From Boring to Breakthrough: Jase Souder’s Event Formula

Welcome back to grow your impact income and influence from the stage.

If you are looking to hold a live event or do more public speaking that separates you from everybody else in the crowd, you're going to want to listen up to today's podcast. My guest today, I had the pleasure of emceeing his event. I got to see him coach people live on speaking, and he is one of the best in the business.

He has several events scattered throughout the year. If you get a chance to go to one of his events and see him live and interact with him, he will change your speaking career and therefore your business. Jace, how are you doing this afternoon? Steve, it's always awesome to hang out with you. Thanks for the nice intro. Yeah, of course. I mean, I was blown away at your live event. so you did something at one of the live events i was at that

i just want to give you props for. I think it's something anyone can learn from.

One of the things that I like to do when somebody asks me a question, I tend to go right into a tactic. And you nicely quieted me down and you said, hey, I want to actually change this person's life. And you gave them something that really helped change their mindset around what they were doing so they could actually use the tactic.

A tactic without a strong foundation is useless. And you saw right through what I was trying to do and help the person where they needed it, which I think is something that so few people speaking from the stage do. And that doesn't come from, you know, reading a book that comes from a lot of practice, a lot of time honored speaking on stage. So you started speaking on stage more than 15 years ago. Take us back and like, just give me a quick recap of how you got here.

Yeah. My life sucked. Is it okay to say sucked on your podcast? It's 2001. I was a real estate agent and investor. I was doing okay. I was doing the quintessential okay. But looking back on it, if you've ever had a time in your life, when you look back, you're like, whoa, I was really in a precarious spot. I didn't realize it. I'll put it this way. I had no really healthy habits.

It didn't have any really great relationships. I was going out drinking, like partying with this group of quote unquote friends, three, four or five nights a week. I was paying my bills, felt like I was getting ahead, but I really wasn't. I was single at the time. I really wanted a relationship and I never forget all of these dates. Oh yeah, I'll go out with you. And then they would stand me up like just heartbroken all the time. Looking back on it, I was really spiraling down.

And I went to this real estate bootcamp and this guy got on stage and talked about how to change your life and make more money in real estate, but had nothing to do with real estate. It had to do with changing your subconscious beliefs, learning sales skills, taking massive action. And I had just been kind of introduced to personal growth before that. And I bought this, my friends have been at this guy's seminar and it's like, I'm going to buy this thing. I'm going to go.

And when I went to a seminar, it changed my life. And I fell in love with personal growth and I went to work for that. Well, I went through a bunch of advanced trainings and then simultaneously, I heard about this other company and I signed up for their stuff, Sight Unseen. And in the summer 2002, I went through two personal development companies training simultaneously, plus other stuff. I went to, Steve, I went to every seminar I could go to. And so I fell in love with personal growth.

I started working for that first company. And so since 2002, I've been working and coaching in the personal growth industry.

And it, it made a difference in my life. Like I fell in love with live events and so everything i do there's a grounding in the breakthrough like we've got to have an internal breakthrough before the external reorganizes itself and so tactics are super important and like you're so good at selling from stage two and i really believe we have to have the heart breakthrough and tactics and that's when people are set up for really big success Yeah, absolutely.

So, I mean, I love live events as well. I think getting people into a room, getting them into a space where you can actually influence them. It's not, you know, 30 or 60 minutes is a couple of days. You can really feel their energy. You can collaborate with them. You gain rapport and you can actually influence them. And I know you share that as well.

You've been doing events now for 20 years. What are some of the things we're going to get into tactics, but from a high level, what are some of the things that you have seen events change in people that you've worked with? That I've seen them. I got lost. No problem. The, when you hold an event, what are some of the big changes that you've seen that you've been able to shift in people that have been an audience in your event? Got it. Oh, over and over and over and over a big thing.

People report back as confidence. They're way more confident in themselves. And then whether or not they reported confidence, but I think confidence leads to this. They take a lot more action. Like we just did an event. What are we in? Literally last month, we did an event, a breakthrough event. And we had people coming back and reporting how they're just getting on all these stages. They're just picking up the phone and making sales calls. They're making connection

with hosts. And they're like, it's like nothing. It's just normal.

And I think when we can help people scrub out the limiting beliefs and really fill them with like confidence and that they're enough and that they're good enough no matter what and to not worry about stuff in their past i believe our natural state is to take massive action i believe our natural state is to be alive and happy and joyful and what gets in the way of that is our protection mechanism so it's it's it's less that we got to fill people with rocket fuel it's more we got

to pull the weights off them take the chains off them and if we do both if we take the chains off and fill them with rocket fuel that's when they have super success. So I mean, other things we've had multiple people say they would have committed suicide if they hadn't been there. And they didn't come for like a personal road thing. They came for in the context of like speaker training.

We've had people make way more money. We've launched multiple, multiple six-figure companies, seven-figure companies. Man, there's a ton. It's a long line. I'll say that those are the most recent ones though. People have been reporting confidence and just taking massive, massive action. That's awesome. The, I mean, I think your analogy of like rocket fuel versus weights, if you think about it, I think so many people are trying to grow their business.

They're mashing on the gas as hard as they can, but they've got this whole thing over here of like a hidden ghost foot that's on the brake.

And it's like, well, if I become, if I become really successful in business, then all these bad things will happen. or I can't accept that in my brain and it stops that from happening. You do some things. I know the event that you just had, the breakthrough event, you actually do some things where you put people in a stressful situation that has nothing to do with being on stage, but it shows them how they're reacting to things. Do you want to maybe talk through that a little bit?

Sure. A couple of things jump out. We do, if you ever heard of the red, black or the XY game, we do that. If you don't know what that is, you guys don't Google it. You will ruin it for yourself. Save it. You only get to experience that game once. The other thing we do is, you know, people are made of three parts. And so there's the mental, the thoughts, there's the emotional, how they feel, and then the physical. In Christian circles, you could talk about spirit, soul, body,

all that, whatever. But those are the main things. People's body, their physicality, their thoughts, and their emotions. And there's an interplay. And if you trigger one, you trigger the other two. If people have a negative thought, they're going to feel negative in their body and their emotions are going to go negative. If we move someone's body in a positive way, it will cause positive thoughts to happen and positive emotions.

By the way, can I take a detour off of that to share a tip for events?

Yeah when you're crafting an event we call it ebar emotions beliefs actions results so emotions beliefs actions so that's the feelings i'm talking about beliefs they're thinking in their body you've got to have all three aligned in order to create the results you want in the room and so if the result you want is a really powerful audience if the result you want is a bunch of sales then it's not enough to just reach their thoughts you've got to also reach their emotions and then the thing too

few people even consider, you've got to reach their body. We've got to get people into an active open state physically in the room so that they're more adept. And like people know like to raise the hand and small yeses, lead the big yeses and all that. But what I want to expand it is, how can you structure the room? How can you structure the seats? How can you structure the movement and the exercises you do throughout it? So you're training and conditioning them to be a yes.

Not just to say yes not just to feel a yes but the movements of being a yes so did that make sense what i'm saying yeah absolutely i mean i know this i remember learning this gosh i think it was from john shoulders i'm not 100 sure but it's like how do you set up everything in a live room this is why i love live events over virtual yes virtual you can get more people there it's so much cheaper blah blah all that stuff but like live in the room events you actually get to physically impact people.

They're jumping around, they're moving. If you've been to a Tony Robbins event, like the reason that he can keep you awake for 18 hours is because of the things that he does in the room. And you do the same thing. I mean, we've seen that at live events, but how does a yes feel not just in your body, but how do you move when you're saying yes to something and getting them in that state and anyone listening to this and you're like.

Well, it sounds like you're just moving them towards sales 100% and we're moving them towards being a better version of your of themselves if they believe if you believe in what you're selling and you believe that it will change somebody's life you have a duty to sell that to them because just being in the room for three days well that might have a positive impact on their life it's not going to drastically change their life that's the difference absolutely and we're talking about the sales and.

If you train people to say yes, and then sit still, that's what they do when you make your offer, right? And everything at a live preview event. So let me define just so we're all on the same page. Preview is like the free or the 97, or we're doing a $500 preview event. Everything in a preview event is designed to move people to buy the coaching program. Now, once they buy the coaching program, they come to what's called fulfillment

events. And that's where you fulfill on the promises made when you sold them in a coaching program. So, you know, if you're doing a preview or a front-end event, you're charging multiple, multiple thousands of dollars, it might be inappropriate to really push an upsell because they've already paid so much to be in the room. But typically the model is they get it cheaper on the front end and that's part of the game. Now, having said all that, why is sales okay?

Because if people don't buy, they're never going to sell. If we say how you buy is how you sell, Well, it's impossible for a coach to never buy stuff. Well, I believe it's impossible for a coach to never buy stuff and be adept at selling. And here's why. If a coach says, oh, I got to think about it. And then they go to make a sale. Then they're going to expect that that person says, I got to think about it. If the coach says, oh, I don't have enough money. They're going to expect the

audience member says, oh, I don't have enough money. And so whatever, however the coaches are in the world of buying, they're going to, it's kind of woo woo. But also when you unpack it, if we have longer, we can unpack how it works. The coach will act in ways or the speaker will act in ways that subconsciously causes the audience to show up like them.

So if the speaker is a slow buyer, they will expect the audience to be slow buyers and they'll relate to the audience in such ways that cause them to be slow buyers. So for instance, they won't close or they'll hear someone go out of the money. And if the speaker is someone who doesn't think they have the money, they'll be like, well, but me neither. I don't have the money either. I kind of detoured us. You asked a different question I was answering when I

took the side note. Oh, you're, you're totally all right, Jace. The, we were talking about like what sets up an event to really move people. Right. And you were going through at a live event, like getting them into a whole body. Yes. You then went down how we buy is how we sell, which is something that you teach at your events, which I think is really powerful. I think so many people are like, I want to show up on stage. I want to hold an event.

I really want to change people's lives. And then you ask them to buy something and they immediately, oh, oh, I can't, I've got, and they immediately start to list off a whole big list of excuses. If you have a lot of excuses, you're, you're, you're going to project that onto people and people will mirror that back to you.

Yes i think one of the same things in the same vein is if you don't fully believe in the thing that you are selling 100 to your core it will show up subconsciously either in your sales calls or from stage this is something that i talk to people you can have the best offer in the world but if you deliver it half halfway or if you don't fully believe in it you're going to get one or two sales of people who don't fully believe in it because they were going to mirror it back to you.

Absolutely. And I think we'll get some people's way too. We say they don't believe in their offer. It's really, they don't believe in themselves. Some level, they don't really, truly believe in themselves because a guy named Jason. So I used to do this event. So back when I started my personal growth company, I launched in 2004 and we'd sell a package as a $10,000 package, which back then was high ticket.

And in it was a five-day breakthrough event, an event on like time management and productivity. And then another event called the Unlimited Weekend and the Unlimited Weekend, we'd rent a beach house and they would get deep hypnosis one-on-one Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And then we'd finish up Sunday. So we'd have like one coach for every two attendees. And so they would get a lot of one-on-one, right?

And why did I start talking about the Unlimited Weekend? We were talking, oh, we're talking about whether or not they believe in themselves. So I'll never forget this. Jason was one of my coaches and we did some group breakthrough stuff Thursday night. Actually, they would do the hypnosis Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We did group stuff Thursday night. And Jason goes, all right, who already got their money's worth? And everybody's hand went up from except for maybe one or two.

And Jason goes, I want to know what it will take to give you your money's worth tonight, right now. So you already got your money's worth and the rest of the weekend as bonus. And what I took away from that was a couple of things. One, if they got their money's worth, they're going to be like, whoa, this was amazing. And the next few days are just like extra. So they're going to be more likely to buy anything else we have.

But the other thing I got was Jason was absolutely certain in himself that he could deliver it. And what he said to them is, what would it take? And he's asking them. And then he says, if you don't have an answer, then no one can make you happy, right? And so he's putting them in a position to have to answer that question, which causes them to step up in their life. But taking it back to Jason, he was so certain that he could deliver that he was willing to say something like that.

So let me map that over to other people making their offer. If you are 100% committed that you're going to do what it takes for your clients to win, and you are certain that you will play full out, you will find a way for them to win. You will find another person or you will find a resource or you will get the training or you will do something. Your success as a coach is only hemmed in by how much you believe in yourself and how much you're willing to go for it as a coach, right?

Now, I'm not saying you give everything away and you do 20 hours. That's not what I'm saying. I mean, we get up boundaries. What I'm saying though is your willingness and your commitment creates something and it calls that forth out of your audience. You can't give your audience something you ain't got, right?

And so when you're playing, I guess it really goes back to playing full out. When you're playing full out, it teaches them to play full out. And when they play full out, their life changes. That's, I think that is 100% true. If you think of any great event that you've gone to, we could name Tony Robbins, or I could say like even like your event, people see you play full out. So they in return are like, well, I'm going to play full out.

But if you've ever gone to an event and I have, I've actually, I've had to work with so many people to help them where they're showing up and they're in their head and they're teaching at a level 10 and it's too heavy. And like, That's not, they're not playing full out. They're talking in a monotone voice. They're sitting in a desk chair. Like that's a lot different energy and a lot different conviction than, Hey, I am here. We, one of the, I'm going to tell this story really briefly.

One of the events that I was lucky enough to be involved with was Eileen Wilder's first live event.

And she had 12 people in the room she tells this story as part of her origin story and i'm very blessed to have been a part of it she's like i don't we she really wanted to have more people there we talked right before her event and i said hey you need to just show up she eileen plays full out no matter what anyway but she i was like you just need to show up and serve these 12 people If you do, they will understand that. And really, because it's a smaller event, they will see more value in it.

She closed 100% of the room and did like well over $100,000 in sales.

Cash collected was over $100K because she showed up with so much conviction. And if you see Eileen now, the thing that everybody leaves her speeches with, she's beautiful, she's smart, she speaks well on stage. I don't really know what she taught me, but man, I really believe in myself. It's no secret to me that she, I mean, she does millions of dollars. I think last year she did somewhere between four and 6 million. And the main thing that if you ask anyone, what did I get from Eileen?

It's I got belief in myself. And that's really what live events do. I kind of want to shift a little bit, Jason. I want to go into tactics around live events. You've been at it for 20 years. You've run probably more than 50 different events with outcomes. I know you have a lot of different, like, you've done so many different things with events. I'd like to talk about some of the tactics of events.

Events what does it like what are some of the things that you use to get people to play full out at your events and on that note if you are looking to hold a live event or fill a live event or sell from stage i would encourage you to click the link in the description down below it's going to take you to all of our free resources whether that is fill your event fast maximum conversion from the stage or if you'd like to jump on a call with me there's a way that you

can book a call jump on my calendar and I'll be happy to walk you through anything I can to help you with a live event. All right, let's jump back into the show. Awesome. So can I tell a quick tag onto what you just shared? Sure. So I had that personal growth company and then when the recession hit, I went in a big depression for two reasons. One, my market was real estate investors and we made a lot of money fast.

When I launched my own company, I increased my income by a thousand percent And we rocked it through 2007. But then our real estate investors was our thing. And I started feeling that pinch, I think, before the rest of society did. And everything crashed. But the other reason I went into depression was... I did everything that they say will make you happy. Made a lot of money, bought a fancy car, traveled the world, made a difference, was on stage,

had all these people saying how great it was. It was all empty, man. It was empty. And I really crashed. And I remember looking for people who would help me and people like, oh, pay me 10,000 to help you. But like, who would help me? Who was really there for me? And I made a promise in my heart that my events, whether I had, when I got to where I could help people again, whether I had four 40 or 400 people in the room, I would put on the same event.

And just like Eileen did, I did a lot of events for four people and we'd still brought our sound and our light and support. And we ran an amazing event. It was really interesting. We made more sales with four people in the room than 40 people in the room, more gross cash collected. Cause I think they could feel our heart. And, and that goes to today, you guys, it could be easy to get disappointed when you don't have a big room or your expectations.

And yet you got to remember everyone that's there said yes and showed up because they saw something in you that can give them access to a better life. And like, you know, we have our own goals and stuff for our businesses. And yet what an honor and a privilege, you know, like the event that you did with us, we only had 35 people.

All the stages we were on were super small. So the amount of people we could sell to how many could show up and yet i think we serve massively what do we have 35 people we did over 200 000 in sales something like that yeah yeah you i mean you close extremely well and the thing that also happens with smaller rooms because some of those people were virtual.

You can actually interact with them we had the big monitors and when you interact with people they're like they feel seen what does what does every human want more than anything else in the world to feel seen, heard for who they are and to be helped. And if you show up, I mean, it's great to go to a big monster room, right? I've been in rooms of 10,000 people. The energy is great, but the chances of you getting like really served in that

are a little different, right? So if, it i i tell people this all the time i would take most of the time i would take a room over 35 to 50 people over 5 000 because i know i can actually really hit those people well you're gonna have that in boise guys we couldn't have done it without steve i know this isn't meant to be an ad for steve steve we did 25 on a virtual event that's unheard of so back to your thing about tactics couple things we do tactically

to get people to take action in the room very very very intentionally I call it forced interaction. People want to interact. People come to a live event to interact, to make new friends. Most entrepreneurs are lonely out there. Most entrepreneurs are doing it by themselves. And we have an unbelievably great community and a few things that get the interaction and the movement going in the room have translated to the community. So one is forced interaction.

Very early in the event, I'll have people write down what are their top three goals. What are their top three challenges? And then I'll take shares from the audience. And then we say, all right, get up now and go share with five people, your top three goals. And I show, Hey, it's, it's not, how are you? Where are you from? It's here's my goal. Here's my goal. Here's my goal. High five, go to the next. So there's a structure and there's a kind of a forced to it.

And I, I like this forced interaction because I can be very, I am naturally ambivert. I think I can be very shy, very introverted, but when I'm forced to say hi, or when it's stage time, I turn it on. Like people would never get so much introverted, but very easy for me to go to a vet and not talk to anybody. But if I'm forced to get up and say, Steve, what are your goals? Here's my goals. Awesome. High five. Go to the next.

You know, they call icebreakers. Icebreakers suck. Usually they're stupid, but this way now we've connected. We've made a physical connection or a physical connection or a handshake physical connection. The endorphins start flowing and there's a structure to it. And then what the salespeople do and the coaches do, they look for who sits on their ass and doesn't participate. Because that person metaphorically and literally what they do in the room, they're doing outside of the room.

So that person that's not getting out of their seat interacting is doing that in their marketing and they wonder why their sales suck. And even if their sales are good, they could be better. And if like, oh, I'm too good for this crowd, then they're giving off that vibe out there. And so when they get to talk to four or five people, now they know four or five. So then they sit and then we have them share their challenges. And I like to do stupid jokes throughout.

Cause the more we can get people to laugh, the more we touch their heart, people are never more open to coaching and sales than when they're laughing. And the more you can get them to laugh, the better. So when we have them say, do their challenges at the end of their like fifth person, they share challenges with, I'll say, you know, I'll have them high five the other people and go, Hey, you you're better than that.

Hey, you're good. You can beat that challenge. Hey, you're stronger than that challenge.

But then the last person they high five, I'll have them say something like. Say, Ooh, I'm glad that's not mine. And then everybody starts laughing because they didn't expect that. And so now they're laughing. They've got the rapport, they got the bond, and now they've had connections, 10 different connections. So now they know, depending on how big the room is, a large portion of the room. So that's one forced interaction.

Plus the more they hear the people's goals and they, everybody has the same goals, right? No matter what it sounds like on the surface, the subconscious 10 to 15 subconscious drivers are the same. Everybody has the same challenges, all the same BS. I wish I had time to tell a story about chat. If we have time later, I'll tell a story about that. So when they hear that, it makes them go, whoa, I'm not alone. And then it also makes them go, whoa, I'm not so special.

So many people think they're special that their problem is no, you're not special. You have the same bullshit challenge everybody else does. Let's just get to work and we can beat it. It's in your subconscious programming or it's in some tactics you're missing.

It's in some sales skills. So, so that's one second thing we do we create agreements and we create agreements like play full out and i say okay and we define it you guys you cannot hold someone to a standard unless they have agreed to the standard this is what too many people do wrong in their seminar rooms am i talking too long or is this all right no you're great keep going okay play full out means you raise your hand when

i ask for volunteers they say okay great i said let's all test to make sure we can raise our hands okay everybody can raise their hands all right what do you do when you have something to share and ask for volunteers everybody says raise their hands. What do you do when I say raise your hand and you don't have something to share? And they like, look around, you play full out, you raise your hand. So you raise your hand no matter what you say yes and take an action no matter what.

And people at first are like, huh? But we have a guy, Shiraz, Shiraz is one of our clients. Shiraz, every time I ask for someone to share, he raises his hand. And I cannot tell you how many times on a coaching call or something else, Shiraz will go, I didn't have anything to share, but you said to raise your hand. So I raised my hand. He's a yes. Right. And then he'll come up with something to share. Nobody in our community has gotten on more stages than Shiraz.

No one has a percentage wise increase. Well, actually percentage in gross revenue, increase their money. Nobody has set up more JVs. Nobody has more speakers asking him to come speak on their stage in Shiraz. And I think it all comes from he learned to say yes and put his hand up. Life is a yes game. So we create that agreement of playing full out so that when they're not playing full out, we can call it out.

And then more important than that, we can do work to discover what was underneath it that was stopping them from playing full out because that's what's stopping them outside of that room from making money. And then the final thing, not the final, but a third piece we do is we have standards for our community. We, if you're going to play with us and be in our community, we have standards like we lead with love. We have fun. We say yes and we take a step.

And this one may or may not make sense in this short of amount of time, but we believe that conditioning equals results. In other words, everything that's ever happened to you from the moment of inception until now gives you what you're producing in life. And if you want to help people produce new results, you can't just give them the logic. You've got to bring the three parts into it. You've got to give them the new logic and thoughts, the new actions to take, and then a heart breakthrough.

And if you want to transform the world, what you got to do is recondition people. So we do the work to help them recondition so they can be a yes. So the forced interaction, the agreements and the standards creates a structure to play in. And so we do that from the jump, from the very beginning of when they meet us at the preview event so that when they join our community, we recap all those stuff and have them re-agree to it.

We have an unbelievably supportive and amazing, I'm not sure how much you've gotten to interact with them yet. Now our community is wonderful. And it's one of the top things people say that they love about our coaching programs because it's a safe place. You get to practice, you get to play full out. No one's going to make fun. Oh, one of our other standards, there's no throwaway comments and there's no throwaway people.

So we're really diligent with the words we speak to people and we make a safe place to train. Too many coaching programs are like, we're going to kick your ass into shape. I don't know a single high achiever who really needs his ass kicked more. No one is harder on me than me. I might need someone to give me a wake up call, but usually I need someone to love my ass into shape and to hug me when I'm scared and say, come on, Jace, you got this.

You got this. You got this. You got this. I was a lot of, I think that is, I mean, that's really very true. I think a little bit of accountability goes a long way. We don't really need somebody with a big stick chasing us around. There's a lot in what you said that I love. Community is always huge. Getting people curated in the right way and keeping them from the moment they meet you all the way through making agreements.

There's one piece that I want to talk about that I think the speakers listening can really benefit from. One of the things I hear all the time is, Steve, put me on stage. Steve, help me with my event. I can teach better than anybody else. And one of the things that you can teach all day, but if people don't accept it, they're not going to implement it. One of the things that you do really well is you include humor. Yeah. And it is something that I think every speaker could benefit from.

If, if people were a hundred percent more funny and taught a hundred percent less, the world would be a better place because people will take the one takeaway from an hour talk. If they feel good, teaching does not make people feel good. So how, give me some tips on humor, because this is something actually I was really impressed with at your event. You made people laugh more than I think any speaker I've worked with probably in the last two or three years. Thank you. Cause I'm funny.

I don't even know why that was funny. So a couple, let's tee up why, why it works. And then I'll give some tactics on what people could do. So one, the emotional state people are in when they learn something is the emotional state they go to when they use it. So when I started LifeTigers, my personal growth company in 2004, I'd watch these real estate entrepreneurs. They were paying $3,000 and $5,000

for these boot camps, and they wouldn't use anything. And I'd go to a boot camp, but you guys are like this.

And it was boring it was all like logic logic logic logic logic right well the emotional state they're in is this so when they leave and they go to use it subconsciously they go back to this so you guys if you're if you're you know we need to find a better name steve being a speaker works for your one-hour presentation for leading a three-day event it doesn't i think you need you need a leader is what

you need to be an event leader and so whatever state your audience is where they're going to go to. So do you want people or do you want them laughing or fun or smiling or high energy or confident? So you have to do emotional state management throughout your event while you're teaching. We do little high fives all the time. Some people mock that. I love it because it's a connection. There's an up, there's an endorphin release. Boom. Okay. Next part.

When people are emotional, proteins get released out of a certain gland of the brain And those proteins lay down the wiring called learning. So if there's no emotion, there's no learning. The more emotion, the more learning. On a negative side, that's why some of the most significant painful events in your life stick with you the longest because the most emotion was released, the most protein was released, and the most brain wiring was released.

And for most human beings, that happened from a down, painful state.

So we've got to break those, by the way. so if you can consistently release positive up emotions then you get the proteins and you get more wiring in the room so that's why i learned it was so critical and the other reason i learned it was critical i watched my mentor speak i was like a roadie i'd carried his bags i did whatever we're at this event and this dude is 2003 at this point this other dude in the same room is teaching brain science and i was like this guy's stuff's amazing

but he was like literally he had a book And he's like, and now I will share with you how the, I can't even tell you what this guy was. But I remember thinking, because I'm watching the crowd, and the crowd's bored as crap. And I'm like, this is a crime. And the guy sold three, like three people went to, back then it was, you would actually go to the back table, right? Three people went to the back table. His thing was a thousand bucks. I'm like, this is a crime. He has unbelievably great stuff.

Then my mentor gets on stage. And my mentor's like, ah, telling stories and super animated.

And he's like, kicking his heels up to kick his own butt. And he's getting the audience involved. And I'm watching the audience. And they're laughing till they're crying. and then he'll bring him down. He'll tell this heart-wrenching story. And they're like, and like he takes him on this journey. And when he finishes, not only is he getting a standing ovation, people are running to the back and he did $375,000 in sales. And I was like, holy crap. If I want to stick around, I better be funny.

So I learned how to be funny. Being funny is the holy grail of speak. Well, let me rewind. Being funny on purpose is the holy grail of speaking. Because some of our friends are funny, but not on purpose.

That's really funny so tactically how can you get funny take take I highly highly highly recommend everyone take improv classes when you speak there's a triangle the triangle is the interaction of the audience your material and you and the more interaction you get between the audience material and you the better the presentation the less the interaction the less sales the less everything so improv makes you a great listener makes you play with whatever happens in the audience and then.

Uh start to watch nextflix comedian wherever watch comedians and great ones are on on a thing called dry bar comedy they're all clean and so you can see how funny clean can be what i did when i first started i ordered all of these joke books off of ebay and uh from the 50s to the current i started seeing what i could redo and then i i like victor borgia cracks me up and he's super clean i watched his stuff there's a really tall comedian she just speaker

she's not even comedian i said comedian is a misnomer. She was so funny though. I think of her as a comedian. She just passed away recently, but she would call her husband left brain because he was so analytical. That was her name for him. And I would watch her stuff and it will inspire you to write comedy and then get some books on actually writing comedy. The first seminar I ever created was called the funny farm for speakers,

which I still think is the best name I've ever come up with. The funny farm. Like what a great name, right? And most speakers need to go to a funny farm, but I created it because the best way to learn something is to teach it. And I was like, I got to be funny if I'm going to stick around. So from the jump, I wrote this because it forced me to learn and study all this stuff about how to be funny. And so talking about being funny, one is just being authentic.

Improv will teach you this. Don't try to be funny, be authentic. And authenticity brings up humanity and humanity is funny. The second thing is, and we say this when we would do the funny farm, we have an event coming up in June and we're going to do some stuff on comedy. And we say this because people expect writing comedy, they're just going to laugh the whole time. One of the things we say is, creating your humor is no laughing matter.

It's work, which I think is funny, but it's work. And if you watch, boy, I'm giving you a long answer, but I love this question. Jerry Seinfeld has this amazing movie called Comedian. If you can find it, watch it.

He throws away his old act it's after he finishes this show Seinfeld and you see Seinfeld building his act a minute at a time and he'll be he'll write something down on a piece of paper and then he'll go do a minute and some of it will kill and some of it won't and so you'll see him be like well that's not going to be in the next one and then you'll see him go to another club and do two minutes and then three minutes and he builds it a minute at a time and that's how we have

to build our presentation we build these humor moments a humor and it's not being funny It's not jokes. You could repurpose jokes, but it's being humorous. And so. You build it and you've got to put the work into it. There's anyone can be funny because it's, it's formulas. And so if you could do math at all, you can add one plus two equals three. You can do it, you know, in comedy, one plus one is anything but two.

It's, it's another way of putting it as comedy is leading people down the brick path of the, of the, of the flower garden and then turning on the sprinklers.

So comedy is the unexpected. connected and and if you just put some thought and work into it you'll do it and then write stuff down and then what happens is when you start speaking keep your ears open for what happens in the audience so i'll finish with this one story i have this picture of me from 2001 from when i started my personal growth journey and and i look horrible full disclosure i don't know if i've ever shared this

before i'm gonna share with your audience steve i knew i was going to change my life so i went to goodwill and bought a horrible outfit and i took a picture of that outfit so i I can have a really horrible before picture. So I show this picture of me and we were at my mentor's house. And this guy's a multi, multi-millionaire. And he had this work van where we take all the electronics and stuff for the events. He would do all his own AV.

And so I showed this picture for 10 years. And I think, how much confidence do you think that guy had? How many dates was he going on? How much money is he making? Because at that time, it wasn't much. I just knew a change was coming. And so I showed that picture for like 10 years. and in like 2013, 2014, I go, how many dates do you think that guy went on? And there's this white van in the background with no windows.

And this dude in the audience goes with the killer van in the background, not many. And everybody starts laughing. And I'm like, oh, that was funny. So I pretended I was offended. And I was like, that's not my van. And then the audience laughs even harder, right? But when I got off stage, I like Evernote, I pulled out my phone and I was like, with the killer van in the background, not many.

So now when I do that presentation, I still show that picture and I say, how many dates do you think that guy went on? And then I'll say, you know, I showed this picture once and a guy in the audience yelled and I tell everybody what happened and they laugh just the same. So humor will happen. People will say something or you'll say something and it'll just be funny. Put it in the next time.

That was a, I hope that was a valuable answer. And then, and then the biggest thing is events, things just, every event is its own animal.

Every event, the audience, I want to share a tip on an audience. And I think a lot of. Talking to a group, you're having, if there's 50 people in a room, 100, I mean, 50 simultaneous conversations or a hundred people, 100 simultaneous conversations. But here's what people don't, most people don't get.

You've got to speak to the individual, but what happens and what happens in a room is the audience through what happens with, I believe it's the mirror neurons in the brain and what happens through the biology in the room and chemicals in the room and human dynamics. Folks, not only are they 50 individuals, they morph into one entity with 50 sets of eyes and ears. So what happens is it's like one emotional heart gets shared in the room.

So if you create a beautiful moment over here with Fred, the entire room gets it. If you get married a laugh, the entire room gets it. On the other hand, if you have someone over here who's really difficult and you don't deal with it, that will go through the, you know, one bad apple spoils the bunch. They begin to share a heartbeat. And so we've got to be really diligent in making these beautiful moments with each person in the room.

And if there's something negative in the room, being able to carve that person out or carve that emotion or that thought out and restore the room to a great place.

That's, we took a big detour from humor. We're going to come back to humor, but I want to actually share, something that I think is really powerful in what you just said if there is somebody in the room that is having a bad experience or maybe they're in a place that they can't accept what you're saying there was a event that i was emceeing and there was a younger girl she was like 24 25 and she just you people in the room could tell that she was having a hard time accepting

it because she didn't have a big enough vision for herself yeah she raised her hand for a hot seat i went over and the person from stage was hot was giving her tactical advice and the girl just wasn't accepting it. I could tell we had an option right then. We could either let her sit down and it would, everyone in the room would be like, or we could deal with it. So I made the call.

I later talked to the people who said the event. So I made the call and I just said, hey, are you open to a little bit of feedback? And she said, well, yeah, I'm here to learn. I'm here to grow. And I said, okay, the woman on stage, do you want the business that she has? And she was like, yeah, the girl on stage. I think her late, that lady was doing like 2.5 a year as a salon, as a salon owner. And I said, okay, you, she just gave you a bunch of advice.

And instead of listening, being curious, you immediately discounted it. So that's not for me. And the girl, like you could tell she's just frustrated. And she looks at me and I said, so what's going on? Why can't you accept it? And she said, cause you're a man and you're giving me advice. And I said, I'm not, I'm not the one giving you advice. A woman is giving you the advice. And so she started like going through all the reasons, but then a really beautiful thing happened.

A lady sitting a couple of tables over cause we were at rounds came over and just gave her a hug. And like the girl, like you could tell the girl was like frustrated. She didn't know what to do. So she got up because she couldn't accept, like people were like, we're here for you. We're here to help you. And she couldn't accept it. She got up and left.

She came back the next day completely different and she was like i went home and she was like first off like i just wanted to get drunk i wanted to get high and like i wanted to leave all of like i did not want to deal with it but when i sat down and really thought about it, i realized like i'm here for something different and but by doing that involved the whole room and the whole room came together and the girl ended up actually

buying the product and then she went on to use it because she was so, she was like, this community is here to support me, when it would have been so easy to just let it shut down.

So anyone listening to this that's holding events, if you have somebody that's difficult in the room, deal with them. Like that's why they're there and if they have a breakthrough, the whole room will have the breakthrough and it will bring the group closer together, which is really why they're in the room. Yeah, if you don't like the action, the story will break your heart.

So absolutely. And, you know, and that, and that triggers me, Steve, we were talking before this about what makes our events different. And no matter what we do, I don't care if we're doing sales training, speaker training, anything, no matter what kind of training we do, we're going to have like intentional segments all about breakthrough. And the undercurrent of everything we do is about shifting the heart.

If you believe in the Bible at all, in Proverbs, it says, above all else, guard your heart, for your heart is the wellspring of life. Another translation says, above all else, guard your heart, for out of your heart are the issues of life. You guys, it's people's heart. And... Can I share something that I see that's coming? So you guys, I'm glad you're listening to this podcast because people that don't get what I'm about to say are going to be left behind.

Have you ever had like a, you ever had something like it's in your space and you feel this thing and it's right here. And then suddenly clunks and you're like, Oh, Oh. So for years, I've been telling people when you, when you structure your coaching programs, you want to have in three parts and roughly the three parts are beliefs, actions. And then I'm like, it's good idea to do a breakthrough island. It's good. And I kept saying good idea.

And then I was listening to that book, Stealing Fire. And he just, he made it just land for me. So here's what it is. We were in the information economy and that's where most coaches still are. How to do something. We moved from the information economy to the experiential economy. And so coaches started adding bands to their events or cool experiences is or taking people on stuff during masterminds and creating a nice experience. But we've left that.

And if you're a coach who's only doing information experiences, you're going to be left behind because what we've moved into now is the transformation economy. And in the transformation economy, the client is the product. And so what's going to happen? I've seen a few waves in my 20 plus years, and this is one of them that's coming. The market is now savvy enough to know that who they are isn't enough for where they want to be. Not that they're not enough, but they need to become something new.

They need to become someone greater. They need to have an internal shift. It's like if someone wants to make money, they know, oh, it's not just I have to learn these things. I got to reprogram my relationship to money. I have to become a millionaire internally. I have to become someone new. And so when people are going to be shopping for coaches, they're going to start looking for who can help me become the person I need to be.

In other words, people are going to start shopping no matter what kind of coaching it is for who can help them do the transformational work to become it. And so in every one of our events, we do transformational work. And I want to encourage all of my people and everyone listening, guys, you either need to offer it yourself or bring someone in who offers it. And as a backup for this, what happened right around the same time I read this book, one of my good friends leads sales teams for events.

And she told me that she was seeing the same crowd, six, seven events in a row. And I'm like, is anyone making sales? And she said, yeah, the coaches who have the most personal growth training and who can deliver the most personal growth for their audience are making the most sales. And then a phrase you probably heard, they come for the money, they stay for the head game. If you want people to stay with you and to buy more. So I'll give you an example on this.

Last year in April, people had paid 20,000 to be coaching program. They came to our five day breakthrough event. And with 20 people in the room, we did $410,000 in sales. And that's 20 people that had already paid 20 grand to be in there. This year we had a smaller crowd. We had 16 and we had a couple of like 15 year olds in there. Well, with 16 people, we did $200,000 in sales.

That's people that already paid 20,000 to be there. When you help them break through and transform, they're going to stick with you forever. And they're going to pay more because that's the most important thing to people.

Absolutely. The, if you're listening to this and you want to learn a little bit more about Jace, Jace has a lot of events going on, but he also has a program called be a better speaker. Tell me a little bit about this is beabetterspeaker.com. It is free for anyone who is listening. Tell us a little bit about what people are going to find there. Yeah, it's the Speak, Sell and Scale course. It's an email course. So you sign up, we're going to send you a four weeks every day.

We're going to send you an email about discovering your unique voice and how to craft a message that captivates, mastering the art of storytelling and how to be really authentic on stage, and then how to improve your visibility and revenue with high impact speaking opportunities. So you're going to get an email from us every day training you on this. So you want to go to beabetterspeaker.com and you can sign up and we'll start emailing you every day.

Awesome. Jason, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and sharing. I love being at your events. I love supporting you in the events.

And it's really cool to hear some of the behind the scenes. Thanks for being a great guest. I love it. Hey guys, those of you who are out there doing this stuff, the world needs you. You guys, there's someone out there praying for an answer and you were meant to be that answer. Go make a difference and make a lot of money. We love you guys. Thank you, Steve. Awesome. On that note, guys, check out the links down below and we'll see you next time here on Grow Your Impact, Income, and Influence.

Thanks for checking out today's podcast. If you're thinking about holding a live event, it can be one of the most rewarding and the most challenging things in the world. I would suggest clicking on the links down in the descriptions. We have a lot of free resources there for you, as well as jumping on a call with me. If you're serious about holding an event, click that link, jump on my calendar.

I'll be happy to walk you through the do's and don'ts so that you can avoid all the landmines and hold a massively profitable first event. I'll talk to you soon and have an awesome day.