Reviewing the Unconference

Welcome to the Jody Mayberry Show. I have a guest returning that if you've listened to the show for a while, you've heard his name, you know his voice. But if you're not familiar with him, if you're new to the show, you will be new. He will be new to you. Vincent Puglisi, the founder, the launcher, the, well, he invented the Unconference. Hi, Vincent. What's going on? Excited to be

here. I wasn't sure how to introduce you this time, but Vincent and I were just together in Sarasota, Florida at the

UN conference, which was very descriptive name of what it was. It is Vincent. I'll set you up for this, Vincent. He told me a while back, he said, you know, the only thing I really like about conferences is the hallways. What if I came up with a conference that was just the hallways? And he took that idea and actually made it happen. It's incredible you pulled it off, Vincent. It's funny because I love you know, you you and

I will travel across the country to go to these events. And I leave there every single time with, like, these handful of amazing conversations. And all I wanted was more of them, but we couldn't do them because the entire conference is built around, go to the speaker, go to that speaker, Rush back and forth. Oh, and by the way, you know, rush a lunch out or 10:00 at night. Go to some networking thing where there's a DJ blasting music that you're like,

what? I can't hear you. And then you go to sleep late and you go, I get on a plane. And I have these handful of business cards. I don't know who the people are that I talked to. Don't remember anything. I'm like, what a wasted opportunity because I didn't care about the speakers. I'm sure they're good. And then full disclosure, sometimes I'm the speaker. And I'm

still saying that. I'm like, I didn't care about that. What I cared about was the connections I would make because I would go into the hallways and magic would happen. And relationships and friendships and business deals would happen and collaborations. So what I learned was after people who've been to one or two or three of these things didn't go to the sessions anymore. They just literally went there and hung out in the

hallways. And I remember going to social media marketing world one year and I called Elizabeth. I was at the end of my wife, and she's like, so who did you hear and what speakers you go to? I said, I didn't go to any of them. And she was like, what? And she broke it down for me. So so you spent a $1,500 on a ticket. You got a flight to San Diego. You got a hotel for four nights and you, you know, going out to eat. I don't know how much money that is, but you did that and you

didn't go to any sessions. I said, you don't understand all the magics in the hallways. That's where it all happens. And it's only the beginners that go to all the sessions taking notes that they're never gonna read. So eventually, like, as I talked to you and and others, I was like, what if we create an event that was just the hallway? So that's what it was about. And kind of like the hallways colliding with a mastermind retreat. Because we would do these intimate small

mastermind retreats, and then we'd have these big giant conferences. What if we took the intimacy of the mastermind and blended it with the hallways of a giant conference, limited to a hundred people, do it as application invite only, make sure the right people in the room, because as you and I were talking, that's the key, is the right people. You know, anybody can get a hundred people in the room. That's a food court at a mall. Doesn't mean

there's gonna be great conversations happening. Right? But when you could bring the right hundred people together and you can have structure, but very loose structure, kinda like water, Bruce Lee be like water. Like, yes, structure moves around and you can let people that's when magic happens. So that's that's where the idea came from. And I completely expected to fall my face for the first time because nobody done this in this space from what I

know. And here we are, and we sold it out with two months to go and and everything seems to have had a great time. It was a a fabulous event. And I told Vincent, I think I even unconferenced the unconference because for one session, I just stood in the hallways and talked to some people. So I unconferenced your unconferenced and and stayed in the hallways. But that was the spirit of the whole thing. It was just conversations. So you have to realize this. Vincent said, I want a conference with no

speakers. I want a conference with no sponsors. All the things you expect at a conference, I want none of it here. So rather than speakers, although there was a speaker, maybe we'll get to that. There was one speaker and Vincent gave two very short talks. But it was conversations. It was rooms that had a topic. And if you wanted to talk about that topic, you go to that

room. And here's why it worked. Maybe I think I wanna make sure you get the enough credit for this that Vincent had handpicked everyone that was going to be there. Yes. People bought their ticket, but you had to get invited to buy a ticket by Vincent. And because everyone had been handpicked, the conversations were phenomenal. And I thought, there's only a hundred people. I'm sure I'll get to meet everybody.

Wasn't even close because if I met someone, that conversation would end up so deep, I would spend twenty, thirty minutes with them. And I I did not meet I met maybe 20 people, Vincent. That was it, out of a hundred. Because if you're gonna have a good conversation, you just can't meet a hundred people in two days. No. And the point isn't to meet everybody. I mean, maybe a quick meeting.

Right? We could there's there's ways of doing that. But the point is, you know, to have a handful or more than a handful of really wonderful conversations. And that would be my goal with a conference. I would go and I would say, I want to have three great conversations and one amazing connection to leave here with. And I said, what if we just multiply that and your numbers are perfect? If you have 20 phenomenal conversations with people and you leave there, but you're still like we

did, we created a program with everybody's information. We've never seen that

before. We would go to an event and it would be all the the five speakers or the 15 speakers. They're the heroes of the event and all the attendees are kind of in the shadows. Well, we said, what if we make all the attendees the heroes and create a digital and a physical program that has everybody's information on the digital, their social media? So guess what? When you're gone, when you leave, you can easily connect with everybody. Cause that, that was born out of my

frustration on airplanes, shuffling through business cards, that there was no pictures. I don't remember who they were. It was given to me at 11:00 at night. Now you can casually have conversations cause you know, you've got this program that you can connect with anybody the way that you want. And, you know, if you walk away from there with 20 great conversations, to me, that's a giant like, I would never get that at a regular conference. Yeah. And that

that's right. I do I have kept every business card I've gotten at a conference over the last ten years just in case I there's a reason to eventually reach back out to them someday. But how many of them have I found their business card and reached back out? Very few. It has happened, but it's been very few. But It's harder. Of the 20 people I met, I probably had five really deep conversations and have even been in touch with some of those

people since the conference. And I I think you accomplished what you were after. I guess that's up for you to decide. But for me, it feels like you did. And I Vincent has been to two Creating Magic Masterminds that Lee and I Lee Cockrell and I host. And after the first one and he he still came back for another one. But after the first one, Vincent said, this was a great

event, but I could do without the guest Disney speaker. And I would even like it better if instead of hot seats, we just all sat around and talked about a topic. And I think you took that, and maybe you already had that in mind. I'm not saying this is where you got the idea. But based on the two things you said you would like about the creating magic mastermind, you made that happen just on a much bigger scale at this event. I think the

whole idea and I think that's why I appreciate our friendship. There's a discerning eye that we're both looking out for each other with. Right? Like, I loved investing in in there and and getting to the masterminds and being a part of it and your crew. At the same time, I think, you know, you probably wanna hear, hey. Can we is there something that we can do? And you might not take my advice and do anything with it. I just think it's, you

know, it is my obligation sometimes to be like, hey. This could be this or this and now that could that could be not what everybody wants. Right? And everybody wants the feedback. Hey, I didn't ask you for your feedback. Right? I can't help. I'm a New York Italian. I'm gonna give feedback. So the way it's gonna be, but I'm always looking at how can I help my friend improve this if they're looking to do it? And maybe I'm not the ideal audience because maybe

everybody loves the Disney speaker. Right? Maybe I'm not the I'm probably I didn't come from the same kinda area that everybody else might have come from where the Disney is is often the main thing. It's not with me. So for me, I just wanna get to know the people. And so seeing that, it might not have been the a the main reason why we did, but it was absolutely a factor in terms of learning from other events of, like, I'm

always thinking, how would I do it? How would I do this a little differently? Right? And yeah. So from the feedback to you, but also to sitting on myself and being like, oh, yeah. I think we could do that. And let's hope it works. Yeah. And so let's we'll talk about

feedback just for a moment because Vincent has also been to my world class workshops that I do. So Vincent gave feedback about the Creating Magic Mastermind saying I'd like it better if there wasn't a Disney speaker and we just had one big conversation instead of hot seats. And my response was, Vincent, you are not the typical person that comes to this event and they like both of those. But Vincent came to the first world class workshop we

did, and he said, you know what I would like? And gave me, like, three things. And I said, gosh. I think Vincent's absolutely right. And we made those changes, and Vincent came to the last one and and was like, oh, this is way better. It was but it's like we do everything. Like, as I said, you know, as I in my first little speech at the unconference, welcome to the worst unconference it's ever gonna be. Right?

It's the first one. I it's my job to continually improve and to make this better and to make the experience better. And for you, you know, the first time you did the workshops, it was like, I love the information. It was almost too much. Right? Too much great stuff. And when I was like, oh, man. What if there was a little less time? We could reduce the amount of teaching and have more time to even work

on the things. I think that was one of the pieces of advice. Right? And what's funny is the experience for us, I think, was better, but also you have to do less. Right? Because you don't have to teach as much, and you sit back and let us do because we need the time to do that work. You implemented that, and I thought it was like, wow. What what a quick improvement that was by implementing that. Well and that's exactly right. Vincent gave me three pieces. He

said, too much. You're teaching too much. It is too much information for us to take in. So we I cut two thirds of the information out, shortened it from a two day workshop to a one day workshop. Vincent said, there's not enough space in the workbook. I actually wanna write some of this out. I expand changed the workbook, made it much better. And then Vincent said, I want time to actually sit here and do the work so then I can ask you about it. And I wanna leave having done most of the

work to give me momentum. And we added that in. And that's it. The the feedback Vincent gave completely changed the event, and I I do think it's much better now than it was. And that's that's it. Before recording this episode, Vincent and I talked about the unconference and what can he do to make it better. I'm not gonna say anything here to spoil what comes next, but yeah, that's one of the my favorite things about you, Vincent. You can pull off you can hit a home

run and then come back and say, how could I have done better? But it's on one hand, it's a home run. You did exactly what you needed. But on the other hand, if you're gonna continuously get better and do a world class conference, you do have to find out how to do it. And even my background, like, I was a sports star for twenty years. Right?

I'm in the locker room of championship games, and I've tried to model some of this stuff. What are the best in the world do? They were, you know, until they won the actual outright championship, they were always looking. And even then, it didn't take very long for how we can get that better next year. And I think that can be some people could be like, oh, that doesn't sound fun. Like, to me, that's the fun part. I love the idea of what's this gonna be like next? How are we gonna get better? I

don't wanna rest on yeah. We did a great thing. I love it. I appreciate what happened. I really do. Like the couple days after I was on cloud nine, it really was. And and even with certain things that could be better than that, but I'm like, but then you immediately go to, I want a better experience for everybody. And and now, you know, after throwing things together with duct tape, I know the things we can do next time to really kinda ramp this up. It's

exactly what you did. Right? And we'll we'll continue that. As entrepreneurs, that's just what we do. I think that that's how you get world class experience, I think. One of the things I really appreciated about the conference is Vincent teaches a certain thing. Well, his book is The Wealth of Connections. That his second book, that is what brought people to the conference

was connections, relationships, conversations. And then I'd be in some of these conversations with Vincent, And people didn't use these exact words, but I felt like sometimes people would say, well, that worked for you, Vincent, but my situation is different. And Vincent would hold steady and say, no. If it's not different, they're all the same. You have to build connections. You have to have conversations. It's funny because I even

wrote in the membership today, did a little breakdown on how we do this. And people like, thanks for simplifying this. And I'm like, it's always simplified. It's not a very complex theory. People just don't do it. And, yeah, I always come back to sports analogies. And I remember covering the New York Giants, and it was, like, ten years after they won the Super Bowl. And they were they were talking about how they won, how they dominated in 1986. And Bill Parcells said, we only had 20 plays

the entire season. We just ran those plays better than anybody. We boost we got so good at those plays. And it's the same thing here. When you, you know, you talk about people that build these giant businesses or all the success, where is it I boil it down to the eighty twenty rule. Where does it come down to? And almost every single time it came down to the connections, the relationships, the network, how they kept in touch delivered for them. So my idea with this whole thing was I don't

wanna advertise this. Like, literally from the moment I came up with the idea, the I'm gonna do like Rocky Rocky two. I'm gonna tie one

hand behind my back, and I'm gonna do this with like, I'm gonna figure out how to sell this thing out without promoting it, without running ads, without doing affiliates. I want it all to be based around connections and relationships and offers from that to show you that you can create something out of thin air and based just around that, not only sell it out, but sell it out in a way where people go, well, this is what I got. How in the world were those hundred people in

that room like that? Like, friend's wife that didn't even come to the event just kinda was there for a little bit. She's like, how did this thing happen? And it happened because of all that work of the connection. Now you can sell a hundred tickets and get anybody in there. You can get the bro marketers, and you can get the people that are kinda just sleazy or or salesy. We made the parameters clear. That's not what this is about.

You're not here to, you know, pitch people. That's not what this is about. This is about connection. And I think that's that's where the special part of it comes. But if I wasn't building my wealth of connection daily, Jody, weekly, monthly, these things aren't possible. I think so many times the online world, we rely on these funnels and the email lists and all the things. They're fine, but the connection is what makes the real

special sauce to it. And I wanted to show that and prove it, and I think there were a lot of people that when they left, they're like, oh, that's how it happened. And you can build any business that way. Mhmm. It is so good. There I'm looking at my notes right now, and there is a was one conversation that was going on where someone basically said, well, I need to build something right now. And Vincent's like, you you can't. You have to put in the work. You have to plan on this being a

one year process. Yeah. And so the the analogy, we use the stadium. We we help people build their online stadium, like, coming from the sports world where it's like, you know, you create something and you built you give away content. You create content that brings people into the stadium, then there's levels to that stadium. So we have multiple levels to ours often based around recurring revenue for lifestyle freedom, which is what almost

everybody wants. So the whole idea of that is you don't just go to an empty lot and say, oh, I wanna host the Super Bowl on this empty lot. Just like, hey. I gotta build this right now. I need this right now. In Las Vegas, the NFL would have said, you're crazy. We're not holding the Super Bowl in this dirt lot. But if you do the work and you build the stadium, you'll get the Super Bowl. Guess what? There was a year or two of dirty

work that happened. Right, to build that thing. It didn't look pretty. It was messy. It required a lot of work. But when they hosted the Super Bowl,

they made, what, a billion dollars from it, and all they needed to do was clean it up afterwards and then restart again. It's the stadium that it keeps on giving. In that example, a lot of times it's desperation. I tried a couple of things, didn't work. I need this now. Go find the ways to make money, but don't don't sacrifice your art and what you're doing for short term

things. You gotta do the foundational work, which are those pillars and everything that goes up so that you can have long term success as opposed to, I just need to do it right now. And so that it's a hard conversation when you when you feel like you need it, but we're looking for long term repeatable success as opposed to just a one time thing. Getting to the UN conference is Vincent just summed up what it

took. The UN conference was a long time coming. Even before Vincent had the idea for the UN conference, he was building the foundation for people that would get invited. So you had to get a personal invitation from Vincent to even buy a ticket. If he didn't think you were a fit, you weren't gonna get the invitation. When it came to those 100 people that you invited, what were you looking for? How did you know someone would be a right fit to be in the room

with the other 99 people? That's a great question. There's a handful of things. Curiosity. So I I have phone calls with people that that were interested because we've let people apply. It wasn't like I just reached out. People could apply, we'll have conversations. Now we have a for each one. We would we love new people that I've never met, but there's a conversation that comes beforehand. Right? If I taught somebody for forty five minutes and they just talk about themselves

for forty five minutes, Right? They don't even ask me any and I'm running this thing. I'm running it, and they don't even ask me any questions. What are they gonna do with a hundred people? Same exact thing. They're gonna talk about themselves. They're not gonna be curious. They're not gonna ask questions. They're gonna be all about themselves. So weed that out. The people that are like, what's my return on investment on this? They didn't get offers either. They're not

thinking. They don't have the right mindset yet of what the event is about. If you're already thinking what's the ROI on this, as so many people said, the magic is getting into the room and then things happen. Right? The people that understand it got that. So people with the ROI question, I generally didn't offer it to them unless it was a better conversation. The other one was, you're like, will my ideal client be there? That's a major red flag for me. So I'm creating an event

around your ideal client so you can sell to them. That's out. No chance. So I always start every business and everything we do in terms of who's this not for. Right? Find out who's not for. It's very easy to find out who it is for. So when I establish those things, it's like, okay. Then who is it for? People that are curious, not just people, but entrepreneurs, people that are building businesses, people that are creative, people that are generous and curious, people that like

other people. Also, the other thing is, like, there's a difference between an introvert and a wallflower. Introverts are great with one to one conversations. Amazing with it. They don't generally like huge crowds. Wallflowers are people that don't like any of it, and they're skittish and they have to be handheld. So So I had people say to me like, what are you gonna do about the wall flowers? You know, how are you gonna shape the event? I said, here's how I'm gonna do it. I'm not gonna

invite them. I don't want the wall flower. I don't want somebody to have to hold by the hand and introduce them to people because they're so scared. That's the type of thing. Go to an event where you can listen to speakers and take notes. This is for people that actually want to connect with other people.

So all these things blend together. And when you get on the phone call with somebody and they ooze all the good stuff and they don't have any of the bad stuff and you go, you'd be a great, so then I make an offer. Hey, I think you'd be great. And I think they also know I wasn't doing it for a ticket sale because I can offer to a lot of people. I just need to offer it to the right people and you don't always get

a hundred percent right. There's always going to be, everybody's got one person that annoyed them. It's not perfect. Right. But you do the best you can to make it as clean as you can for everybody else there. And I think that's a big part of, of how we kind of weeded it out. One unexpected part of the conference for me is after meeting Vincent's wife, Elizabeth, Vincent is no

longer my favorite Puglisi. That's the way it usually works. I mean, you meet my kids, and I'm, like, the fourth or fifth depending on how they're acting. Yeah. Yeah. She was great. She was great. And it was so cool to see your kids helping out and going around and meeting people and serving them. And you and Elizabeth have done well. Oh, thank you. And it's funny because you don't know everything that's going on. So Dylan's our 13 year old, and they have these, like, cocktail tables over by

the elevator. I didn't know that Dylan was inside of one of them because they have, like, the black, you know, tablecloths. So he was inside of one and he was grabbing people's legs as they were walking by and do so he grabbed my, I'm like, what are you doing down there? And I'm like, that's a little, I guess, a part of the uncomfort. He's like scaring people from under the table. I'm like, you know, that's, that's a little bit of

the unexpected surprise you're going to get when you come. Yeah. It's hysterical. That's right. Well, I feel like you accomplished what you meant to accomplish. You took a conference and you unconferenced it. Do you feel you accomplished what you were trying? How does it feel now that you've pulled this event off? That's a great question. It it you know, it's funny because

I am I don't like giving myself credit on things. So I'm always because as you can tell from the conference, I'm always looking for how do we make this better. But and I don't know if you heard it. You know, I've got to do a lot of things in my career. Right? Especially when it came to photography and the the things I got to do and people got

to I got to hang out with. And I said to everybody, this was a top three moment in my career, if not higher, to be able to come up with an idea, to work with my wife on this, to have so many people that we care about in the room together, People that believed in an idea that there was no there was no, like, guarantee of success. Like, this

is trusting in me to do something that we haven't done before. And you're gonna get on a plane from Seattle or from New York City or from Texas, you know, or, like, Tim, no four hours north of Edmonton. And you're gonna be coming here. You're gonna spend the money on a plane ticket, on hotels, and to trust in me and for it to go the way that it went. And all the social media posts that were done, all the comments and messages I got, gifts, cards. Yeah.

I have to say it went it went beyond what I could have ever hoped for. And at the same time, knowing we could do it so much better. Yeah. Well, that's this is great. I I just wanted to do a little review of the Unconference because it was unlike any other conference that I've been to. It very much had your personality to it, meaning it was unconventional. It wasn't like what you're gonna see elsewhere. It wasn't Vincent doing a conference to do a conference because that would give him status.

It really was just bringing 100 fabulous people together. And I'll tell you the two more quick pieces, Vincent. I found it was because you brought so many curious people there. There were times it would be hard to find out much about other people because I would start to talk to someone and they kept asking me questions. I'm like, wait a minute. I'm trying to find out about you. So forget about me for a moment. But

that's a testament to the type of people that were there. And also, I will tell you, I am really good one on one, one on two. I can talk all day. Put me in front of a crowd. You put me on stage in front of a hundred people. I can talk all day. No problem. My least favorite situation is to just put me in a room and say, okay, here's twenty, thirty, forty, fifty people. Now go meet them. I do terrible. Terrible. So you created that situation a couple of times where you just put a hundred

strangers in a room and said, now go meet each other. And I'm like, Vincent, I do not like this. But you found a way to make it a little more comfortable. And I can think of three people I met in that situation that I've been in contact with since the conference. And maybe I wouldn't have met them otherwise, but you kind of forced that. And I didn't like it at the time, but I appreciate it. It's funny. You said that because mark Foster came out to me and he goes, I didn't like when you did that,

but it was absolutely what I needed. And you're saying the same thing and it wasn't even me. It was Dustin Heider. It was a part of the conference and, and he runs his own. He was a real estate conference. He does. And he came up to me because we basically said that first hour is going to be about the connection. We want you to meet different people. And I was going to let it go for an hour. And he came up to me and he goes,

all right. And he's like, can I give you some advice? I said, absolutely. He goes, okay. About five minutes, stop it and tell them they need to stop who they're talking to and meet someone else. And I was like, I don't want to do that. So I don't want to do, I want, because there's not only are they going to meet different people, but also some people are going to be stuck in conversations they don't want to be in. And this is a way

for them to separate. So I did that and I saw the looks I was getting, I was kind of getting a little like, what are you doing here? And I was like, no. And then we did it one more time. And I had a bunch of people come up to me and said, I would not have met these other people if it wasn't for them. So that's interesting. You said that, but also to your first point, the whole point of this is not for the conference to end the unconference to end when the sun sets. Right? We got the

trolley down to the beach, watch sun. It wasn't for it to end then. It was for it to be a beginning for you guys. You had these conversations, and now we want to expand your network. What's really fun to watch Jody is the social media for the last week since then. All these people that did not know each other are now interacting with each other on their content, on their posts. They're supporting each other. They never would have

met. And everybody's engagement is going higher because one everybody's involved with one another. And now, as you said, you're having conversations with people that you met. It's supposed to be the beginning, but without that, those deep conversations to start, it's really hard to get those conversations going. So in that aspect that it really accomplished, what we're hoping for is to keep going with that in terms of the more you build your connections, your networks

with great people. Like I say all the time, all you need is one great connection. All you need is one great idea and a wealth of connection. That's all I need, Because now these people are gonna wanna support you. They're gonna wanna promote you, help you, connect you as opposed to I have all these ideas, but I don't really connect with people. I want them just to buy stuff. It doesn't work that way, especially this day and age anymore. Everybody's just tired of lead magnets.

They're tired of all the stuff that goes with it. It's all about the connections. And I think, you know, that's what it was meant to do. Alright. Maybe we'll have Vincent back again. Vincent's been on so many times. Like a couple of years ago, we did that experiment where we did five episodes in five days. That was fun. So Vincent is a familiar voice to the Jody Mayberry show, so I'm sure he'll be back. But, Vincent, where can we go to find out more about you and connect

with you? Yeah. LinkedIn and Facebook are my two social media places that I'm most active at. I can send you links if you want to share that. And also our websites, my membership, freedom.com. We didn't talk about that, but that's our, that's our main business. The young conference comes underneath that. So my membership, freedom.com, I wrote a book called the wealth of connection that we talked about. I

give the audio away for free. It's right there, prominent on the website. I could share it with Jody to share with you as well, but that's the best way. Alright. Thank you, Vincent, and thank you for listening to the Jody Mayberry Show. Metaphorically, he's the man. It's Sugar Jay.