[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:39] Brad: In this episode, I talk with Pete Vargas a.k.a. the Stage Whisperer who since 2003 has been responsible for booking over 20,000 stages and events worldwide. He’s the Founder and CEO of Advance Your Reach and besides being the nicest guy I think I’ve ever met, he dropped some serious knowledge on this episode about how you as a financial advisor can book local stages in your backyard that you probably didn’t even know existed. Oh, and it doesn’t require a 10,000-piece mailer or a Ruth’s Chris Steak dinner either.

So, here are just a few highlights from our conversation. Pete starts off with his story about how a speaker literally changed the trajectory of his life and how it led him to what he does today. Next, we cover Pete’s Story Braid framework and how following its four steps will help you connect, educate and, best of all, convert your audience. Then Pete uncovers the thousands of opportunities advisors have nationwide to land local speaking gigs that from my experience most of you aren’t taking advantage of and probably don’t even know exist. The best part, they’re often free, don’t require direct mail or buying dinner and you can handpick your ideal prospects, groups that consist of business owners, CEOs, doctors, lawyers or dentists to name just a few. Lastly, Pete does a live role-play of the exact conversation he used to land a speaking gig at the White House for one of his clients and how you can use the same framework to book stages in your own backyard.

Okay. Get the notepad ready because not only is this episode jampacked with actionable content but Pete literally gifted all you Blueprint listeners a ton of tools to put his ideas into action including a PDF overview of a Story Braid framework, a phone script for booking local stages, a seven-minute example video of how to find local organizations seeking speakers and a bunch more. All of this is available right at the top of the show notes at BradleyJohnson.com/28 that’s 2-8. Links to everything else there too, books mentioned, people discussed as well as a complete transcript of the show.

[00:02:41] Brad: One last big announcement before we get to the show and a huge thank you to all of you listeners who have supported my show from the very early days. We’ve just finalized an agreement to feature our show’s content and biweekly articles exclusively at WealthManagement.com. So, you’ll start seeing a breakdown of some of the biggest takeaways of our past shows and, most importantly, our goal is to give you a simple framework to put these ideas into action in your own practice. I literally just submitted the first article which will feature an idea shared from Ron Carson on how he landed his first billionaire client. So, we’ll be sure to send it out to all of you who have subscribed to our email list as soon as it goes live. And by the way, if you haven’t subscribed yet, you can do it by visiting BradleyJohnson.com/subscribe so you’re notified any time a new episode goes live or we have a new article hit. As always, thanks for listening and without further delay, my conversation with Pete Vargas.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:03:39] Brad: Welcome, everyone, to this week’s episode of the Elite Advisor Blueprint. I have a special guest, Pete Vargas III, Founder and CEO of Advance Your Reach. Welcome to the show, Pete.

[00:03:52] Pete: Hey, man. I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:03:54] Brad: Yeah. It’s been just a bit. We were hanging out in Carmel out of Jayson Gaignard’s Mastermind talk. So, it was cool to actually get a chance to meet in person. I know we have a ton of mutual friends, had some good conversation on kind of really your specialty. So, they call you at the Stage Whisperer. How did you come about getting that nickname?

[00:04:13] Pete: Oh man, I don’t know. We are very, very passionate about stages, man. We’re really, really passionate about stages. I was a youth pastor in Texas and I got called. I had the opportunity to go into the corporate world or had the opportunity to go and take over as a youth pastor for this small little West Texas youth group and I chose to go there. It was crazy and I went there and had no theology background and just thought, “I’m going to bring speakers in to come speak to my kids,” because my youth group was only three kids the first Wednesday night when I showed up. So, I would bring in all these speakers. I bring in financial advisors. I bring in stay-at-home moms. I bring in CEOs, entrepreneurs. I wanted my kids to understand all of the different values that I hope for them in their life that I wish I would have as a young kid myself. And so, growing up in a really broken family, my pastor was encouraged because I bring in all these powerful speakers and I really did bring in financial advisors and they’ve shared with my kids and then my kids would get motivated and inspired to change.

And so, when I went to the church board and said, “I need a million dollars to build a youth facility here in West Texas to provide something for these kids,” and my kids have already given tens of thousands of dollars, my church board and my pastor were blown away. Well, they’ve given so much money because they had heard about finances from CEOs, entrepreneurs, financial advisors. And so, it was amazing because we raised the money to build this youth facility and through this process I heard all of these speakers, Brad, and I heard all these speakers that would come in and they’re like, “Man, I know I’ve got something powerful that can change people’s lives. I just don’t know how to get it out there and I don’t know how to get it out there,” and I would give them some feedback and give them some advice. I would tell them what I would do if I were in their shoes to get on in front of more stages and more of their ideal buyers in front of more of their ideal buyers and customers but I didn’t go do it for any of them because I was a youth pastor.

[00:06:09] Pete: Well, one of the speakers who came in, his daughter was the first girl killed at Columbine and he, just like everybody else, was struggling to get his message out there and he wanted to impact education in corporations. That’s who he wanted to impact. He wanted to impact the climate and culture of those two. And so, he came and, once again, I encouraged him just like I had done all of the other speakers and, long story short, I heard him one Friday morning in Hereford, Texas and I was on the front row of Hereford High School and his final challenge was you need to go let your family and friends and your loved ones know how much you love them because you have no idea how long they’ll be around. And I thought, “Wow. This is coming from a man who lost his daughter,” and I thought, “Cool.” My wife which is my girlfriend at the time, my grandmother, my best friend, and then he gave that little dagger that so many great people do, he said, “And some of those people you’re not in good standings with today.” And all I could think about was my dad. That’s all I could think about because my dad was an extremely verbally and physically abusive dad growing up and so I thought, “I’ve got to get my dad back to the parent event tonight. I have to get him back to the parent event tonight.”

And so, I went home, begged and pleaded my dad to come back that night. We haven’t had a good relationship at all. My grandmother had taken me away from him in my teenage years because of what was going on in our life and we hadn’t made amends, and I had tried everything, dude. I tried counseling and church and his siblings constantly telling him to make things right and that night, after my dad heard this man speak, it prompted him to go home and write me a multiple-page letter and he said, “Here, my son is having an impact on hundreds of kids lives and I can’t have an impact on my only son’s life. I’m sorry for the father I’ve been. I’m asking for a second chance to do things right,” and he told me he loved me for the first time in over a decade.

[00:08:13] Pete: And my wife and I were crying. We were weeping. We were just like, “Holy cow.” So, I picked up the phone. I called that speaker, Darrell. I listed his cell phone number and I said, “Why are you not sharing this message with everybody across the world? Why aren’t you in front of more people?” And he told me the same thing that all of those speakers that I brought, and I brought over two dozen speakers into my youth group. We grew from three kids to 750 kids my last Wednesday night, all from powerful speakers and he told me the same thing all of them told me, “I don’t know how to get it out there.” And so, I told him, I was a young naïve 23-year-old that day and I said, “Darrell, I’m going to figure this out for you.” And over the last 13 years we’ve been directly responsible for booking over 25,000 stages across the world and so that’s probably the reason why other people, which I’m glad it’s not me, but other people have begun to call me the Stage Whisperer is because we figured out how to book stages, but better yet, how to leverage those stages for people to truly build their business and make an impact that goes deeper.

[00:09:17] Brad: Wow. Talk about finding your niche through a really powerful way to find it. I mean that’s…

[00:09:22] Pete: Yeah.

[00:09:22] Brad: So, you were 23 when you’re kind of reconnecting with your dad and it was a speaker’s message from the stage that hit home with him where really nothing else to that point had really done it.

[00:09:32] Pete: Yeah. Nothing, man. Nothing. Nothing. And that’s what I – that’s the trend that I saw with my kids too like there would be someone come in and talk about health and wellness and it would just trigger in their hearts and there’d be somebody come and talk about financials and financial planning and financial advising and how to be wise and how to be a giver. And then all of a sudden, we would start taking tithes and offerings on Wednesday Night Church Youth Group, not the main time but in the youth group, and my kids would just give and I was like blown away the first like offering we raised just in our kids. So, yeah, I mean nothing – a lot of times people, I mean, I believe 60 minutes can catalyst something powerful for folks and, yes, so that’s what it did. Something in 60 minutes catalyst my dad and I, my dad to go home and write that letter and mail it to me. It was really crazy. He didn’t drop it off. He mailed it to me like he – yeah, so it was pretty powerful.

[00:10:30] Brad: I remember you sharing I think it was a podcast I listened to. You took him that night with this kind of expectation of this is going to really hit home with him and then it was like he didn’t say anything at that the actual event and it was a few days later that he actually where you saw how much it impacted him so that was a lesson for you. You shared of just kind of an entrepreneurial lesson of it’s not always about the instant gratification of what these events do right out of the gates but the lasting impact they make.

[00:10:58] Pete: Well, that’s so relevant to the people here too. I didn’t get into the depth of it but that night there were over 1,000 people at that parent event like right just shy of 1,000 but 1,000 out of 10,000, we got pretty much the majority of the people and then a huge percentage of the people in the community after this evening event. And my perception that night after Darrell spoke and shared his message with that audience is that every parent and grandparent in that auditorium are hugging their kids and their grandkids but my dad wasn’t. That’s my perception now. I’m sure every one of them weren’t but I thought, man, if this can’t make my dad want to tell me he loves me and ask for forgiveness, I don’t know what is. And a lot of the times we don’t see it right away. We don’t see things right away like instantly like I wanted to see it right then and there.

Well, it was a couple of weeks later. My dad had to go home. He had to process and it’s just like a lot of people who were in front of but he had to go process and as he processed, he reflected and as he reflected, he wrote the letter that quite frankly changed his life and changed our relationship forever. So, yeah, it’s a lot of times too. If your advisors will do the things that they need to do and make sure that they lay it all out there and that they’re great every time that they’re in front of people because my promise is by the time we’re done today, Brad, like the advisor people listening to this, they’re going to be able to go book a stage in their local market that they don’t have to pay for like maybe even get paid.

[00:12:32] Brad: So, let’s go there because the anticipation like just you teasing it that little bit they’re like, okay, let’s not wait. Just tell me now. So, let’s set this up a little bit. Most of our clients, they’re great marketers. They’re doing live events very frequently throughout the month. A lot of them have radio shows, a lot of them have TV shows, a lot of them are doing systematic referral events to engage their clients and for them to bring their friends but let’s hone in on the public events because I would say the typical framework, there’s one of two ways which you’re going to blow their minds if there’s this third way they didn’t even know about. It’s typically I’ll host an evening at Ruth’s Chris. I’ll put on some nice dinners and then I’m going to basically share an hour of education and then for those of you it makes sense, book an appointment and come see me.

There’s another framework where it’s more of an educational-based event where they might have a local community college and they might actually teach a class a couple of nights, a couple of three-hour sessions and then from there if you’d like to come in and discuss your one-on-one, let’s book an appointment. So, there’s this third way and we’re having this conversation out in Carmel, I’m like, “Dude, this is so brilliant.” So, going to the what you’ve done, the 25,000 plus stages you’ve booked over the last decade plus and how financial advisors are completely missing the boat by not even knowing it exists because, man, it was news to me when we started talking about it.

[00:13:55] Pete: Yeah, man. So, I kind of get – I’m leaning in a little bit. I’m getting excited and, hey, I will have some visuals and I’ll have some amazing things to give away so anything we represent this that I’m not able to like show or any gifts, I’ll just give them to the group here. Yes. So, I believe there are three components that you have to have in your business as a financial advisor to make sure that when I do get you to stage here, that you maximize that stage too. So, I want to set the framework correctly and I’ll talk about number one and I’ll come back around the number one. Maybe we can come back to number one at the end and I’ll talk about number two but we’ll dive right into number three. So, number one, I honestly believe through what I’m about to show you through stages that you can add six and seven figures to your business. I truly believe that. I believe the most powerful way is stages and, yes, your own stage but meaning that you pay for so that Ruth’s Chris dinner plus the mailers plus all of that probably cost some $8,000 to $10,000. Is that right? I mean, I’ve been to two or three of them. I do the math in my head.

So, let’s flip that upside down here in just a second but there are three things that you have to do really, really well to you speaking in your business. So, you speaking in your business, you have to be great in front of people. You have to have – you have to compel them to want to go deeper with you and we use a proprietary process called the Story Braid framework. It still allows you to educate but the problem is too many financial advisors because I’ve been to about five of these, maybe 10 of them and there’s only one of them that resonated with me and it’s because he connected with my heart right out of the gates and then he closed with the heart at the very end and that’s our whole framework and we’ll come back to that. We’ll talk about that a little bit more as much as we need to but we want people to design a signature talk that has the Story Braid framework into it.

[00:16:01] Pete: Here’s the thing. People don’t care. You don’t win their heads until you win their hearts and once you win their hearts, their minds are open to listen to all the education that you can provide. And so, I want to at least hit on that at the end because I want people to understand how to walk through that Story Braid framework and actually, Brad, if you don’t mind, I might just for two minutes tell – I’ll just give people the quick overview of that. Is that all right, since we’re here?

[00:16:27] Brad: You just keep rolling, buddy.

[00:16:28] Pete: Okay. So, here’s what you want to do. Here, when you design a presentation, a signature presentation, and I know the advisors have their presentations and I know that a lot of them are very educational and some of them are inspirational. But here’s the three components that make an incredible presentation. Number one, I want it to be inspirational, number two, I want it to be educational and, number three, I want it to convert. It has got to convert and here’s what the Story Braid framework does and I’m going to tell you, only about 2% of people, I’ve seen over 1,000 speakers and I want financial advisors into there. I’ve seen probably 50 financial advisors in my lifetime speak and I’m telling you there’s one or two that just absolutely knocked it out of the park. They were great. Whether they’re on a podcast or they’re on a live stage, they were great and here’s what they do. They lead in with the heart. That is the first piece.

There are four pieces to the Story Braid framework. It starts with the heart. People want to know that you walked in their shoes and they want to know that you know how they feel. They want to know that and if they know you understand how they feel and that you’ve walked in their shoes, you’ve now put down every guard that they have up against you, “Oh, this guy’s going to sell me something. This lady’s going to sell me something.” As soon as they understand that you walked in their shoes and you know how they feel, a.k.a. the hero’s journey story, that is when they lay down all of the walls to get rid of all – they go from this kind of mentality which you’ve seen them in your audiences to this kind of mentality because they know you realize that you’ve been where they’re at or you have a client that’s been where they’re at. It doesn’t have to be you. Now here’s the beautiful thing. As you lead with a story like right off the bat, I’m going to tell you how much percentage time you spent in each of these four areas.

[00:18:27] Pete: Then you go into the head because once you’ve got their hearts, their minds are opened up. Their minds are open and here’s the transition from the heart to the head. This is critical that people get this. As soon as you’ve connected with them, not before, as soon as you’ve connected with them, there’s a transition thing just like you transition from one paragraph to another, there’s a transition thing in between the heart and the head which is your highlight reel. So, you human connect through the hero’s journey by grabbing their hearts right off the bat and then you share a highlight reel. It’s the success stories of what you’ve seen in your clients’ lives, “And now I want to show you my three or five-part signature system of how you can get results in your life as well.”

So, after you go from the heart, you use the highlight reel that now transition into your signature system. And every financial advisor needs to have their own signature system. I call it a proprietary process. Make it yours. I love what Advisors Excel does for their advisors but I want every one of the advisors and I love what advisors do but I want every advisor to have their own proprietary process. It is your way of doing business. It’s basically saying if you do this in your life, you will see the results that you want. And so, the second piece is the head. It’s teaching them your proprietary process, teaching them what they need to do to get the results in their life. Because remember, the only difference between you and them, you’ve been where they’ve been but you’ve come out. The hero’s journey says that you come out on the other end and your highlight reel reveals to them that you came out on the other end and now they want to know the difference between where they’re at in their lives and how you’ve gotten the results that you’ve got.

[00:20:27] Pete: And here’s the big mistake that everybody makes. They try to brag before they’ve connected with the human being and that is not working in our society today like people want to know. They want to connect before you brag so make sure they do that but in the head part, you talk and you teach around your signature process and each piece of your signature process, each piece of it you reconnected with either story, data, case study, analytics, a quote, video. You drive each piece of your signature process home. I typically say it’s three to five. I like the three to five. I’ve seen people do seven, six, four. I’m a three to five type of guy. I just think that everything you do can fall under three to five big pillars and each of those pillars you drive it home after you’ve caught it with something that’s heart-related one time but then something case study or financially driven or data driven, not financially, data-driven the next time because then you’re speaking to both the left brain and the right brain as you drive home your signature process.

So, that’s the signature system in your company like that is the head part. People want to know how you’ve gotten the results. And so, that’s what you’re teaching them how to do. And here’s what I want you to know. If you are great at teaching this, they have two decisions to make when you’re done talking. Yes, I believe in that signature system. This person has walked where I walked. He understands how I feel. She understands how I feel. I either have to go do this on my own because you’ve laid it all out for them or I need to go do that with them. I’m sure they can get me the results a lot faster than I can get on my own. And so, that’s the headpiece. That’s the second piece. And so, now we went to the heart. We went to the head. Now we need the hands.

[00:22:27] Pete: We want them to take action. We want them to take action. And so, what do you do to get them to take action? Well, there’s two things. It’s called a tactical call to action and an emotional call to action. And during the middle of your presentation, I love the last piece of your process to be your strongest teaching piece. So, your signature system, make sure the last piece that you teach to the head is your strongest piece. And what you do is you give away something that they would pay for while you’re teaching it. So, like today, I’ll give you a perfect example. I’m going to show you how to win a stage. I’m going to show you how to win a stage today here in just a few minutes. The problem is I can’t teach you all 10 steps of it today. I can only teach you one step of it today because of our time here today but I have a free giveaway that will teach you all 10 steps of it.

And so, when I’m on a stage, I teach stages last because I want to give away that free giveaway while I’m teaching it. Like in the midst of teaching it, I want to be able to give it away. It doesn’t feel like a lead capture because it’s congruent with what I’m currently teaching and so I give away that piece because I want to capture the names in the room. And if you do so well, you will capture 80% to 90% of the people in the room. 80%, 90% of the people in the room, when this is not your room. We’re assuming like Brad said this is the third room. This is not your room. We want you to capture 80% to 90% of them. And so, that is the first thing is you’ve got to have a tactical call to action that gives them something away for free and then if you really want to get like and I know this is a smart like a really smart group. I’ve done my homework and it’s amazing. If you really want to get kind of advanced, make a promise that something that you can win that they can get in their life.

[00:24:30] Pete: So, the second tactical thing like if you can do this in your presentation, make a promise on the front end of a win that you’re going to get them by the time you’re done presenting today. Did anybody hear my promise at the front end of my presentation today? Yeah, I made a promise that you can go book a stage in your local market the next day or two if you really want to. So, if there’s a promise that you can make to them in their life like some promise, so now you’ve given away for something for free and if you make that promise, you better make sure you can give them the resource to be able to do that which I’m going to do for you today. But that’s what you want to do in the hand section is give away something for free so we can actually click their names and get them a win in their life. That’s what we want to do with the hand section so that’s the third piece. It’s the hand section.

And then the fourth piece of the proprietary process is the heart. You close with the heart. Open loop something from the beginning of your presentation that you now can close the loop on, on the backend. Open loop something that you can close loop on the backend. And now you close the loop on an opening story. You bring your opening story or some piece of your opening story full closure. And so, I talk about where my dad and I are at today and I talk about how my dad had another son at 49 and my stepmom was 48 and when I went home to meet my baby brother for the first time, my dad walks me out to the car and he takes my wife, lets her get in the car, takes me to the other side and he says, “I want you to know you’ll always be my little boy but I feel like JT is my second chance to get to do things right.” And I then share with the crowd as I’m closing, had it not been from a speaker on a stage, not only with my dad have not gotten a second chance to do things right with JT, he also has become the greatest grandfather to Keaton, me and Emma that you can even imagine and that was because of the power of a stage.

[00:26:37] Pete: And so, that’s how I close the loop on the opening story that you all heard me tell today. It’s to close the loop. I’m telling you, you’re one signature talk away from being the highest closer in the inspire and educator out there. And so, here’s what I want – no, those are the four pieces. General rule of thumb, 10% to 20% of your time is spent on that opening heart, 60% to 70% of your time is spent on educating meaning the head, and then 10% on the hands on the closing heart. That’s just the general rule of thumb. So, if you have 30 minutes, you can use those percentages to actually design your signature talk. I need you all to just have one great signature talk. Because when you have all of those pieces, when you just are educational and you only speak to the head, you’re boring. And when you only speak to the heart, all you are is an entertainer. You make people cry and laugh but that’s it.

Most people think great presenters do both the head and the heart. Well, that’s the third level. If you think about a pyramid, that’s the third level of it but it doesn’t change. People don’t change. They only change when they go deeper with you. That’s when they change and that’s why the hands part is as important to get them to convert. That’s what makes a great speaker, the top 2% are those that can do all three of those pieces that the heart, the head, the hands, the heart. And so, that’s the framework, Brad. I know I went a little bit longer on that but here’s the thing. We’ll short-circuit the stages but if people don’t have one great signature talk that does all of those things, they’re not going to convert. And as Zig Ziglar said, “I’ve been on a lot of stages in my life and I don’t believe that in 45 minutes I can change people’s lives but if they buy my tapes and cassettes, I have a chance at changing their lives.”

[00:28:40] Pete: And so, that’s why I want people to be able to convert from a stage because if they go deeper with the advisors and their services, I’m just letting you know my life’s change right now because of the policies and the life insurances and all of the stuff that I have in sort with my financial advisor and I would’ve never had that had I not gotten deeper with him. And so, I want people to go deeper with them and that’s why it’s really important to design one incredible signature talk. That’s it.

[00:29:07] Brad: So, that was huge. Thanks for sharing all that. I know people pay you money to share that and you just give it away for free here so thank you.

[00:29:14] Pete: Yeah, man.

[00:29:15] Brad: Blueprint listeners, that was huge. If you didn’t get that as Pete was going through all that so we’ll make sure, Pete, any of those diagrams that can help, we’ll throw those in the show notes too. You hit on a couple things. Thanks for supporting everything I’ve been saying for like the last year or two by the way. So, we spent a lot of time with Bo Eason who’s great. I know we talked about him. I know you’ve connected with him on some levels. He spends a lot of time on story and using it to open a presentation so that people connect with you which is basically what you just also seconded how important that is. But where I think a lot of advisors fall short is a great story to open but now as you go into what you call the head section, the second section, there is no proprietary process. And we’ve spent so much time with our clients, how do you name? How do you trademark? How do you separate yourself in your three to five-step proprietary process? And I just love how you frame that up where your strongest teaching moment, you give that away for free.

So, let’s since we’re on the presentation piece right now, let’s go there and then we’ll circle back around to how you can book stages. So, let’s speak on this third stage. So, I think we’ve kind of left this mysterious third stage out there. So, we’ve got your typical dinner seminar then we have maybe a college education class and really what you’ve specialized in is how do you land free speaking gigs where you’re not paying anything and people are asking you to come in on their stage. So, can you just expand on what does that world look like? And then I want to go into how do you capture the names there before we get on to how you actually book them if that works.

[00:30:53] Pete: What does that world look like? Be a little bit more specific what you mean on what does that world look like.

[00:30:58] Brad: I just think it’s so foreign. I think in financial services, guys are used to paying to speak and so this mysterious world of, “What? Somebody would hit me up on the phone or I would call somebody up and they would invite me onto their stage?” You’ve booked tons of stages with entrepreneurs, just ideal clients for financial advisors in the room just there to listen to what they have to say. So, can you just give us a 30,000-foot view of what are some different stages, what are some different areas where you’ve booked speakers, maybe even financial advisors to speak so that they understand the opportunity there. Because it’s such a foreign world, a lot of advisers don’t even know it’s out there.

[00:31:36] Pete: Yes. Here, I’ll give you the analytics of this and so there are 23,000, I’m just speaking in the US right now so any advisors listening outside the US, I can tell you your numbers but I’m speaking to the US, 23,000 national associations in America and it’s growing. It’s growing. It’s growing. And if you can’t, for those who can’t see me, the national is the parent. Let’s look at it as the parent. That’s the parent national associations in America. Underneath that, they have their state chapters that report to the national and the state chapters and these are membership-based associations. Under the national, you have the state. There are hundreds of thousands or over 100,000 state associations meaning those that report to the national. If we have a perfect world, all 23,000 would have 50 states if that makes sense. All of the 23,000 but that’s not how it works. So, there are hundreds of thousands of state associations.

Now here’s the beautiful thing for the financial advisors. There are then under the state local associations and there are millions of local associations that are under the covering of the state that are under the covering of the national. These are membership-based associations in any niche that you can think about, CEOs, chiropractors, dentists, doctors, lawyers, plumbers, you name it. There are even stay-at-home mom associations. There are prayer associations. There are pastor associations. You name it. There’s an association for which means that the national have engagements typically one to two times a year where they have a big conference just like Advisors Excel does.

[00:33:38] Pete: The states also have one to two conferences a year on average. But here’s the beauty, the local tends to meet monthly. Where the state national put on two big productions or one big production a year, the local meets monthly which means that every one of the financial advisors when I show them how to start winning stages, they have an opportunity with millions of stages that potentially meet every single month to go and speak and be an incredible content provider and I’ll talk about that whenever we get to the stages but to be an incredible content provider and so that’s what exists. So, your ideal client, whatever your ideal client is, there’s an association in your backyard for them. So, I know a lot of financial advisors who love doctors.

I know a guy up the road, my buddy Justin, he loves to target doctors. Well, he loves to target chiropractors. He loves to target dentists. Why try to like one-off them? Why don’t you just go meet where they’re already at, in your backyard where 42 of them come together every single month and go provide an amazing presentation in the way that I just showed you how to provide it? Why not just go meet and be a content provider? You’re not going to be able to sell but you do a good job with your presentation how I just showed you how you to do it and I’m glad we started there, Brad, because you do a great job with your presentation then when you get in front of those 42 doctors or lawyers or attorneys or dentists or CEOs or whatever it is, entrepreneurs, now they’re all in one room and you didn’t have to be the one to spend all the money to get them in a room. That association gets them in the room naturally every single month. So, hopefully, that opens up their minds and imaginations to the whole – and that, just for the record, is just the association world.

[00:35:34] Pete: There is also a public seminar world over here that has nothing to do with associations meaning they don’t have a membership base. I would say Advisors Excel is probably a public seminar because they don’t have like state associations and local associations. Pete Vargas hosted his own event. He’s a public seminar. There are people who are training chiropractors and dentists and lawyers and doctors and CEOs. They have their own events. They’re public seminars. And a lot of people think public seminars are the big space. The public seminars are like a lake and it is a big space of events that exist in your backyard. The associations are like the ocean. They’re endless, man. And so, I love to not discredit either one of them because they’re really big. And so, if we were doing this visually, I could go show people right here on this screen how – maybe I’ll just provide a seven-minute training.

I’ll just show one association and I’ll give that training for the show notes and I have it already, Brad. It’s our chiropractor example and I’ll show you how I go to one website and I can see that they have – I think I don’t know the numbers. They have a national association that has two chiropractic events a year. And then with one drop-down menu, you can see that all 50 state associations and who the executive director is and who their phone number is and who all of their information is and then when their event is. So, you can see all 50 of the actual states and then you take it one step further and I don’t know how many it is in the local but you can see the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of local chapters around the US, all in one view from one shot. So, just in that chiropractic one association exists 500 speaking opportunities and here’s what I want the advisors to understand. This is the power behind it. Yeah, the national was cool. They meet once or twice a year. Yeah, the state is cool. They meet once or twice a year.

[00:37:34] Pete: But these locals meet monthly. That’s what I want the advisors to see. They meet monthly so you have an opportunity to win that stage potentially every single month. So, hopefully, that does what you – does that do kind of opening up the world of stages?

[00:37:50] Brad: Yeah. So, let’s just go deep there. I’m going to throw the other question on the shelf for a second.

[00:37:55] Pete: Cool.

[00:37:56] Brad: So, let’s just say I’m a financial advisor. I’m listening to the podcast right now and let’s say I happen to specialize in chiropractors and let’s say I check out the seven-minute training video. What’s the next step? If I say, okay, a lot of our guys have marketing directors. They’re running big operations. This might be a marketing director reaching out on their behalf. What would that look like to start to engage and actually book that stage? Can we get it?

[00:38:20] Pete: Yes. Absolutely. So, this is like specialized like I’ve worked on this for you specifically and for your audience specifically. Here’s what I want you to know. Let’s go slow. So, I talked about being great on stage and I do agree with Bo. I believe in Bo’s story mentality. I just know that story alone without a full-blown presentation in a way that I outlined it is you got to have that full presentation that does all of the components. And so now that we are going to be great on stage, let’s go win stages. So, that’s the second piece of this pie is let’s go win stages. So, as financial advisors, they need to understand a few things. So, the first piece that financial advisors need to understand is they’re going to have to go position themselves a little bit differently, a little bit differently. I don’t want financial advisor company ABC to be the person who’s winning these stages. I want the financial advisor personality brand to be the one that’s winning these stages. You have to be – it’s okay. This is not a bad thing. Let’s separate. I want to separate kind of the financial planning practice versus – or the wealth management practice from you as a content provider.

We’re going to make you an expert in the content provider who’s an expert because when people know an expert or a content provider, that’s who they want to bring in to speak. And now they don’t think you’re a solicitor or a vendor. So, please understand that piece first. That’s the first piece of the pie. And so, I’m just going to tell people three things that they can do to position themselves well but the first piece of winning stages is making sure the financial advisors put themselves in a bucket to be a content provider. Just give a simple one-page landing page or one-page website up that positions you, and you want to get a little bit more in-depth. Just build out a personal brand website around you as a speaker. You can do it for a couple of thousand dollars. Just build out a personal brand website of you around the speaker. That’s the first thing that you need to do is people need to see or if you just want to incorporate that into your current page, cool, but make sure that they see that you are a speaker. I want you to have…

[00:40:28] Brad: Right there. I mean, that be as simple as like even on your website like as Book Pete, right?

[00:40:34] Pete: Yeah.

[00:40:34] Brad: Book Pete to Speak or something to that effect. They could just even add that on their regular financial advisor website.

[00:40:39] Pete: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And then on there you want to be able to provide some data that actually positions you to make them be like, “Wow. This guy, this Darrell has stuff that we want.” And so, yes, it could be as simple as adding that to your website. And then on there, I want to make sure that you have if nothing else, go create two or three awesome talk titles that basically I would say two or three talk titles and you might say, “Pete, you told me just to design one signature talk.” Yeah. Just create two or three different talk titles that have different angles of that signature talk that one of them will resonate with them to say, “Oh that’s awesome.