[Podcast] Predictable Income: Financial Freedom Through Virtual Summits (Liam Austin)

For many entrepreneurs, the ebb and flow of inconsistent income is normal. However, it doesn’t have to be that way.

In this episode, Liam Austin shares his journey to discover predictable income through virtual events. You'll learn about Liam's early career as a professional athlete and high-performing sales leader, what makes for a successful virtual event, and how to gain more predictable income by what you do after your event wraps up.

Key Takeaways

• Success comes quicker with commitment. Increase your odds by going from might to must.
• Get unstuck with a coach. Like professional athletes, working with one or more coaches provides a clearer, faster path to where we want to go.
• Increase revenue with reruns. Repackage the recordings of your virtual summits for more predictable income.
• Your system is another revenue stream. Once you’ve fine-tuned your business engine, consider teaching others how to do something similar for their own.
• Pick the right virtual event for you. With over 100 different styles of session-based events, you can be creative with the best format for your event.
• Relationships win over revenue. The money’s great, but virtual events done well are more impactful to your business when you focus on long-term partnerships instead of just one-off paydays.
• Get your offer ready. Sell your own high-ticket program on the back end of your event, even if you’re just starting out. As the host, your credibility boost should lead to more clients wanting to work with you, not just your guest speakers.
• Turn your event evergreen. Don’t rush from one summit to the next. Instead, build a full funnel around a packaged replay that can scale with more partners and paid ads.
• Mix live with pre-recorded sessions. Host live sessions with your audience to get them pumped up for the content, but pre-record your guest speakers to be more flexible for their schedules.

Resources Mentioned

• Liam on LinkedIn
• Entrepreneurs HQ
• Quick Workshop Win checklist
• Virtual Summit Class

Transcript

Who is Liam Austin?

Bob: I can't wait to dig into your story, to your journey, and especially the tips that you're going to be sharing today, around predictable income.

But before we do that though, I like to ask first, what is a way that you and Entrepreneurs HQ transform the lives of your clientele?

Liam: Well, yeah, I think it's around the lines of that predictable income. There's so many entrepreneurs that are on a bit of a roller coaster, unpredictable income. They don't know when the next client is going to be joining them or where the next sale is going to come from.

Just having some consistency and stability in your life, just decreases stress levels. And ultimately, if we get our clients to that 10K, 20K mark, it's then all about, well, how do we grow that sustainably to 30, 40, 50, 80K months?

Bob: That's awesome. Now, you have been able to do a lot of successful things over your life by creating a business. I think that one of the things I always love to know about too is, what kind of result or reward do you feel like you're grateful for, that this intentional business has done for you?

I mean, where you're living today, any other aspects that you can share with our audience, so they can see what the after can look like, as they pursue what we're going to talk about today.

Liam: All right. I got lots of examples here, Bob. Just stop me if I keep going on too long. You can hear from my voice, if you haven't met me before, I'm Australian. However, I'm living in Europe because my partner is Swedish.

We're actually on a little island, a country called Malta, which is in the Mediterranean, just south of Italy, but most of our clients are in the US, Canada.

So we've got a business, a very international, spread out along the world, so we can work from anywhere. That's really why we started this business, my partner, Sara and myself.

We wanted to be able to see our family in Sweden as well as in Australia, whenever we wanted. So, we knew we wanted to create online income for ourselves.

That all started with our very first virtual summit, back in 2015. Just doing that, I knew I was on the right path and I'd be doing this for long into the future.

It's now been what, close to a decade of doing these online events with my partner, because of the impact we are able to create with these virtual events for our audience.

Now, our audience are spread out everywhere in the world. It's free to attend our events. Typically, we give out free tickets. There are some upgrades and VIP passes, to get a bit more of an intimate experience or to get the recordings or some templates and scripts and some other bonuses like that.

But typically, it's free, so we're supporting people. Doesn't matter whether you're in the US, in South America, in Asia, or in Europe, you can get access to our events via just an online internet connection.

The events that we hold, typically we're inviting the top, the best experts in the world in their field, for the niche that we might be discussing at that particular event.

So these are people that are very difficult to get a meeting with or to learn from and get access to.

As an Australian, if I wanted to go and see this person at a conference, speak, hear their presentation, I'd have to book a few days away because just the flight itself, there and back, is going to take me a couple of days. Then a few days at the conference.

The costs of just the flights, the hotel, the transport and food, time away from the family, time away from the business, it's costly in a lot of ways, whereas the online event is free.

As long as you've got an internet connection, you can show up in your own home, where you're comfortable, in your own office and get access to these experts that you wouldn't necessarily get access to.

So, the amount of emails and just communication that came from that first event and now happen on a daily basis, thanking me for giving access to this expertise, this knowledge that's going to grow this person and change their life, that is probably the biggest value driver and what drives me wanting to drive this business forward and make even more impact.

Bob: That's awesome. I can't wait to dig into some of the strategies that you're doing, not only for events themselves, but what you do after the events, which is even more powerful.

Going for the Back of the Net

Bob: I also know that back in the day, you were a professional soccer player, football, for those of you that are in Europe.

First of all, where did you play on the pitch? And secondly, how did you decide to jump from that into a career in sales and partnerships, which you did for a little while before your business?

Liam: Yeah, sure. I think as a professional athlete, you're a high achiever. You're always aiming to be the best or to get better, at the very least.

I played striker, so I was a goal scorer. I wanted to be hitting the back of the net and between the goalposts.

One of my favorite quotes, from Wayne Gretzky, "You miss a hundred percent of the shot you don't take."

Now, I heard this from a coach when I was young. I think my father was telling me as well, take that shot. If you don't take the shot, you're never going to score that goal. So, I've taken that philosophy into business.

I'm not necessarily a risk taker, but I'm just like, hey, take that shot. If there's an opportunity in front of you, why wouldn't you take that shot and go for it? So, I think that led me down the path of going into sales.

From the year 2000, I worked with an online startup out of Sydney. They gave me my first website, a white-labeled version of their technology and database, that I used to market and promote.

I was learning about SEO, how to do paid ads. That really got me interested in the impact the internet could have, because this white-labeled website that they gave me was actually a dating website. It was a dating database that was powering Yahoo, MSN, worldwide.

They eventually sold to Match.com in 2004, but the connections being made, the impact that we were having on people who were able to find their soulmate, find their partner for life. We were being invited to the weddings, almost on a weekly basis, at one point.

Just the power of that, knowing that the power of the internet and that this technology was just going to grow and get even more powerful, that just led me down the path of, online business is the way to go and now conferences virtual events.

Bob: Cool. How did you decide to shift from a career that looks reasonably successful into doing your own thing, as an entrepreneur?

Liam: I think it was the freedom of setting my own schedule, working when I wanted to. I didn't have to show up to a specific training session or a specific meeting, at a specific time. I didn't have a boss to having to answer to and the freedom to travel around the world, really.

To be able to be both in Sweden and Australia, when we need to was, really important for us as a family. That drove the idea of the business, but also it drove us to be successful.

Because from 2000, when I had my first website, all the way to 2015, when I've started Entrepreneurs HQ, and what's that 15 years, there was little spots of success, but there wasn't any major successes.

We were making a little bit of money here and there. It was never consistent. It was up and down. I never completely committed to it.

That commitment changed when I knew Sara and I needed to travel. We needed to make this happen. It wasn't a choice anymore. It had to happen. We had to figure out a way. That's when it started working with us.

Yes, the virtual summer, the virtual events had a big impact on that. Yes, we chose the right strategy, but also, we had that fire in the belly and that commitment to make it happen.

Combine Mindset and Mentoring to Master Your Path

Bob: That's really amazing. I was just going to get ready to ask you a question around mindset shifts that you might've taken on, in order to open up this world of possibilities. You hit on this idea of, there is no other option.

Is there any other shifts that you took on or had to learn or had to just have an epiphany about, that said, this is the way forward?

Liam: In terms of, if you're thinking about starting a business, I think you really have to understand your why and go really deep, like five levels deep on your why, to understand, well, what is that burning desire to really make this happen? If things get tough, what's going to push you through this? We had our reason, right.

So, finally I had this business that takes me around the world, impacts millions of people. It took me 15 years of mistakes and errors and struggles to get there.

It was really, I think the shift was that burning desire and really understanding my why, to make this thing happen. So, that's for the beginner, the person starting out.

Then since we've been running this business, 2015 onwards, whenever a shift happened, it was because we had a mentor, someone coaching us. Someone who was guiding us down a pathway, who had been there before, who had made the mistakes, so we could avoid them and knew exactly where we wanted to go and how to get there.

They were giving us a path and a plan. I didn't really understand the idea of having this coach to begin with, but when someone pointed out to me, but you've had a coach for your soccer career, your football career, since you're a child.

Not just one coach. You'd have your school coach. You'd have your local coach. You'd have your representative, like regional coach. So you had three coaches, all giving you input, to help you get towards where you want to get to, towards your goal.

I also had my father. That's four people. He played soccer his whole life too, so he really had some great ideas. So, I had a lot of input there.

So I think in terms of, if you are struggling, if you're not sure of the path, if you're not motivated when you wake up in the morning, I think getting someone who can support you and guide you is a step in the right direction.

Understand Whose Advice You’re Taking

Bob: I'm curious. How did you handle when your coaches gave you contradictory advice? Because I imagine there's many people listening to this show, who they may have a mentor. They certainly have family members, that are chattering or hopefully inspiring them, one on each side of the shoulder.

When you had contradictory input, how did you decide which one to follow or to carve out a path of your own?

Liam: Yeah, really interesting. There were different levels of coaches that I understood, with their level of expertise, what they were maybe good at, what they weren't so great at.

There were certain things that I would listen to, when it came to those expertise from those people. But when it wasn't their expertise and they were telling me something that was conflicting with someone who was the expert, I would in a nice way, just point out that, "This is the input I got from this other person. How does that fit in?"

Typically, they would give some kind of explanation, but I think it's good to have different points of view.

If you want to make a million dollars in your business, there's plenty of different ways to get there. There's not just one way, one method, one system that you have to do. There's plenty of ways to get there, but I think it's important to actually choose one system, so you can follow it to the letter.

Because typically, if you're following a system, it all works together to make it work. Similar to, if one of my coach was telling me something to do, it was because it was a team effort. It would work with the strategy and system we had for that team, but it may not work for this other team over here.

So if you are following a step-by-step path, you're following someone who's taken that path, then follow their steps exactly. Don't look at these other shiny objects or what these other people are doing, because they might be on their own path and that's okay.

Bob: Love it. Since we do have a few soccer examples that you've been sharing, I have to ask, because it's certainly a cultural thing here in the States. Number one, have you watched Ted Lasso so far? If so, what about that show, do you carry forward in entrepreneurial life?

Liam: Great question. I have watched Ted Lasso. I don't know who hasn't right now, but I think it's like, anyone can make it. As long as you've got the determination, you believe in something, you really understand your why, you can make it happen. You can turn disbelievers into believers.

Bob: It's a great show. I can't wait for the next season.

Think Beyond the One-Time Payoff of Virtual Events

Bob: Let's shift gears now, to your zone of entrepreneurial genius, which is creating that predictable income and doing so specifically with virtual events.

We're going to dive deep into this, as much as we can in the time remaining in our episode. The first thing I'd like to ask you is, what do people have as the misconception or a wrong idea around virtual summits and virtual events, that you'd like to just squash here from the beginning?

Liam: Yeah, that it's a one-time payoff. I see so many people, where you run an event. And they think, okay, this thing that I spent weeks, months creating, I've created all the copy, all the funnels, all the video sales letters, all the Checkout pages, all the products, delivering it.

All of this was set up to sell within this two, three-week window, pre-event. And then, you know what? Once that's over, we're going to have to move on to something else, because it's all done and dusted. That event's over.

I believe this. For the first good year of our business, 2015 we started the business, 2016 we're still running events and we're launching all the time. It's exhausting. It's quite tiring, having to come up with all those sales pages again, the whole new website, the branding, the name, the logo, the packaging, the video editing. I could go on and on, on this.

But when you create a product, if you just sell it once and then never sell it again, what a waste. So 2016, we realized that this was not sustainable for us.

So much launching, so many unpredictable days and nights where we're like, well, where's our next sale going to come from? Well, it's coming from our event that we're launching in three months' time. What's going to happen between those three months? Well, we're just going to have to wait for this big payday that's happening in a few months.

Reruns Aren’t Just for Nick at Nite

So, we had these spiky sales and revenue months. It was stressful. So 2016, we looked at one of our past events. We said, well, this is still relevant today. Can we still sell this program, this product, this event that we ran?

It's a course. It's all this training in there, from all these experts. So, we repackaged it. We sent out an email to our lists. Guess what? Sold.

So, we made sales. We're making revenue, even though we didn't create a new event. It was unbelievable. Because typically, when we made money, we spent weeks or months trying to build this product so we could sell it.

Then suddenly, we were just like, we had to write an email, send that out. We made more money. What? This was revolutionary, in my mind and in our business. So all right, well, what's this, luck? Was this a fluke?

We repackaged a different event, sent out that email and again, it sold. So now today, looking back, we've run over 15 summits that I've personally hosted.

We've done hundreds more for our clients, but I'm just talking about just for our business, Entrepreneurs HQ, we've hosted over 15 of them, that are all now repackaged and being sold every single day, long after we ran them the first time.

Predictability Begets Profitability

So, they're able to not just generate that one payoff, that big payday. We generate those pay days every single day or every single week, well into the future. As long as the content's all evergreen and it's still relevant for people, then people are still going to buy and want access to the results that you're promising as part of this course or the learnings, the strategies, the access to this expertise.

People still want it, whether it was an online course that was recorded one year ago or that it's going to be dripped out over the next six weeks.

That was the biggest turning point, I think really in our business, that we could now have this consistent flow of traffic, of leads coming in.

People who were getting access to our events, they were purchasing. They were buying, making sales. They're generating appointments for our sales team, and they were enrolling as clients. So, they were doing this on an ongoing basis, a rolling basis. Meaning that, we could have more predictability in our business.

We could make forecasts. We could make investments into the future, into our business. Make extra hires, knowing that, okay, this is the forecast of these predictable incomes, predictable revenue and clients that we've got coming in over the next few months.

We can now confidently say, yes, let's move in that direction and make those investments because of this stability, now in our business.

The Evolution of the Virtual Summit Model

Bob: Having the honor of being on one of those summits, way back in 2016, I did have a front row seat to the process, when you were running this as a live event. How often are you running these as live events now, versus working through optimizing those packages that you've already recorded?

Liam: Yeah. We went through a few different stages in the journey with our business. The first three years, it wasn't until October 2018, where we started teaching our methodology around running these virtual events.

When I say virtual events, it's summits and workshops, typically. But when people come into our world, they're doing seminars, challenges and all types of virtual events in there.

The first three years, we're just running these events for ourselves. We're just working it out. We're making money by bringing in these experts, us teaching and selling these tickets and VIP passes through the events.

Now, that was going great. It was doing good, but people were emailing us saying, "All right. Well, if you built up an email list of a hundred thousand people in under 18 months, this seems like a great lead generation strategy. Obviously, you're doing some good sales and making some pretty decent revenue and money off the back of this. So, can you teach this system?"

We said, no. We turn these people away for three years. Every event that we ran, every single month, we're getting these emails, asking us to teach this methodology.

October '18, we decided, okay. Yes, we'll launch Virtual Summit Academy first. So, Virtual Summit Academy teaches you the whole system for launching a virtual summit for your business, as the host, to generate leads, build your authority and get clients off the back end.

Since then, we've had over 200 people go through Virtual Summit Academy. And from there, we had people just asking us, "This is awesome. This is great. This is working for us. Can you teach us some of the other strategies and methodologies that you're using to automate your business and grow? Turn these events evergreen. Put them on autopilot, get these predictable income months happening for me."

So we launched a group coaching program in 2020. That was in March. Yeah. We've been helping people ever since, via our online courses, our workshops, which we republish as mini courses, our summits, our membership and our group coaching programs.

The Perfect Size for a Virtual Event

Bob: As you're teaching these to folks doing them for the first time, is there a sweet spot for the number of experts that they bring to the table when they launch their own summit?

Liam: Depending on what your goals are, how much time you have, because if you look at a summit versus a workshop, the way we run our workshops is, it's you teaching for just 90 minutes.

If you come up with the idea today, you can have marketed, promoted and actually taught the workshop within the next seven days.

It's super simple, really quick to get up and running. You can get a half a dozen or a few dozen people to that paid workshop and start getting clients off the back of it, in just over a week.

Whereas the summit, if you're going to do a full-blown summit, where you're looking at 20 plus speakers across multiple days, then you want a 90-day window to prepare and make sure that you're going to maximize your return on investment of the effort and time that you put into it.

Because we saw that we were trying to scale our summits and move it from three months to two months to one month. When we were doing that, we could see that we had a leaky bucket.

We had opportunities that we weren't grabbing. We weren't taking the shot on all the shots that we had the opportunity to. So, we kind of scaled back. We looked at this. We started doing them every three months.

We started getting the same, if not better results, than trying to squeeze in more events in that same period of time.

So yeah, 90 days would be the maximum to do a 20-speaker event. I would say, ideally, look for around the 30-plus speaker mark. And then also look at a three to five-day window.

Longer than that, then it comes a little bit longer. By then, you might be looking at a different category.

There's so many ways to do these virtual events. There's a documentary style that you can release as episodes, rather than big chunks of interviews all at once.

You can cut out pieces of interviews and paste them all together, into a topic-based summit or scene-based, which I think, it gives a completely different experience and end result.

We show some of our clients the different ways you can run events. We've actually got a whole list of over a hundred different session styles that you can run, from a keynote presentation to a Q&A to a panel, to just a normal, standard presentation with an interview style.

So, there's over a hundred of these different session styles you can put together, to make your event unique.

So if you do see an event that's in your market, in your industry, that's out there, don't feel like, oh, it's already been done. It's probably a good thing that it's been done, because it means that there's probably money in it and that it's working and there's demand for it, especially if it's been done a number of times.

You can come in with your own theme, with your own different session styles. Just you being the host, that makes the event different.

Boost Your Credibility and Connections with a Virtual Event

Bob: What I also love about that style of event, as far as bringing in expert speakers is, if you don't feel super confident just yet, in your expertise being ready to be on display as the thing people buy, you're introducing folks as a connector to all these other experts.

By extension, it seems like, at least my experience has been, that your own expertise and authority does rise because you have this connection.

Can you speak to that, for the folks that are maybe a little bit unsure about how they might get 30 people to say yes to a virtual summit they would be hosting, if they don't really have much name recognition so far?

Liam: Yeah. With a virtual event, it can absolutely be done with someone starting from scratch, moving into a brand new market, brand new industry, where no one knows you. You don't have an audience. You have no email list at all.

It's actually the perfect launch pad for anyone breaking into a new market. It literally puts you on the scene. It puts you in the minds of the influencers in that marketplace and builds your relationship with them, as well.

You're inviting them to be involved in your event. You're asking them to collaborate with you, to make this impactful event in your market.

So, you're building these relationships with these influencers, these friendships, these joint venture partners, that you can lean on in the future.

The way you should be approaching these partnerships is looking at it long-term, so that you can really just become friends. I think that's really important, that it's the friendship. You can go really deep on that and really understand people and grow with them.

I really, truly believe in the rising tide lifts all boats philosophy. But those partnerships can lead down to doing partnership deals in the future or actually going into business together.

I mean, we've had so many opportunities to do that kind of thing, with speakers that we had speak at our events back in 2015 and in 2016.

I mean, just even today, we met back in 2016. Hopefully it was a great experience for you. I know that we had 13,000 people that were able to get towards that event at that time.

It's just, I think building these relationships is something that, again, the event hosts don't think of enough. It's transactional. They think it's a one-off payday. Really, it should be something that is consistent, that we build upon.

It's a good excuse. It's like, "Hey, do you want to come speak on my stage for an interview? I'll get you in front of these people."

It's a nice invitation. That's the start of the relationship that you want to build and grow into something even bigger and better.

Driving More Revenue from Virtual Event and Summits

Bob: Love it. I have a couple more questions before we wrap up, that I think our listeners are probably having in the back of their mind.

One is, you mentioned earlier, giving these as free events so that they would be accessible to everybody, with no barrier to entry.

Obviously, most people that do that kind of a summit, they drive revenue from the recordings. But I imagine that you've come up with and seen a lot of other creative ways to drive revenue from an event.

So, can you speak to maybe two or three ways, that even the earlier stage virtual summit folks are able to drive revenue from the live event and then obviously, that predictable income that you're speaking to, after it's over?

Liam: Yeah, for sure. To maximize your ROI from your event, you should have an offer to sell off the back of the event. So, an online course, a coaching program, a consultancy, a service. Whatever it may be, have something to sell off the back end.

Ideally, it should be high ticket. I'm thinking five to 15K, somewhere in that range, that people can work with you more deeper, to get the kind of results that you were showcasing to them across this three-day event.

There's another, what, 362 days of the year that you can be supporting and helping them. So, give them that option. Give them that opportunity to learn from you and get more results, across many more days throughout the year and even years into the future.

So, definitely have a course, a high-ticket offer to be selling off the back end. That's crucial.

Then, reverse engineer the summit, the summit topic, the people who you're going to invite, the actual topics that they're going to be talking about.

So you take those prospects, those leads on a journey with you, to ultimately have a conversation with you, about working with you further.

This is really crucial and a mistake that we made for several years. Like I said, the story, we didn't even have an online course or a coaching program until three and then five years later. We left millions of dollars on the table, for sure.

So if you're thinking about running one of these virtual summits, yes, absolutely. It's a great way to enter a market as an unknown, build your email list very quickly, build your authority, but there's going to be a massive opportunity to sell off the back end.

If you've designed the event right, you've laid the foundations, you should be getting anywhere between a 60 to 75% opt-in rate for the summit because of the way it's structured.

Then, those leads are going to be going through an experience where they know, like and trust you. They're ready to buy and invest and spend more time with you. So, we have that conversation. We enroll them into our courses and our programs.

Now, this is the funnel. This is a system. This works really well when you launch the event the very first time. It works. You get some great results. You get some clients. You make some money.

What do we do next?

Build a Funnel Around Your Evergreen Event

Liam: Do we just go and create the next event? Which is what we've done in the early days. Well, that is an option. But the smarter option and what we teach our clients now is, if this all worked and all the conversion rates were at the benchmarks that we set for each of the conversion points in the funnel, then great, it's a green light. Let's turn this evergreen.

Maybe there's some things that are below the benchmark, so certain conversion points. Okay, let's make those tweaks. Let's look at what might be the problem. Let's move those big levers, and then let's set this evergreen.

By setting it evergreen, we can start sending paid traffic to it, knowing what our customer lifetime value is, what our average order value is for that cart.

We can say, okay, well look, we can spend this amount in paid ads. Let's start spending just a little bit of money each day and seeing if the cold traffic is converting just as well as the warm traffic we were getting when we first launched the event, the referrals that were coming from our speakers, sponsors, media, and affiliates.

If we get the similar or same results or close to, with the cold traffic, we can then start scaling that and spending more and more, without having to adjust the funnel, because we already know it works.

We just need to adjust, maybe the advertising, the messaging, type of traffic that we're targeting, and then everything else is built already. You don't have to necessarily work on that.

There's probably some tweaks to improve it, as the cold traffic comes through. But then, we can really scale this. We can start spending more and more money on a monthly basis, which means more traffic monthly, more clients monthly and more revenue and income on a monthly basis, that's consistent.

I think that's the key there. Predictable income, consistent months, as an entrepreneur, it's like the holy grail.

Don't forget, if you are running one of these virtual events, turn into a mini-course, sell it forever, get clients and revenue forever as well.

Repurposing Your Event Content

Bob: Do you ever take those 30-person summits and break them up into four or five different courses, or do you wind up packaging them all at once, or a little bit of [inaudible 00:31:52] on that?

Liam: Yeah. There's just so many options. We've created books. We've created a daily email program. We've created courses, like video courses, audio courses, email courses from this content. It's almost endless.

If you run one summit with 20-plus speakers, you've got a year's worth of social media content. You've got a year's worth of emails. You've got courses to send.

Not just one course from the whole package, with all the bonuses, but all these other mini packages as well.

Here's just the audio package. You purchase that. Here's just the transcripts or the notes or the takeaways or the worksheets. You can sell them all as individual products as well.

I think the great thing about running these events is that, you've got this content. You've got this digital product now. If the funnel worked, keep selling it. Keep doing it forever.

Make sure that's in your head when you're designing the theme, you're doing the interviews or you're creating the content. If you're creating a workshop, a presentation, that this content, I want it to be evergreen. I want it to be relevant in two, three, five years from now.

So, we can make sure that our copy is all in sync. We don't have to make too many edits. There might be some date changes, what we need to make. But other than that, it is quite minimal.

Live or Pre-Recorded

Bob: My final tactical question is around the idea of doing a summit live versus prerecording, before it's released to your audience.

I know there's pros and cons to both. How do you advise your clients and your students on which approach to take?

Liam: Pre-recorded, typically. Then if you're doing any live sessions, make sure it's you doing those presentations. Maybe it's a wrap-up presentation or a it's pre-event kickoff session. Make sure it's you, so they really get to interact with you, engage with you. They see you as the authority, as the expert, as the host of this event.

You're going to be that first person that they speak to at the end of the event, when they realized, "You know what? There's so much I learned here. There's so much I need to go implement. I need some help, some guidance and support to be able to do this. I'm going to talk with Bob first, because he was the host. I've got to interacting with him on those events. I saw him interview all of these other people during the prerecorded sessions. Number one choice, Bob. I'm most familiar with him. My know, like and trust factor is high."

So mix it up. There's so many ways to do it, how you feel. But I think that, as a standard templated approach, pre-interview all those other experts, which gives them flexibility. They don't have to show up at a specific time. You can get the top experts in the world.

Time's not an excuse anymore. "What time works for you?" "Okay, great. I'll make sure I show up at 2:00, 3:00 AM, so it suits you or time zone."

I was doing that. I'm in Europe. I'm in Australia. I need to show up at some ridiculous hours, to accommodate some of our top experts.

But then with the live sessions, you can show up and really build even deeper relationships with your audience.

Take Your Next Step with Liam

Bob: I know you have a lot of resources available at Entrepreneurs HQ. Is there anything specific you'd like, that people can do as a first step towards learning more about how to do that virtual event, towards a predictable income pathway for themselves?

Liam: There's a checklist I can give you, for both the workshops and the summits. So, if you go to QuickWorkshopWin.com, you can download our checklist, which is every single step you need to do to run one of these workshops, that gets you clients in just seven days.

Then we've got our virtual summit class, VirtualSummitClass.com. It's a virtual summit masterclass. Really, it's a 60 to 90-minute training, taking you in depth about how we structured and ran our first event and how to get your speakers to speak for free, how to get them to collaborate with you on the event and actually promote and what's in it for them. Make sure it's a win-win situation. So if you go and get that class, you just need to go to VirtualSummitClass.com.

Bob: Awesome. Of course, we'll have those links in the show notes, in case you forget them, over at Leadpages.com/podcast, for this and all the previous episodes.

Liam, it's been a pleasure to reconnect with you for today's conversation. Thanks so much for dropping a lot of wisdom and sharing your story for the Lead Generation today.

Liam: Yeah. Cheers, Bob. I know you've been on a lot of these. You've experienced this a lot, so there's some really great questions there. If there are any more questions for anyone, yeah, please feel free to reach out. You can just email me, liam {at} entrepreneurshq.com.