Michael Tucker [00:00:00]:

It's actually we were at, like, $750,000, but there were certain things we learned from launching a product and getting no sales to running event where we're making 300,000 dollars, $500,000 in a week.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:13]:

Welcome to the creators' adventure where we interview creators from around the world hearing their stories about growing a business. Today, we're gonna talk about the power of running challenges and live virtual events for your audience. everyone. I'm Brian McAnulty, the founder of Heights platform. Let's get into it. Hey, everyone. We're here today with Michael Tucker. He is the CEO and founder of the funnel Pros. He has established himself as a virtual event guru empowering online entrepreneurs to spread their global message via virtual stages. Michael has helped over 75 coaches generate more than 35,000,000 revenue and collected hundreds of thousands of leads for his clients, some including, the Maya Davis, Marvin Mitchell, Stormy Wellington, and more. Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Tucker [00:01:05]:

Thanks, man. So pumped and excited to be here and add value. Thanks for having me.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:10]:

So what would you say is the biggest thing that either that you have done or you are doing that has helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy?

Michael Tucker [00:01:18]:

Man, that's a that's a great question. And when you say freedom, freedom means a lot of things to a lot of people. If I was to go back If I was to go back about 5 or 6 years ago, dude, I was living. Is it okay if I tell stories? I like telling stories.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:32]:

Is that cool with you? That's what want. Yeah.

Michael Tucker [00:01:34]:

Alright. Awesome. So I just wanna make sure. So I going back, like, 5 or 6 years ago, I was not where I was today. Our business was not actually I just graduated college, and I just gotten married. And my wife and I spent all of our money on a honeymoon in Bali. came back, didn't have anything. And so I was working as a part time restaurant server and making nothing, man. Making 20, 30000 hours a year. And as you know, that's barely enough to get by, especially when you're married. And so, I had a mentor and a friend of mine, and he was like, hey, I wanna teach you real estate. I want to I was like, real estate. I are you do you know who you're talking to? I don't I don't have any money. And he said, well, I wanna I wanna teach you. I'm starting this coaching program. So some of you all hear, you know, your coaches, course graders. He was starting his course in his coaching business. And he said, I I have this coaching program I'm rolling out. I would love to to bring you in and, like, just help you. And I said, well, dude, again, I only have money to spend on your course. And he said, well, let's figure something out. I said, well, I know a little bit about how to make websites. I've done it for a little while. I've kinda helped, you know, my mom, my dad, my grandparents, there's no build, some Facebook pages. Like, I know a little bit about digital stuff. I said, how about we we barter? I'll build out your funnels. So give me access to your click funnels. I'll build out your funnels, and you teach me real estate. And that was the journey on my way to freedom, like we're talking about today. And so from there, we took actually David, which was my real estate mentor at the time. We took his real estate coaching business to 7 figures in less than 12 months from scratch. And now here's the deal. David didn't have a big email list a big social media following, hating it, spend money on ads, and we that. And so it was mind blowing what we were able to do. And so some of the techniques that we used were virtual stages and virtual events to blow up his business and blow up his audience. in 12 months. And, yeah, man. So virtual events is, like, the key thing that I say, like, for me right now, has provided me the lifestyle lifestyle I'm able to have, but then also, you know, all my clients that work with us, the same thing. They're using virtual events to really propel themselves forward in their coaching this.

Bryan McAnulty [00:03:54]:

Awesome. Yeah. I like, how you touched on, like, trying to figure out everything related to money, like, after getting married and all of that and maybe even going a little bit off topic, but I think it's really interesting that, like, the way that the world works is pretty difficult because Everybody is in school, and everybody has to get a job. And, like, the in between point of, like, figuring out a job, starting a family, all that the time when you, like, need to spend the most money is when you have the least. And, like, you know, start a family buy a house, get married. All the and and going to school, maybe you have debt from school. you have all this all this coming in that you have to spend money on, and you probably have the lease. So there's a lot to figure out there, and it's interesting to see how people like yourself approach that in, being resourceful and saying like, okay. Well, what can I how can I barter my services in exchange to be able to learn something? without having to directly have this money to be able to to invest in it. Yeah. And I

Michael Tucker [00:04:52]:

tell people all the time, like, you're only limited by your own creativity. Right? You're only limited by your own creativity. And so so many people, they hit a brick wall or they hit a obstacle, and they they don't even give themselves time to get creative. Like, take some time, think about that obstacle, think about the brick wall you just hit. How can we climb over? How can we bust through it? How can we go around it? How can we dig under? Right? And so that was me. And I've done that several times since then. is just like, hey, how can I make this work? And so recently, actually, I had a another, friend who has a coaching program. I was I went in their coaching program. So I was like, how can I get in? I I'm gonna be honest. This is a big investment, like, big, big investment. You know, some of these coaching programs are like 1000, a $1000,000. So I was like, how can I get in? without hurting our business cash flow. And so I borrowed, right, and I got creative and figured out a way to jump in. So definitely definitely could be something that some people need to hear on here is, like, hey, don't give up. Don't back away. Just find a way to get creative.

Bryan McAnulty [00:05:51]:

Yeah. I mean, especially as an entrepreneur, like, when you already have a business, now you've got this service, this product, and something that you can exchange, And it's it's usually worth it to both parties involved. If you have something that that person's looking for that they rather exchange their service than pay you for it as well. So

Michael Tucker [00:06:09]:

And sometimes the other people on the other end, the other person on the other end doesn't know they need it until you show them they need it. Right? And so for me, David, he didn't know he needed help with funnels. He didn't know he needed help with all this marketing and until I pointed out and I said, hey, I don't have money, but I know if you wanna grow this to a seven figure business and you wanna take this next level, you're gonna can't do this alone. You don't know how to do automations. You don't know how to do X Y Z. So I pointed out the pain and then provided the solution. And because of that, he accepted, he accepted it. Right? And so since then, dude, it's been a big whirlwind since, like, going back, I remember when we first launched, it was it was horrible. I don't maybe some of y'all listening right here. You ever just launch a product and it flops, like, massively. I'm sure Brian, you've been there, bro. Like, it's just It's just horrible. So and that was us. We actually, when we first got out of the gate, we launched his his first coaching program launched and it sucked. I remember sitting. I was actually working part time as a youth minister as well, and I was living in a church parsonage. And so I remember 1 night, it was like a Friday evening, We just prepared for this big launch, and I was sitting in the dark at the kitchen table of our church personage, laptop screen on my eyes, and I was sitting there, we hitting send on those emails, hitting send on those posts, and those those text messages that were going to go out for our big launch, and I came in to refresh and click funnels, refresh, refresh, or whatever software we're using at the time, and nothing was coming in. So it wasn't always, like, well, it wasn't always sunshine and rainbows. Our first launch flopped, and I don't think we made anything. And so it's just a learn a continuous learning process and getting creative, like we talked about just a second ago, which is continuously learning. And what I tell people all the time is you learn something, you test it, you tweak it, and you repeat the process. You learn something, you test it to see how it works, or if it works, you tweak the process, and then you repeat it all. And so that's what we did from the very jump.

Bryan McAnulty [00:08:14]:

Awesome. Yeah. I think, there's something to be said for those listening that It's easy. Like, all these entrepreneurs hear about, okay. You gotta do this big launch. And then they put everything into that and, like, not only their effort, but also, their mindset and thinking like this has to work. This is gonna be huge. And and the reality is, like, a lot of times it's not. And the other part of that is that even if it is what you kinda want it to be, like, that's just one time. So what about the whole rest of your business? So most of the business is all of the things that you're continuously doing over and over again. And, like, you don't like, there's no there's never gonna be in any business like, the one thing that they did, and then that was it. It never had to market again. Right? There's always things you have to keep doing. So so don't worry too much about that one launch Anyway, I wanna hear more about these virtual events. So you help, coaches create these virtual events, attracting clients, Can you kind of give a overview of, like, what's the key steps involved in mapping out an event like this, like, from start to execution?

Michael Tucker [00:09:18]:

Yeah. 100%. Let's let's do that. And I think we can go super deep in this, so I'm not gonna go super in-depth, but I'm gonna try to give you enough where you all listening right now or watching can take massive action. But I need to start from the very beginning when David and I, we were, you know, we were launching that first product and it flopped. We actually got mentored after that. And so what happened was we I was sitting there at church Parsented. We hit send on all the emails, sending all the text messages, waiting for all the cash to come in, and nothing came in. and we were like, shoot. We did what we thought we were supposed to do, and it didn't work. And so we went back to the drawing board. We got men's words. Actually, one of one of our mutual friends reached out was like, hey, I love what you guys are doing. I think there's a better way, though. I think what you guys need to do is something called an online challenge. A lot of you all listening right now, you probably heard of online challenge model. You've seen Tony Robbins, Dean Grasiosi, Russell Brunson, A lot of these people are doing that. Well, we heard about this way before Russell Brunson and all them were getting starting using them. This we we heard it from the source. I don't know if you know Pedro Adeo But it was his team that reached out to us, like, yikes. Like, we're just happening to these things called online challenges. And you need to use them. And if you're here and you you've never heard of the the online challenge model, you're gonna blown away today with what we teach. But so we we took we sat down oh, let me back up. We sat down in Zoom with him for an hour, learn this 5 day model, within a month, we launched our 1st 5 day challenge, and we made like $30,000 that first event. Okay? I'm gonna show you guys how good this works if you're consistent. $30,000 for me, that was what I made in a year. So my mind was balone for me to see $30,000 come in in a week. I was like, I had to work hours and hours and hours weeks weeks months and months for that. And so my mind was expensed, we said, Hey, what do we do? We learn something We test it, we tweak and repeat, right? And so that's what we did. We're like, oh, we made 30,000. I bet we can go and make more. guess what? We ran it back. See, that most people, what they do is they never even take action in the first place on these kind of events and marketing strategies because they say, I need to have every email sequence correct. I need to have every every automation done, every funnel, like, just go run the play. Now you need to have some things in place, right, to make it make it work, but we just ran the play. And so the second one, man, it was it was crazy. I think we made for the second one right over 6 figures, the second one within, like, 2 or 3 months later. 3rd one ran it back again. We made, like, 250,000 fourth one, we made, like, 300. I can't remember. In all, like, within that 12 months, I think it was, like, within 8 or 10 months, actually, we were at, like, $750,000 total combined. And then, you know, he went on, David did some other things to help push his push his sales, but but there were certain things we learned from launching a product and getting no sales to running event where we're making 300,000 dollars, $500,000 in a week. And so here's a few things for some of you guys are like, I want that. I want those results. One just know, like, like, our guy Brian here said is, like, not gonna happen overnight. Your first event, your first virtual event that you run, it may flop. And that's cool, or you may make $10,000. but no, it's getting better and better practicing and and getting because most of this is just you, your your belief system, how you talk to your audience, is, like, it's a whole learning experience. So know that it's

Bryan McAnulty [00:12:50]:

going you said there was the run the play. Right? Because, like, no matter how long you spend, like, perfecting all your email automations and everything like that, as you were saying, like, when you actually go and do it for the first time, there's gonna be all these things you realize you missed. even though you're sitting there, like, thinking like, oh, this is perfect. And so often it's better just to do it, find out about those other things that you you weren't even thinking of. and do the next one better because, yeah, as I was saying in the beginning, like, you're not gonna do it once. You're gonna keep doing whatever it is. So

Michael Tucker [00:13:22]:

Exactly, man. Exactly. And so, you know, that's that's one thing before we get into any deep details is, like, something I would just say is, like, and commit to this for long term. Right? That's a whole another story on why I wear the commit concourse shirt is because, like, that's part of my story. You just gotta commit to it. but, yeah, so whenever we start building these out, we were like, there's really a few core areas to building out a good virtual event. And today, We're gonna talk about online challenges for a little bit because that's what I know best, and we actually have an agency where that's all we do. We run now you can run free challenges. And for everybody that's wondering what a challenge is. It's a it's a virtual event designed to push your audience in a direction you want them to go, which ultimately they wanna go as well. so, for example, if you are a health coach, you may want to run a challenge helping and pushing people to lose £10 in 5 days or 7 days. don't know what I don't I'm not in the industry, so I don't know what's reasonable, but you may be a real estate coach and you may say, Hey, I'm gonna run a challenge, a virtual event, where we push people to find their 1st property in the next 30 days, whatever that may be. Right? And so for us, it's just a strategically built out event where you're challenging your audience, you're challenging your attendees to get out of their comfort zone and take action towards a certain goal. And that's why challenges work so well versus webinars and workshops and master classes, which I love because we use those as well. and I maybe give you some tips on how you can combine the 2. But the master classes, the problem is, like, you can only build trust with people for an hour, 90 minutes. But with a challenge, how we design them, they're like 3 day events, 5 day events. 5 is our suite number. So if you're listening here and you're like, you wanna run a challenge, I say start with a 5 day challenge. Don't do like a 7 or 14 day challenge. Don't start with like a 3. I like the 5 because it gives just enough time for you to build rapport with people. And so that's why I always

Bryan McAnulty [00:15:20]:

say, like, to, as opposed to maybe the very, very long ones, like, a

Michael Tucker [00:15:24]:

30

Bryan McAnulty [00:15:24]:

day challenge or a year long challenge, that this kind of situation, that's something kinda completely different. And I think you need maybe more experience with it to get the best result of getting people. Yeah.

Michael Tucker [00:15:33]:

And most people, it's, like, too much to bite off. Right? It's like, I don't want you go and have to commit something for 14 days or 10 days or 20, 30 days. when it's you're you're just starting out. And so that's what we did. We we test it started out with 5 day challenges. And so it's just 5 day virtual event. You're not going live, for 5 days straight, like, 24 hours a day. We normally do, an hour to 2 hours a day for 5 days straight. And you could do these free or paid. We'll get into that in just a little bit. But the first thing we do is when we're building these out, we ask ourselves, okay. How can we design this event? for conducive growth. How can we build, like, design this from the the the ground up to be optimized, maximize for the people on the other end? So whenever you're building out a 5 day challenge, what I tell people to do is just ask, where is my client now? and where do they wanna go? So, Brian, where is your client at right now? And where is their end result? Where is their dream destination? I call it? Yeah. What you can do is use the 5 days that you spend with them. Use that 5 days to get them closer to their dream destination, right? So let's say you do have a client that wants to get loose £50. They're not gonna probably lose £50 in a week, but you can get them closer there.

Bryan McAnulty [00:16:50]:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's go to the real estate example because that's what you kinda know best, right, because I think what you hinted at there is you're getting them to that result but you're figuring what's the result we can get them in 5 days that -- Yep.

Michael Tucker [00:17:03]:

--

Bryan McAnulty [00:17:03]:

now, like, they're happy. They got something what they were looking for. And it's not the end all be all. Like, in your example, it was like, they find the property, but then they still have to buy it if they close on it.

Michael Tucker [00:17:13]:

Right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:17:13]:

And everything they're on And, like, that's when you can sell your flagship coaching, your course, and everything with that challenge. Right?

Michael Tucker [00:17:20]:

Exactly. Yeah. So what we do is, you know, we break down those 5 days that you're with them and help them get closer to their dream destination, like the real estate example. Right? And so it may be that they want to get their first rental property. Right? And so what we do is we ask, okay. What content do we need to include in the course of 5 days. Now if you're a professional in your field, you're not gonna be able to teach everything you know in 5 days. If you can teach everything, you know I I should say 5 days, but in, 5 hours, you need to go learn more stuff. And that may be I heard Alex or Mozy say that recently is, like, if you if you're worried about giving away all your stuff, you probably need to go learn more, And that's not saying in a bad way, but, like, we we structure these pretty strategically as well, which I'll give the 5 day break just a bit, but we ask, what can we include in those 5 days to really get them closer to their goal. And so, you know, like we said, for a rental property, it may be, hey, you know, day 1 is, you know, we're gonna talk about how to think like an because you have to look at numbers and think differently. Hey, day 2, we're gonna talk about how to build a team. Right? Hey, day day 3, we're gonna talk about how to analyze a property. And so you kind of take them through this journey by the end of the 5 days that you spend with them. They're like drooling over what you have to offer because they're like, man, I just made more progress this week than I've made in years trying to do this by myself. And so what I love about these 5 day challenges, not only do you get to build a lot of rapport, you build a community at the same time because they're all taking action together. And so That's step 1 is we just map it all out and ask, how can we make this, like, the most amazing event and help try to get people to results? before even going to marketing it and going and trying to actually run that event, we just gotta figure out what we're gonna teach and how we're gonna build out this thing. so there's a bunch of other questions and things we ask. But does that make sense, man? Like, kinda just building out the vision for the event?

Bryan McAnulty [00:19:17]:

Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I'm I'm a fan of challenges as well. We've got a challenges feature inside HEIGHTS platform. so I'm gonna try to stay a little bit reserved and not not make this episode too much. Like, we're both just promoting how amazing challenges are.

Michael Tucker [00:19:30]:

Hey. No. I would love to hear what you've been learning, man, because --

Bryan McAnulty [00:19:33]:

Yeah. So, well, I

Michael Tucker [00:19:33]:

would add to that. -- running challenges. So --

Bryan McAnulty [00:19:36]:

Yeah. What I would add to all of that is and you you mentioned it a little bit is that not only, like, are you getting them from, like, the point a to point b of, like, this first result, And, like, this is a great marketing tool, but it's also something that we found is a really great engagement tool because, like, for course creator specifically, everybody talks about the problem of somebody signs up for your course, and then they don't do anything. Even courses that are more expensive. And, making the course more expensive. Maybe that helps a little bit because the person's like, wow, I just spent a grand on this. I'd better get value from it, but still, like, nobody's built up, like, that mechanism of suddenly saying like, okay. I'm suddenly doing this course. There's no habit really there. So we found that challenges are also not only good for your marketing, but good to, like, kick start that engagement because you have some of these. You say, okay. I'm gonna do this.

Michael Tucker [00:20:24]:

-- human side. Right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:20:26]:

Exactly. So, like, we're gonna do this 5 days. And the person goes there. They go into it because they know, like, I have to do it now. It's live. Like, I'm, like, I'm gonna miss it if I don't. So get this kind of bite sized info for 5 days in a row. And now they get that offer to buy your course, your coaching program. They go into the course, and now they've already built this habit of engaging with it. They know how to get there. They know what it is. And now they doing a lesson every single day is not a big deal for them anymore. So your challenge is actually helping them not only get to that first result, but also engage better with your content.

Michael Tucker [00:21:00]:

love it. And you can shoot, man. There's you're we can get super deep in this, and so everything you said is a 100% right. really helps with engagement. And so, like, I tell people, because people ask me all the time, like, okay, I know I gotta build it out, but should I do, like, a paid challenge or kinda do free challenge. I think it depends on you and your audience. just to give you guys a little perspective, we do free if, like, somebody's just starting out. They don't really have a big list. Like, we just wanna start collecting leads because leads are the lifeblood of your business. Right? And so we just do free now. if you're somebody that has 20,030,000 followers or more, like 50,000 followers or more, you have a decent email list. Like, maybe jump in and do the paid challenge. Right? It could be a a thing where you get higher quality leads, right, because we're seeing right now with our paid challenges. Like, we close anywhere between 15 to 20% average of anybody who buys a ticket. So if you get a hundred people to buy a ticket, you could close 15 to 20 of them into some kind of program. And that's we've sold programs ranging from $5000 all the way up to $75,000 on these events. And so we kinda tell people free if you're just starting out, you know, you're just building your list, but then paid, you know, if you have you know, could be a great resource. Like, we've we're running pay challenges right now with 1000, 1500, 2000 registrants, by once a month. And so definitely definitely a more advanced model, though.

Bryan McAnulty [00:22:25]:

Yeah. Yeah. I I would agree with that. And I think, like, for those listening, if this is all a completely new to you, the idea of the pay challenge is not, like, for it to make you money directly, but to do two things. One is it's showing you, like, who is a potential buyer already. So, like, they spent money on your challenger more likely to spend money with something else as opposed to people who just only want things for free. And then number 2 is the small money that small amount of money that you charge for it is something that's gonna help you cover ads and everything so you can promote it and grow it bigger. So it's not meant to be like, this is your flagship product of where you're gonna make all the money. but it's going to help you funnel people into that flagship product, whatever it is.

Michael Tucker [00:23:08]:

Love it. Exactly. And so that kinda leads us to we can conversation about marketing. Right? So you build out the mechanism. You kinda know what you're doing. Hey, in 5 days, I'm gonna teach, you know, 9 to 5 employees how to invest in real estate passively. Right? You can build that out. We could talk about funnels and systems for days. That's not what we're here for, but now that you have the event and you know what you're gonna teach them, how do you get people in the room? Right? And that's the biggest biggest thing people struggle with, right, is like, how do I get people to show up? Not only show up, but show up for 5 days in a row. And how can we get as many people in the room as possible? And this is what we had to think about with David, man, like, We were just starting out. David only had a few hundred friends on Facebook, and he only had, you know, a small a few hundred people on Instagram and no email list. And so The first one was really small. You know, we we made 20 or 30. I think it was, like, $28, $30,000 off of that first one, but it was just too as organic list. So if you guys are here and you're just starting out, just do it to your organic list. Like, do a free challenge, get some momentum, go ahead and just run it. But what we learned was after that first one, we tapped out. We banged his lit we banged his social media. We we hit up everybody we could. And so now where do we go? And what we discovered this, it's not secret because people are using it all the time, but this platform that only few are utilizing correctly changed the game for us, and it was using other people's audiences. using other people's audiences. So we we made that $30,000 and immediately, we went to another friend who was a coach who had an industry that coincided with ours pretty well. He was in the wealth industry. So, teaching people financial literacy. So real estate financial literacy, you see how they kinda kinda come together. Yep. And so we said, hey. You have this audience. You have this audience of, like, 30,041,000 people on your email list. You have a Facebook community of 5 or 10000 people Let's run a joint challenge together. We just did it. This is our result. So we we made $30,000 in 5 days. about we do it? You have a bigger audience than us. We can make we can make more, and we'll split it 5050. And that's what we did. We turned around that guy, just so you know, who we partnered with, He did nothing other than send out a couple emails and show up for 5 minutes on our challenge. He showed up to transfer authority to us and be like, hey, welcome everybody. This is my good friend, David. Here's the mic, David. And that was it. And that literally led to 100 of $1000 just through that one relationship. And so for some of you all here wondering how can I fill up my webinars, my challenges? Like, let's learn to utilize all the hard work that other people have already put in place. And so I'm sure you guys have been doing that in your business, but that's been key for us, man.

Bryan McAnulty [00:25:56]:

Yeah. That's a great one because there's so many creators who they think like, okay. I've done a couple things for this free marketing. Like, I've created stuff on social media. I've started building email list And then they immediately wanna jump to, like, okay. Paid advertising. Like, that's the next thing I do. And especially over the last few years, like, all of that has gotten way more expensive. There's way more competition related to it. so, like, you'll probably know this. Like, I don't know. Depending on, those watching, like, how long you've been paying attention to this space, like, few years ago, there's all these people, like, running webinars and everything telling you how, like, this is how you use ads money with your course and everything, you don't see that anymore. Right? And so it's gotten harder, but the thing that people miss out on is, like, what you're saying, these partnership ideas where you can use somebody else's audience. And, like, we found great success in doing that kind of thing ourselves. So I can definitely a test to that, but this is so powerful because it's free. So you don't have to pay for it. And it's the the issue is I guess, like, some creators think like, okay. Well, how can I better leverage what I'm doing and and get better exposure? And so then you jump to ads, but there's other ways to do that, like, the partnerships.

Michael Tucker [00:27:08]:

Yeah. Exactly. Partnerships. And so that's actually when with David and all of our other challenges that we run now is, like, partnerships are super, super key. And so from that one relationship we built, he went to another because we were like, hey, these financial and wealth coaches, like, people that are teaching budgeting, people, like, that's a great niche. And so he had another friend that kinda did something similar. He was a financial advisor and he financial advisor that had a little following. Nothing crazy. Just like a listen, all you need is a group of, like, a 100 to 200 super fans. And that's what this guy had was, like, just a couple people's a couple hundred people that were super fans. And so he went together and was like, hey. I know you have this super small community. they would really benefit for what we're about to teach. How about we do an event? And he just did that over and over and over again, and he still does it to this day, like, last month, we did the same thing. And we didn't make a whole lot of money, but $80,000. Right? I was like, hey, $80,000 isn't isn't that bad. Right? So for you guys, a question I would like to ask is, who can you partner with today? to help take your results to the next level. And don't over complicate this. Don't overthink this because so many times we say, well, this person, I don't know if they would do it with me. Like, some people will go all in and partner with you a 100% like they'll go live with you, they'll go on podcast with you, they'll send out 10 emails for some that'll they'll do it. they'll just send out one email to the list. Like, every person's gonna be different. So when it comes to building out partnerships, I tell people there's no one cookie cutter approach to it. we like doing the 5050 model, like, if they're gonna be pretty in tune, like, 5050, like, you're gonna help promote this quite a bit to your list, you know, but everybody's different. Every partner is different. Some people would just say, Hey, I just want to go on IG Live with you. That's all. Hey, I want to just send out a text to my list. That's it. So you get to custom craft those and really build a relationship around it. So one thing I encourage people is, like, especially if you're currently running events right now, just start building relationships first, adding value to people, and then go for the ask later. And the ask doesn't have to be anything super scary. It could just simply be, Hey, I have this vision for this event. And actually, this is what I did last December. I'll give you guys an example in just a second, but just go with them and say, hey, I have this vision for this event. This is what I'm thinking. Worst case scenario, we we grow our community. That's the worst case scenario when these things is you grow your community. And most of the time, they'll say yes if you'd pitch it the right way. And so and I would love to hear your thoughts, man, on anything else you've learned from, you know, building up partnerships yourself.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:41]:

Yeah. So I think, a common, like, maybe irrational fear that I hear from our creators related to this, is that they tend to think of, like, all these people who could be potential partners as their competitors. And they said, like, oh, well, they're in the similar space, but, like, if you think about it, like, they're not they're probably not selling the same product. It's something a little bit different. And, like, you mentioned, like, okay, financial services and real estate. And so, like, there there's a lot of potential cases right now where if you're listening to this, you might be thinking of somebody as a competitor to you where they actually could really compliment what you're doing. So, like, I I'm trying to think of an another good example, but, like, even, like, in the digital marketing space. Like, you could say, like, oh, well, these two people, like, I'm selling a digital marketing related course and this other person is too. Like, maybe yours is related to, I don't know, like, live events and and, like, doing all this. Any other person, maybe they're more teaching about, like, writing or something. So it's a different skill set. Like, you you need to learn both and, like, the audiences would be interested in both. So there's a lot of potential there.

Michael Tucker [00:30:49]:

most of the time, if done correctly, the audience will actually thank you. So let's say, Brian, I know you guys are big into AI and things like that. Right? And so wanna say we joined, like, I brought my audience to you and teach them about AI. Like, if you're the right partner, if you do what you actually are supposed to do, my audience will probably come back to me and say, Michael, that Brian, dude, what they got going on there changed my life, like, it's awesome. And so that's how you're even gonna help your status and help your credibility because when you can partner with good people, don't just partner with with anybody, partner with people you can see yourself doing business long term with. you know, it can help your credibility, help your rapport, and, just help you overall.

Bryan McAnulty [00:31:30]:

Yeah. That's great. Okay. So I like the idea also about, like, finding these different partners and, like, not being afraid to reach out to them and just see what's gonna happen, realizing that different partnerships are going to work a little bit differently. maybe I'm getting a little bit ahead of things here, but do you have any recommendations for somebody as far as, like, how should they handle it? with one partner maybe. It's not, like, wants to do it, but it's not planning to engage quite as much as you maybe like them too.

Michael Tucker [00:31:59]:

Yeah. And so I'll give you an example, because back in December, I ran in a a virtual event for myself, I have this, I love self development leadership. And so, like, that's not where I live, though, like, in my business world. My business world is digital marketing, live events. And so I was like, you know what? I just wanna run an event and try to see what I can do. And so we we build out this event was all based around helping you, like, goal setting, things of that nature. And so I just went on the hunt building out partnerships. And so I was I sent these customized videos. I don't know if you guys know Pete Vargas. Pete Vargas is big in, like, the the physical and virtual stages world. And, he teaches, how to do these, first impression videos and these reach out videos. And sorry, I started doing that. Right? And so I started sending I started realizing that some people, like I mentioned, some of them weren't too serious. They, you know, they were just gonna do it just to help me out. And so you had to figure out, you know, you this is your business. This is your this is how I feel anyway. It's your business. It's your virtual event. you get to decide if you go move forward with those people. So there was a couple people. Like, I just I've started conversation with them. I just was like, you know what? This probably isn't gonna fit because if you're not gonna be passionate about this event, you're not gonna be passionate about this to your audience. It's probably not gonna be good. If you're just doing it just because, probably not gonna be a good fit. So you get to choose And so if you if you talk to somebody and they're not fully sold, it's okay. Like, let it go. Keep building that relationship. Don't just drop the relationship because they're not fully bought in, keep growing your business, keep doing what you're doing. And then maybe one day, they'll go back and be like, wow. they're really changing some minds. They're really helping some people. I gotta tap in with what they're doing. And so I always tell people, like, don't get hurt If people say no or maybe next time, just keep pushing because there's people out there that would love to partner with you and would love for you to share your, your knowledge with their audience, and you just gotta find the right people. And just go out there, make some connections, build some value, and you'll be you'll be surprised what happens when you start doing these reachouts.

Bryan McAnulty [00:34:02]:

Yeah. That's great advice. And, I can give an example, like, just recently about how, like, it's better to think of this as a as a long term thing in those relationships, like, it may not happen the first time that you contact them. And so for us recently, we we launched the, I'd say I coach. We had this big launch around it. we plan beforehand, like, okay. We're gonna reach out to some newsletters about AI that we've been following because they would it would be awesome if they mentioned us. And so we reached out to a bunch of them. We had a whole list ready for right before the launch and heard back from very few of them most of the ones that we did hear back from, all they said was, oh, great. So do you wanna sponsor us? Like, this is how much it's gonna cost. And we're we were kinda just looking for, like, somebody to talk about this for free. We're not trying to sponsor it just yet with that. And so basically, like, the reach out didn't really do anything. Then when the launch actually happened, it turned out that we got mentioned by, like, the the top 3 on our list of, like, some of the biggest newsletters total audience of, like, more than 500,000 people and all three three of these big ones specifically mentioned us, and it was free. they they didn't even reply to our emails. We hadn't heard from them, but we we did enough and we kept going with it. That eventually we got noticed. So the the lesson for that kind of for us was, like, just be be so good that, like, they have to notice you from other things that we're doing. And, yeah, like, the they may not respond to you that first time that you reach out to them. they may respond, and, like, it doesn't really feel like the right fit. They're not really seeing you what you are just yet. but, yeah, as you said, like, you keep going and build that relationship because and maybe it's not gonna happen so, like, quick over, like, a couple week period like this, but maybe, like, next year, then they come back to you and they say, hey. You know what? Like, I just realized what what you're doing, and this is really awesome. Like, I kinda like, glanced over it before it didn't really get it, but, like, I think this would be perfect. And then maybe they are gonna pitch you something.

Michael Tucker [00:36:03]:

You know? Exactly. Yeah. 100%. And so lead with with value first and just think, like you said, just long term value, like long term play, long term relationships. And so, yeah, and it's it's it's gonna be a learning experience for everybody. And so that's Though, like, the other people's audiences is something that we've leveraged a lot. Now we do use paid marketing. Right? We use paid marketing. We use depending on the size of the event, you know, we'll definitely spend, like, we had one event where we spent, like, $500,000 on ads. Right? But then we have some some events where we spend, like, 5000, 10000, 10000, right, or maybe a couple of 1000 just depends on your audience and who you're serving. And so, definitely, like, other marketing strategies, you know, your organic list, your organic social media, other people's audiences directly like emails, texts, their social media, but don't forget there's other people's podcasts. There's other people's YouTube channels. There's other people's TV shows. Like, radio station. There's so many other ways you can leverage those. And then, you know, there's you could do the same thing paid. So a lot of people don't think about this, Brian, is like, You can partner with people to get on their Instagram live, to get them to send out emails. You can pay to do the same as well. There's some people you can pay a $1000 for to get an email blast sent out to a list of a 100,002,001,000 people. Alright? There's some people you can pay $1000 to go live with, and they got 50,000 followers on Instagram. So, like, don't forget there's some paid to play, like, podcast you can get on and things of that nature. Nobody thinks about, right? Because you think, you ever seen somebody, you're like, how the world did they get on that podcast? I didn't know they were that big. They may have paid, right, because money talks. And so that's what a lot of our clients do, man, is just like, they they pay to get in front of other people's audiences instead of doing the partnership.

Bryan McAnulty [00:37:50]:

Yeah. Yeah. That's true. And, I mean, it's, it's something that is way way less of a learning curve than, like, trying to figure out Facebook ads or or Google ads for the first time. Right? it's easy to just continuously dump money into that, whereas a paid partnership in that sense Like, you know that they have the exact audience that you want. And, like, usually the rates are not that bad. It's usually something that can work out really well to do that because, like, I don't know. It it depends. It depends on what the whole thing is. You have to evaluate every single case, I guess, but a lot of times people wanna do the partnerships because they think it'll be better for them because they really believe they'll be able to earn more from it. And in the case of where you're paying people, it it might be a worse deal for them where you're paying them. They might've made made so much more money if they agreed to, like, our revenue share instead. But, like, it works out for you, as well that way. So

Michael Tucker [00:38:44]:

-- Yeah. And so one little tip, like, here's, like, a a ninja trick like, I'm just thinking, like, micro influencers. There's a lot of people that have 5000, 10000, 15,520. I would say micro points, there's, like, 20,000 below, maybe maybe a little bit more, but, like, 10 or 20,000 people, like, I hate to say this, but some of them don't know what their audience is worth, like, the value that they can bring people. And so, like, if they have 10 or 15,000 followers, like, unless they're fake followers, you know, but if they have truly, like, a loyal fan, that's a that's a decent amount of people. And so you could go to those people and be like, hey, let's, you know, 500 bucks, 300 bucks. Let's go live together. Hey, let's do a webinar together. So check this out. something that we've been doing is using master classes to fill up our paid challenges. Okay? So we've been doing these free 1 hour classes We'll partner with micro influencers, bigger influencers, run these. And at the end of the class, we sell tickets to our paid challenge. And then at, you know, of course, the end of the pay challenge, we're selling something high ticket. Some people can sell, of course, but we sell high ticket products 5000 and above on our challenges. So You can even, like, all these people just do joint master classes and then my master classes sell tickets to your virtual events. Yeah. We even do this conferences too. So if you're running in person conferences, same exact play. Partner with people, push them to a master class, at the end of the master class, sell a conference ticket. There's so many ways to skin the skin a cat, and there's so many different ways to fill up your events, guys. just get out there and and figure out creative ways you can do it if you have no audience. If you have an audience, definitely implement this right away because this is gonna blow up what you're doing already. but those are so many strategies. So one, you build the challenge, you build the virtual event, 2, you fill it. And then lastly, you just gotta run the play. You gotta run the event. And so you know, if you're cool with it, I can go into, like, this last part very fast because I know we've been chatting a lot, but, you know, at building out the 5 day challenge of running it is.

Bryan McAnulty [00:40:40]:

Well, actually, yeah, I want I want you to go into that, but, yeah, since we are running, running low on time, I also wanna ask you just real quick, as far as pricing. So we could talk about that probably forever as well, but what do you charge for your pay challenges now on average And what do you recommend somebody? I know you said they should start with a free challenge, but once they start saying like, okay. Well, now I wanna move to a pay challenge. What's, like, the price range they should target?

Michael Tucker [00:41:05]:

Yeah. So free, what we normally do with our free free events is we'll do a free general admission, and then we'll do, like, a a $49 97 VIP The difference is VIP. They get access to the 5 days of training, but they'll get, like, daily q and a's with me or with the coach. So if you're a real estate coach, you'd maybe spend 30 minutes a day, you know, answering any questions they have about the industry after after, you know, that training session. So they're getting like an extra 3 to 5 hours of training with you for VIP price of $97 or 47 or 49. Normally, we do 97 at the most, for the free and then a free general admission ticket. We may throw in other stuff for the VIP, like, ebooks or workbooks and all that fun stuff. On the pay challenge side of things, general admission is 97. So we started a hundred bucks for that. Some people go lower, but we do 97. VIP, we do 297. So it's 300 bucks. And depending on the client and the audience, if we have a big pool of people we're gonna be marketing to, because there's some people you realize they'll spend a $1000 if you have a $1000 product. They'll spend a 2000. Like, there's some people they just love spending money with you, and that's who they are. And so if we have the right audience pool, we'll maybe even throw in a third ticket and do like a platinum for 500. So a 100 300, 500. And so the differences between the the VIP and platinum VIP, they can attend and watch the Q and A sessions. Platinums are the only one that can ask their questions. And so we throw in some other stuff for Platinum as well, like a platinum only networking night they can come in zoom and network with other people, like a private text thread or like a Telegram group. You can do it on Facebook Facebook Messenger group for platinum platinum only. Like, we give platinum some extra perks. so 100, 300, 500, like I said, that's more for people that have a bigger audience, more experience, but definitely start out free and then have some kind of upsell, whether it's a VIP, whether you have a software, you can offer your software free trial as a VIP, right, click funnels. All these other platforms are doing that. They'll do free GA. Actually, I have a client right now. We're with it is working so well, man. They have a free general admission, and then we're upselling for free, a free trial of his software, and then they can come and attend all the VIP sessions for free, but they automatically get put in this monthly membership now after 30 days, they're gonna be billed a $100, $200, you know, whatever that is. And that's been working phenomenal for us. I think we have an event actually next week with him, and he's got, like, 800 people registered, and I think a hundred people were on free free trials now, you know, just from that. So crazy, man. I you get me pumped up and excited about this stuff. I'll go on and on and on day for days.

Bryan McAnulty [00:44:05]:

Cool. Alright. Well, was there a last thing that you wanted to cover before we wrap it up?

Michael Tucker [00:44:08]:

Yeah. Real quick. I mean, yeah, you can get the people there, but if you don't know what to say, how to say, like, that's a whole in process in itself. Right? It's is not just teaching. Okay? So you you build out the event. You know what you're gonna your topic's gonna be. You get the people there. but then you actually have to make sure you're running that virtual event in a way that's conducive for not only, their growth, but your sales. right, your sales later on. And so what we teach people is a whole framework and process around helping them transform their belief because most people come in they don't believe they can invest in real estate. They don't believe they can, lose £50 in the next month or 2 months. They don't believe they can create their course in 7 days using AI. Right? But they can, and you gotta help them believe that. And so how you need to ask yourself, how can I transform not only their their action habits, but their mindset through that 5 days. So we hit a lot on belief. So, you know, day 1 from the start, we're talking about mindset. helping them reconfigure this up in their head, their brain, in their head. And, you know, we do that all through the day. And there's a whole another process for how we run that. You know, we We intertwine mindset and teaching. And then, but, yeah, just be conscious of that because we don't have much time to talk about it. Like, reach out if you have any questions on that piece of the puzzle. but just make sure you're you're conscious of you're not just hammering them with so much content that you're not helping them transform into the person they need to be. to find the success that they need. Does that make sense?

Bryan McAnulty [00:45:39]:

Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I think that there's definitely an important part. Alright. Well, one of the things we like to do on the show is have every guest ask a question to the audience. So if you get to ask our audience anything, whether it's something you want them to think about, something you're just curious about, what would that be?

Michael Tucker [00:45:55]:

Yeah. A question that I was actually thinking as we were going through this is, and this it may be too broad. And so what would one successful virtual event, 1 successful 5 day challenge mean for you in in your business right now? You've heard what we talked about with David, how David went from 0 audience, $0 in sales. I was, like, his first student that I bartered with him with. to making $750,000. What would that be worth to you in your business and how can you implement it in the next 30 days? everything we just discussed, what would it be worth to you, and how can you implement it in the next 30 days? I want you to create a plan around it. And I want you to go back to Brian, the whole team, and be like, I'm doing my challenge. I'm doing it right now. I'm running my virtual event. and I wanna see you find some wins. That'd be the question I asked my friend.

Bryan McAnulty [00:46:45]:

Awesome. Yeah. That sounds great. Yeah. And and guys, definitely, do what he says. Definitely reach out to us. I think not enough of our creators take advantage of that. Like, we're willing to help you with questions related to your launch and not just the software. So email support at heightsplatform.com if you have questions. Also get in touch with Michael here. so Michael, where else can people find you online?

Michael Tucker [00:47:08]:

Yeah, man. I'm on Instagram at official Michael Tucker. you know, there's there. I'm on YouTube the same place. you know, we have a podcast there as well. But, you know, man, I don't are you cool if I give out a ebook for people that kinda, like, goes with this whole process? Okay. Yeah. You guys go to a virtual state secrets.com. A full ebook completely free. No sales there. You guys can just go get the book, virtualstagesecrets.com. and it has, like, kinda, like, master classes broke down, challenges broke down, and you guys can just read that and everything we discussed is in-depth there.

Bryan McAnulty [00:47:39]:

Awesome. Alright. Well, thanks so much, Michael.

Michael Tucker [00:47:41]:

Alright. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

Bryan McAnulty [00:47:44]:

I'd like to take a moment to invite to join our free community of over 5000 creators at creatorclimb.com. If you enjoyed this episode and wanna hear more, check out the HEIGHTS platform YouTube channel every Tuesday at 9 AM US Central. To get notified when new episodes release, join our newsletter at creators adventure.com. Until then, keep learning, and I'll see you in the next episode.