ourselves in there because they're going to have, you know, a booth. Number two
Speaker A
is you want to have the opportunity to do some sort of speaking um at the event.
Speaker A
And it can be like a 15-minute slot. It doesn't have to be a big thing. It's just like, hey, if you guys have been loving this event, um you know, uh we're uh we're Utopia. You know, we uh we put
Speaker A
this whole thing on and we do this all the time for people like you. Um, and so you put a little bit of razzledazzle of like this is what makes shitty events, this what makes great events. Um, and
Speaker A
say, "Hey, if you want these slides, so you can give them to your your event planner. Um, just QR code on the screen and I'll I'll send them to you." So you can just actually come into this is like
Speaker A
I'd probably think it was like uh 20 mistakes that uh people who are buying event planning make. And so I just go through all of the mistakes that people make and with each of them proof of one person underneath of them saying that
Speaker A
you're awesome at that thing and say, "Hey, if you want the slides, go grab them." Um, but the main sex appeal is that after they kind of opt in to grab them. The opt-in says, "Do you run events?" Like, "Do you host events and
Speaker A
how many per year?" And then that way that just becomes a lead list for you.
Speaker A
So you're not pitching. It's just like, "Hey, the the CTA is do you want the slides?" Which makes it much easier for you to do for the the the customer. Now, when you have those B2B conferences, I would do whatever it took to to get
Speaker A
those ones because it's basically them front running all the cost of getting 500 or a,000 of your ICP in the stadium.
Speaker A
And it's like if you can't close 10% of that room, then there's other issues, right?
Speaker A
Even if you closed 1% of the room, you get 15, it'd be a 50% increase in your in your business if you just from one event, right? And you do more than that per year.
Speaker A
Yeah. So, that's why I see this as super material. like you should be very willing to like we have this nice high anchor so that we can say oh well do you know I just quoted you 90 um but you
Speaker A
have five sponsors right do you have any issues with having a sixth I'll pay you for the booth I'll pay you your sponsor fees 5,000 a booth I'll pay 5,000 it's at 95 now how's that oh great right so
Speaker A
it's like we can just start chipping away at it and if you'll let me just do an intermission I'm talking 10 minutes I'll just talk about how events work I'm sure we can see we can frame it as value
Speaker A
additive I'll knock another 500 off right love it I'm going to my sales team on the phone tomorrow to start calling these different associations.
Speaker A
And so the last one is just uh one list email. So basically just say, "Hey, I don't want to like get your email list.
Speaker A
That's that's your own thing." But if after the event I could say, "Hey, if you had a great time at the event, if I can just say like basically solicit them and then I'll happily pay you a fee on
Speaker A
anybody who decides to book through us and that can further uh bring this number down and I would say and typically we're going to get, you know, 1% of people." Sure. Alex, you also encouraged me to engage with our ICP and you said sponsor
Speaker A
an event, which we did here. Cost $15,000 to sponsor a booth at that event. We had a line the entire time and we're going to end up closing a $500,000 piece of business um within the next week as a result of going and sponsoring
Speaker A
and spending 15K. Like, I'll pay 15K to make 500 all day long. Well, it looks like it paid for itself.
Speaker A
Um yeah, I mean it I mean he did the he did the stuff and then he got the outcome.
Speaker A
And so you know if you have 200% pipeline um then you have a 3x sitting in the business and he found a channel that is getting him I don't know what 15k to 5500,000 is but high uh return on
Speaker A
spend. And so uh that's how it works. Do more of you know a little bit works more is usually better. And so it's just figuring out how to do more in an efficient way uh given constrained resources and he's
Speaker A
doing it. This is kind of the the um offer pieces and then this can hopefully fix pricing and also the instant quote issue that you have. Okay. Now the second part is sales motion. So, you're converting 10 times more than
Speaker A
your sales team, which is a problem, right? Because you're doing like if you work leads part-time, you are getting more than two guys full-time, right?
Speaker A
Yeah. Okay. So, it just means you're doing things they're not doing. So, we just have to figure out what those things are. So, have you audited any of their DM conversations um that they're having?
Speaker A
Um I've had one meeting with my sales team. I have a follow-up uh one meeting just on this specifically. I have a followup meeting with them next week to just audit all of their communication and just figure out like great like
Speaker A
don't say that this. Yeah. So what I want you to do is basically as soon as you kick off because the the issue that you have is you're obviously demand constrained. Um I don't want to forget this one thing.
Speaker A
Um okay back to this. Um so instead of weekly like you should be meeting with them every single day to drive and then do end of day because right now this like you need to drive this. Yeah.
Speaker A
Like first thing in the morning what's your plan? How many touch points you going to do? Um, great. Like, walk me through the the leads that you're working. What kind of prep have you done for those those calls and those reach
Speaker A
outs so we can personalize them? Um, and then end of day, how the conversations go, where are we at with pipeline? Like, we just need to drive this.
Speaker A
From a role playing perspective, the way that like don't do this, do that. You have to then give them the opportunity to try in front of you. Now, part of this is going to be the actual sales, but right now, are they just mostly
Speaker A
setting for you to close or are they setting for themselves to close? Yeah, they're they're kind of they're end to end.
Speaker A
Yeah. Um, do I need to restructure that? I'd rather have them just set appointments for you because you don't your sales volume is like two a week, right? It's not it's not a huge or no one a week. Um
Speaker A
if you had two guys just setting appointments for you, the likely that you'll close them is significantly higher and you're also the business owner and you can kind of flex on some of these things a little bit better. I
Speaker A
would rather you do that because what you're closing 40% of sales, right, that you talk to.
Speaker A
Yeah. I mean, if you have four appointments a week, like that's not going to really change anything, but all of a sudden you double your business. If you have eight appointments a week, you quadruple your business. So, and that's still not a lot of like
Speaker A
that's not a lot of work. So, just have them be like SDRs, BDRs, booking my calendar completely.
Speaker A
You can still give them a commission on the on the on the thing that they bring in, but you're like, "Listen, you'll make more money if I'm selling than you are. So, like do this for now." And then
Speaker A
I think that'll allow you to stay closer to it so that you can document the process better and your feedback loops will be faster because you're like, "Hey, I got nothing on my calendar today. What the hell's going on?" In a
Speaker A
nice way. Sure. Right. Does that feel okay? Yeah. Okay. uh weekly I would go deep with one of them or not one of them with each of them one-on-one. Um the way that we structure these is basically you go
Speaker A
personal and you say, "Hey, how you doing? Hey, if you're, you know, your mom just died, then like let's talk about that. Make sure you're good because you're not thinking about your KPIs or photos or if you just got dumped
Speaker A
or whatever." Um the next is assuming they don't have any like personal calamities. We say, "Okay, we we're focused on short-term stuff. You're messing this up in the in the intro.
Speaker A
You're messing this up in the in this part of the scripting." If they're crushing their KPIs, say, "Hey, long-term, what are your goals here? why don't we why don't you you shadow some of my sales calls so you can maybe pick
Speaker A
up some of this other stuff is basically giving them growth opportunities but that's the the the progression that we do with uh weekly one ones and in here it's all role playing like forever just like you train sales to role playing
Speaker A
cuz you have to get you have to get them to try and so that you can correct them and have more feedback loops just think how many feedback loops do I have with these people it's the only way they
Speaker A
learn just like saying it at them will do literally nothing what's what's my you know my brother and I have been consuming your content for 5 years him longer than me.
Speaker A
I had a call with my brother last week and he's like, "The horosium in me is telling you that you're not doing you're not doing this." So, I started booking daily check-ins with my Oh, good. Good.
Speaker A
I've restructured how the sales team is engaging at Utopia. And so, instead of doing the full cycle end to end, their job now, at least in the spirit of like this 90-day sprint, they're prospecting and they're booking discovery calls.
Speaker A
That is it. But Alex, you said Joey, once you bring on proficient, competent sales reps who will get it. You're not going to 2x, you're going to like five to 10x. And I'm really seeing that now.
Speaker A
And that we have 200% more volume in our pipeline just in the discovery calls that are getting booked, which is huge for us.
Speaker A
It's nice when things work as advertised. Now, I want to give you something that I think would be super super high leverage, which is um an idea that I had um while you were talking, which is when you open
Speaker A
up the call after you say, "Hey, how's it going, whatever?" Um and you set the agenda for the call. Yeah.
Speaker A
What's the first question you ask them? Why'd you book this call today? Why not 6 months from now? Why not 6 months ago?
Speaker A
Okay. So, you're clarifying why they're there. You're on the C part. What I what I want to do, there's one question I want to ask in the earlier part of the process, which is how many events per year are you doing? Because I want
Speaker A
automatically as soon as they can say, "Well, we do three events a year." Now, I just took our average ticket from 80K and made it 240K because now I'm trying to bid for all three.
Speaker A
Yeah. And then what we can do is say, "Hey, why don't we do all like I'll commit to all three for you. We'll do the first one and assuming the first one goes great. We'll book the other two at
Speaker A
the same rate. That way we can start like trying to increase average ticket and then get into these kind of like very recurring relationships." Do you like that question? Cuz I think that will have a very big effect. I just want
Speaker A
to make sure that that gets added into the script. Okay. Inspired by your question like, "Hey, how many events is your organization doing every year?" So, we started asking prospects that they love the idea of being able to do that and to promote
Speaker A
next year at this year's event. And of course, it's a win for them because they can do that. They could sell sponsorships today for tomorrow. That's been a major win for us because now we've just converted a one-year client
Speaker A
into a three-year client. Tripling LTV by just getting them to buy more of the thing they just bought tends to always work. Doesn't always triple LTV, but getting people offering them to buy more of what they just bought almost
Speaker A
always does. I have one more thing we got to add. So in your existing sales process, the way you were doing it, you'd reach out to them, you'd qualify the lead, and then you'd set an appointment. Correct?
Speaker A
Yes. Okay. Before they and on that appointment, you then basically collect all this information and then you'd say, "Let me get back to you." And then you'd set a follow-up appointment and then you would try and close them on the next
Speaker A
call. Yeah. Correct. Go through the proposal with them live because then you can actually kind of work through those questions and and handle the objections.
Speaker A
Yes. So, um, I want you to add a video sales letter before the call.
Speaker A
Okay. I just recorded it. So, before you like before you ever talk to a customer, you should have a video sales letter.
Speaker A
Now, if you have two conversations, there's two VSSLs. You said this before the call.
Speaker A
Mhm. Okay. Yeah. And when someone hops on the call, if they have like the first Now, inside of the VSSL, um, I can walk you through how to structure it, but if you already did it, then we can leave it. I like
Speaker A
having a little nugget in there, which is having one CTA that's like, "Hey, by the way, text me your headcount. Text me the date of the event that you want to do. Text me the week or text me the
Speaker A
season, whatever." We just want to have something so we have some indication they actually watched it.
Speaker A
And then also engages them with us. So that's good. Increase the likelihood of the show.
Speaker A
But beyond that, when you start the call, um you'll find out quickly like, "Did you did you watch the video?" If the answer is yes, great. If the answer is no, then we say, "Hey, no worries." Um, this will save us like 30
Speaker A
minutes on the call. 7 minutes. Um, play this now. I'm gonna grab a cup of coffee. You want a cup of coffee? Haha.
Speaker A
It's Zoom, huh? Okay. Uh, and I'll be right back. And so then they watch it and then that way they're fresh and primed and the whole conversation's already been framed and you've been notified and all that kind of jazz.
Speaker A
Yeah. Because this is also what helps you scale sales once it once you stop being the person selling. Um, because we want to do as much of the lifting as we can for the sales people, including you.
Speaker A
Because what this will do is it also short the amount of calls you have to have. So, if you're currently doing two, if we do a VSSL and then we can do an instant quote, we might be able to in uh
Speaker A
change to a one call close. Got it. And even worst case scenario, even if you like having the two call, which I'm not against two calls at certain price points. Sometimes it just people just want to like it it gives the
Speaker A
approximation of knowing someone. Um we can still have our instant quote and then rather than saying let's meet in 5 days, you can say uh I'll have this to you by uh what time tomorrow works best for you. I'll work on this until until
Speaker A
then. Because there's also a speed element of like if it takes you a week to get me a quote, I'm like, man, how long is it like? Is this what it's going to be like working with these people? If
Speaker A
it's like this is priority for me, we'll get this done. You know, I'll get this turned in today and um how's first thing tomorrow morning? It's like that speed, I can almost guarantee you'll increase close rates. Cool.
Speaker A
Got it. Okay. Ah, this is another little uh a little nuggie. So, after the events that you hold, what happens? So, the event's done. Yep.
Speaker A
Now, what? Within um usually within 2 days of landing back in St. We send a follow-up email to the hosts.
Speaker A
We get them on an event debrief call. That's where we're going through what worked, what do we want to see improved, and when's the event, the event date for next year? Let's get it booked.
Speaker A
Okay. Love that. Just add a VSSL beforehand. Really? Yeah. Okay. For every conversation you have with a customer, frame it.
Speaker A
Okay. And so for here, it's like different VSSL. It'll be same con the structure will be the same. You want different examples and the the objections are going to be the ones that happen after someone has an event and is thinking about booking
Speaker A
the next one, not before they book their first event. So the objections will be different.
Speaker A
Okay? So they'll be like, "Is it going to be the same price?" We'll say, "Well, it depends on like So you're just going to go through what the FAQs normally would be and then just answer them ahead of
Speaker A
time before the call and that way you can spend the whole call actually closing rather than just like transferring information and like yapping at them." Got it. But that'll frame the call so that basically it's like um so you know
Speaker A
you just went through your first event with us. Um hopefully it was amazing. Don't worry, we'll go through the they like everything like we perfection is our standard and so nothing's ever perfect and we always want to get better
Speaker A
and that's how we've continued to grow as a company. Um that being said, there's some questions that people have which is like uh building logistics, uh what happens with other other future events, uh when am I going to get my my
Speaker A
video stuff like all the questions that people normally have. Um, and then included in that would be, okay, how does how does working with like basically what do we go from here?
Speaker A
What's the next step? And I'd say so, um, what we're going to do on the call is also just book figure out what the next event is so that we can get even more advanced prep because basically the
Speaker A
more prep we have, the better the event is. And so, right, and so I would just say like, so I can tell you that even if there was somebody who is better than us at this, which there aren't any, of
Speaker A
course, um, if you book with us now, we will be better than somebody who is better than us. And so you get better value by booking now.
Speaker A
It's a great friend. Yeah, damaging your mission. Also, our VSSLs are gold. So, we have a top of the funnel VSSL, which is like here's the avatar, here's the pain, here's the, you know, sort of the threshold to work with us. And now
Speaker A
people are getting on the calls, you're like, oh my gosh, it's like you knew me.
Speaker A
And that's been really validating for our team to finally be like, you know, we're going 10 miles deep and an inch wide where in the past we thought in order to scale we had to go 10 miles wide. And it's just not that way. Like
Speaker A
now that we've like narrowcasted and focused in on this particular avatar, it's amazing that like nine out of 10 prospects are experiencing the exact same pain. Now we can speak to that.
Speaker A
We've systematized it and it's much more scalable. When you get clear on the avatar, you can systematize and templatize the solution, which allows you to sell for higher margins and have more operational scale, which he is now experiencing. You
Speaker A
also will reduce CAC because your messaging is now aligned with that avatar. So, he's probably selling better people for less than he was before and making more margin.
Speaker A
We also now have a bottom of the funnel VSSL. And the bottom of the funnel VSSL is for your busy CEO who or CFO who's ultimately making the decision but is maybe not going to join the call. Um,
Speaker A
that is been something that has helped us get some deals across the line. Love that. So, now we can talk about the like what is the order of operations?
Speaker A
Does that work? Yeah. Okay. So number one, we need to we need to create the call it like the auto auto quote generator which shouldn't take you that long to build but you just have to think through what are the cost what are
Speaker A
the variables what are the uh what are the fixed costs and then how is it depend by headcount. Great. Now we have our we have our at least our cost basis and then that gives us our range for our
Speaker A
pricing. Right. Uh second uh you'll add in kind of the uh referral slpromotion incentives to this so that you can put your discounts in so that you can get you can basically solicit more business from them. That's the list and the speaking and the survey
Speaker A
close of like hey get my slides and you can sort from there to get new leads.
Speaker A
Yep. Okay. Got it. Third element is we need to do daily sales training implement VSSLs times three because you have three kind of touch points you have call one call two and then post call right we have to increase our uh outreach
Speaker A
which is going to be first they're going to start every day by maxing out the platform limits which means they should be doing exactly what you were doing when you were doing outreach they should just clone exactly what you're doing and
Speaker A
if they're not doing that then like either they're the wrong people are not good at training. Um, then we want to do an AI scrape of the contacts to get numbers and then we want to feed that into a dialer. And there's a ton of
Speaker A
different dialer softwares um out there that you can use. What What would you do with the dialer?
Speaker A
You're having it call the we want to call the We just want you want to hit it from as many channels as you can and you're going to have more like you will be limited by this more than you'll be limited by this. And so
Speaker A
the call these like the highest likelihood responses because it's warmer etc. Um but these are where you're going to be able to get a lot of volume.
Speaker A
Got it. And for max platform you're talking about something like LinkedIn like as many DMs as you can possibly send on the platform.
Speaker A
Exactly. Got it. So you think is Facebook a solid channel that you think we should pursue?
Speaker A
I think LinkedIn would I would stick with LinkedIn. You've already done that there. You already have a proven process. They're not following it but you have a proven process. So it's like how do we just do more of that for now?
Speaker A
Got it. because I know you have all these different acquisition channels and my whole focus here was like how do we get really narrow on the one that like you have the best LTV CAC on LinkedIn so let's do that and let's do way more and
Speaker A
you already hired two guys so it's like we just need to get them uh on ramps and you need to do that with lots of training and making sure that they are motivated sure that's basically and if you say this is
Speaker A
what we're doing twice a day every day I promise you the productivity of the team is going to go up and since it's the constraint it's a good use of your time the p this here is this pricing
Speaker A
generator we should be at 5 to 10x our costs for the now obviously that's your going to be your estimate your like we have to have five is the minimum because it might go over right like you don't know
Speaker A
um but the price lock says that we will charge this as long as you don't change anything if you change something then we might have to readjust it and then we'll true up at the end okay now the higher you go in here the
Speaker A
more you can say as long as you're not changing the headcount by more than 20% between now and then or we have to change venues or anything like that. Um this will be the cost no matter what. So
Speaker A
you can use that as a like if I were selling this I would say something like so there's two ways that this pricing works. So one way is you get nickel n the other is that we just pick a price
Speaker A
it's within your budget and then as long as you don't do anything crazy that's what the price is going to be. Which one would you rather do?
Speaker A
Right? And they're like just tell me the just tell me the price it's going to be.
Speaker A
It's like great boom boom. And then we factor in all the the fudge factor. And so it's like to be clear, you're not going to change your venue and you're not going to change your headcount by more than 20%. We agreed on that. Okay.
Speaker A
And like you're not going to all of a sudden say like I want AV like these are the services that you're going to get.
Speaker A
I'll I'll give you fudge factor on headcount up to 20 and then you can't change the uh and you can't change the date, right? It's like can't change the date, can't change the venue. And then that way it you don't it confines the
Speaker A
scope. If they break that, which they might, then you have a different conversation. And I don't think I would try and jab people. I just feel like listen, it's going to cost me 30% more to do this. But if they're already
Speaker A
making the decision that they need to do that, then they've decided that it's worth it. So then if it's worth it, then it's worth paying it.
Speaker A
Yeah. Does that make sense? It does. Okay. Would you also add in a, you know, like um a multi-year kind of agreement?
Speaker A
I mean, my goal of asking how many events are you doing is so that I can seed off the fact that, okay, most people who are in your position are doing three events a year. Um, and there are all three events going to be like
Speaker A
this. Great. I can give you a better rate if we do all three than if we just do one. And so it's like we'll give you a 10. Again, it's like I like this big anchor so that I can say I'll give you
Speaker A
10% off uh on all three, but we're already way above your current price. Sure.
Speaker A
Right. Uh I'll give you 10% off on all three. Um if you commit to doing all three with us now, and if for some reason you want to break it because you think we suck, which is totally fine,
Speaker A
just pay the difference on on on what you would have owed us to. So it gives a little bit of a stick.
Speaker A
Right. And so if that 10% off is uh and then it's like we'll give you another 10% off, you prepay all three. some people and that that may sound crazy to you, but a lot of departments and businesses work on annual budgets. And
Speaker A
so it's like, listen, it's about to be tax season. If you want to get this off your books now because we have one event now and two next year, prepay for the event now and that way you can you don't
Speaker A
have you don't have to pay taxes on it. That track. Mhm. Yeah. That'll works super well Q4 because they know Well, we do like because a lot of people, you know, they're looking at their Q1, Q2 sometimes, you know, depending how last
Speaker A
minute they are, right? Uh, so Q3, Q4, you'll be getting the events for, you know, Q1, Q2, maybe Q3. And so it's like, get the cash off your books, pay your taxes now. You get a discount and you don't have to pay taxes. It's a
Speaker A
double, it's a double whammy. Like, why not do it? Yeah. Sure. Yep. Okay. Um, and you had one question about the fact like you speaking at events, right? Like you speak at these events.
Speaker A
Um, I think you should speak as many events as your family life uh that you feel comfortable doing because you being on stage will further edify you so that your LinkedIn responses go up, you'll get more inbounds and then obviously at
Speaker A
the events themselves uh you're getting leads. So it's like it's a triple dip and so to the degree that you can, I would encourage you to do it.
Speaker A
Okay. So if even with me being the bottleneck and I can only be on so many I mean you the hourly rate I think was like 1250 per hour.
Speaker A
That's because you didn't have a really good offer in a conversion process. But at a B2B event, if you have a 500 person audience, there's no world where you shouldn't be able to get 50 people or a 100 people to opt in for your thing. And
Speaker A
then of those, maybe 10 or 20% are going to be qualified leads for you. Like that's huge.
Speaker A
Yeah. That and so you should be able to make significantly more than $1,200 an hour.
Speaker A
So I would encourage you um to speak at B2B, but using a survey close as your primary method. But fundamentally, the business as it currently stands works fine. It's not nearly as profitable as it needs to be, which means that we have
Speaker A
to understand our cost better and price appropriately in order to have more profit. In order to solve our uh demand constraint, what we're doing is we're getting more people from our existing uh events that we're doing.
Speaker A
We're training our sales team to be more effective. We're increasing their effective with VSSLs. We're increasing the overarching volume that they're doing in terms of outreach. And then you're also speaking and this is giving you like a turbo bomb approach of like
Speaker A
this is the constraint is demand and we did have a pricing issue cuz we don't want to jam more demand through something that's thin margins. So let's fix the margins in the offer and then jam as much demand as we can.
Speaker A
I love it. Does that feel clear? It does. Yeah. I'm I'm processing. Okay. Yeah. I know it's probably a lot a lot of information and also an incredible road map that is that is like very followable.
Speaker A
Good. So I appreciate you. Appreciate you man. We're going to do some scaling road map.
Speaker A
Where are to us? All right. How what's your head count? We have 30 total, 12 full time.
Speaker A
Okay. So, you're here. So, if we're looking at what we're doing with sales, so we need to install a sales training system, individual coaching, and team cadence. We're optimizing right now. The ad assembly process is typically if we
Speaker A
have a a paid side, but for you the idea is like uh we're doing these events as kind of like your like that's the thought leadership side of this, but a lot of the um other stuff is happening
Speaker A
through the sales team with increasing our outreach, right? From a product perspective, um incremental product improvement across both products.
Speaker A
because of the customization of how you are going to break down your costs, you'll be able to get laser focused on each component of your offer. And that's really what the kind of product improvement at this level is now
Speaker A
creating customer segmentation. So this is like what we need to do is in time probably like a year from now you'll start looking and say hey we did 100 events this year and what's crazy is that uh 25 of those events were 75% of
Speaker A
our profit. And we're like, okay, so that's the customer segment that's actually driving the most profit for us.
Speaker A
How do we retool our messaging and our marketing and the examples that we use in our VSSLs and our scripting in order to attract more of those people? Because then at that point, we could do the exact same volume as we currently did,
Speaker A
make four times the money if we just only sold those those customers. And then that's the process of getting really narrow so that you can then boom.
Speaker A
Sure. Cool. Um, so by the way, if you want to know, have your own scaling road map which has a 90-minute video. Have you gone through this?
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. Pretty good, right? It's really good. Um, I made this as something that was supposed to be of paid quality and then I was like, I should just make it for free. So, I gave it away. And so, if you
Speaker A
are a business owner, you're like, where am I on this road map? Um, just fill it out and it'll tell you in a lot more detail than 30 seconds uh where you're at and what you need to do to get to the
Speaker A
next level in the link somewhere around here. I get all these like as an entrepreneur we have like so many ideas and we want to execute all the ideas and you've made it so simple to be like no
Speaker A
just do these three things and that oversimplification has created ironically the most amount of upside and the most amount of scale that like I never even thought I would see in our business let alone see it today. And so for that I just I thank
Speaker A
you so much. I've been struggling, banging my head against a wall for so many years trying to fix this problem and the amount and the the level of momentum in our business right now is just wild. I am so grateful for your
Speaker A
recommendations. They are working and man, I'm looking forward to winning this competition. Um, yeah, we're really limited as entrepreneurs in terms of the amount of things we can do and a lot of things can work, but none of them will work if you
Speaker A
try to do them all. And so we just have to look for what things make the most money and then ruthlessly eliminate everything that is not those things. And he did that and he's and he's seeing what happens. And so usually most people
Speaker A
think their business is is far more limited than it really is. Um and it's limited because they're trying to do too much rather than too little. And so it's like how do you how do you reconcile do more and do less? It's really that you
Speaker A
do more of fewer. My mom started this business and um unfortunately mom lost her battle with cancer in 2013 and she's no longer with us. Continuing a legacy for me means everything. I do it because there are people in the company that are
Speaker A
counting on me to show up. My family is counting on us because my wife left her corporate job. My dad left his as well.
Speaker A
And all three of us are in the company together. My wife and I now have a three-year-old daughter whom at someday if she wants to take over, we would love to transfer the baton to her in the same
Speaker A
way that my mom passed the baton on to me. And let's do the verdict.
Speaker A
Okay, so uh within the context of this competition, we've got scale it 90 days.
Speaker A
Uh who can scale the most and win $100,000 and qualify for that? or you kind of have to do some work and nail it first. I think that not having a defined acquisition process is has been something that's obviously limited the
Speaker A
business. Um so that definitely gives me a little bit of pause on the whether or not you'll be able to scale and then obviously win. I want you to be in a in a position where you could win um if we
Speaker A
were going to do it. But you do have two sales guys that are underutilized right now. And if all you do is just train with them daily and get them to do exactly what you were doing and just
Speaker A
switch the offer to something that can be significantly more valuable, I think that you have some of the most potential at actually winning. And so for that reason, we're scaling.
Speaker A
Cool. Let's go. All right. So, you got 90 days to grow as much as you can. I think that if you focus on just those two things is like just get those two sales guys productive which means that you're going to be in
Speaker A
the trenches with them and just get that offer generator so that your pricing is right, I think you're going to get significantly higher prices. I think you're going to get more people saying yes. Have those people set for you. And
Speaker A
I think like I think you have the potential to go from like one deal a week to two or three deals and at not just 60 but like 70 80 100. And I think that's where all of a sudden it's like
Speaker A
holy we're at a 300 $400,000 a month run rate and that can happen very fast if we just get those two things right.
Speaker A
Thank you. I'll see you in 90 days. All right, man. You got it. Appreciate you, man.
Speaker A
Thanks, Alex. Appreciate luck. I'm profoundly overwhelmed with joy. Tomorrow's Mother's Day. My mom started our company. She's not here with us, but um to know that that other people believe in the company as much as I do is uh is profoundly
Speaker A
powerful and an owed and a testament to my mom's legacy. And now I have an opportunity to to implement what Alex has shared with me today. And now I have the actual strategy to scale.
Speaker A
All right, and so that was this episode of Scale or Fail. Stay tuned for the next one as they all compete for $100,000 in a year of working on scaling.
Topics:Alex Hormoziservice businessevent planningpricing strategysales processbusiness scalingdynamic pricingcustomer acquisitionevent industrybusiness growth
