Why Dave Decided to talk to Pete:
Pete Vargas is an entrepreneur who helps people grow their businesses and spread their message through stages. He is the founder and CEO of Advance Your Reach, an organization with a shared vision of impacting 1 billion people across 7 spheres of influence. Since 2003, he and his team have booked over 25,000 stages worldwide–and generated tens of millions of dollars of revenue through those stages.
Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business:
Why stages? (1:30) Lead collecting (8:40) Where to get One Hour Launch Workshop (14:00)Quotable Moments:
"Facts tell and stories sell."
Important Links:
OneHourLaunchWorkshop.com/dave
---Transcript---
Speaker 1: 00:00 Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Everybody. Welcome back to [inaudible]
Speaker 2: 00:18 radio. I am your host Dave Woodward and I am so, so excited. I've got a dear friend of mine I want to bring on and the reason I want to bring him on his. I was actually out at his event and while I was there and I rarely paid to go to people's events anymore these days, but this one we actually paid to go to because of the value that I wanted to make sure we got from him and while I was out there at his event, I wanted to make sure that I had him on my podcast so he could share the same types of things with you and give you the opportunity to actually get involved with something like this. So without any further delays here, I want to bring on a dear friend of mine, Mr Pete Vargas. Welcome to show bud. Hey Man, I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2: 00:56 Thank you for having me. I'm stoked and just absolutely love you man. Well, I am so excited. Again, for those of you guys just don't know Pete. He's got a company called advance your reach. It's actually why we went out. A lot of you guys have heard. We actually are in the process of starting our own speaking team and even though Russell spoken on literally hundreds of stages and we've done literally thousands of Webinars, I was, we started looking at trying to systematize actual speaking and using, speaking to build our business. I thought there was no one better that I could bring on than Pe. So I flew myself and Chris who runs Chris now runs our, uh, our speaking team, flew him and myself and miles out to Colorado to spend three days with Pete and his team to learn really about how do you land stages, how can you use stages in your business, how can you actually use a stage to build your business by providing massive value and really you state using.
Speaker 2: 01:47 For us, we're looking at using stages to scale and I know for a lot of you guys who are in the situation or listening to podcasts, some of you are sitting there going, I don't know. I haven't even. I've never done a stage presentation. How would I do that? Pete's going to answer that for you today. For those of you guys who were in Russell situation where you sit there going, the last thing I want to do is actually get on more stages. He's going to tell you how you can actually create a speaker team like what we're doing and do the exact same thing. Again, I'm you guys don't want to hear from me. What you really want to hear from is my friend who I'm so excited to have on the show. Again, Mr Pete Bargas. So Pete, let's kind of talk about what you refer to now as this one, our launch.
Speaker 2: 02:19 What the heck is a one hour lunch? Yeah, so let me just tell you that one. Our launch, we're the one hour launched was birthed for me, like that's an important piece to understand. I, as you know, as a youth pastor and I brought speakers in because I didn't want to speak on the stage and so I brought these speakers in and I remember showed up my first Wednesday night. There were three kids there and I thought, how am I going to grow my youth ministry, which is going to be equivalent to how you're going to grow your business. And so what we did, Dave, is I brought in speakers and in one hour I saw my kids get so moved and inspired that they, the youth group just continued to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. We went from three kids to 750 kids in a town of 12,000 from bringing in over 30 over the course
Speaker 3: 03:00 of four years. And our youth group just grew. And I saw the magic in one hour on a stage and the action that my kids took. One of those speakers, as you know, his daughter was the first girl killed at Columbine in 99. And he came and spoke and he came and he said, you know, there's five people that you need to let them know how much you love them because you don't know how long they're going to be here on earth with you. And I couldn't help but think any said some of them you're not in good standings with. So he, I couldn't help but think about my dad. I hated my dad because of what he had done to me. And so growing up as a kid. So that night I begged my dad to come back to the 90 defense and all of a sudden at the night event, my dad came back.
Speaker 3: 03:39 He heard the speaker speak. We had tried for a decade. Everything, counseling church, his siblings constantly saying, you got to make things right with your son. And in one hour on a stage, one hour on a stage, it prompted my dad to write me a letter and say, I'm sorry for the father up then here my son is having an impact on hundreds of kids lives and I can have an impact on my only son's life. And he asked me for a second chance to do things right. I called that man, now this is important for the list because I said, dude, you did something in one hour that nothing could happen that put my head in the last decade wouldn't happen for my dad, which is a lot like our business. We tried so many things that don't work or they take forever to work and in one hour things can change as you get on a stage.
Speaker 3: 04:23 So I called him and I said, why aren't you getting this out there to everybody? He's like, I'm trying this, I'm trying this. I'm trying this, who's trying a lot of things? And I'm like, get on a stage with your ideal clients in the crowd for one hour and watch what begins to happen. I don't know what the listeners, ideal crowd, they know who it is, but his ideal crowd was principals and superintendents. That's what his ideal crowd was because they were the decision makers who controlled the budgets. So the very first stage I put them on, I was like, Ooh, I hope this works. And because I figured out how do I land this stage, how do I make him great on the stage and how do I make sure that this is one of the biggest customer acquisition channels that exist because that's where he's going to change their lives.
Speaker 3: 05:03 So I got to my first stage, I worked my system back in 2003. I've been working at cents 500 educators in the room. We couldn't make an offer. Five hundred educators in our later 450 of them were turning in a physical piece of paper, what we call a contact card because we lead collected by giving away a free gift for 150 are turning in papers. And in the next two weeks, 70 to 80 new clients paying three to $5,000, just shy of a quarter of a million dollars in one hour in the last year, struggling with everything in this business. He had done $52,000 in the last year. Now here's what happened with him and it's very much like Russell, very, very much like Russell. He started getting big. It started being recognized in the educational system and he couldn't be that, so a lot of you out there solo preneurs or if it's just you on your team and you're trying to really be like, what could I do it start with stages like Russell built click funnels with being on Webinars, you know, he did webinars, there's offline and there's online stages, but here's what happened with them and what's happened with Russell's.
Speaker 3: 06:09 He got too busy and he couldn't be on all of the stages that we're requesting for him. So what did we do? We created a presentation that duplicated past him. We told the stories to company's story on the front end. We talked about the content. Everybody shared the same content in the middle, but at the beginning of the presentation we mentioned the company story and then how the company's story connected to the speaker and then the rest of the presentation was the same for every single one of those speakers. Dave, before it was all said and done, not only did he grow the organization from $50,000 to $7 million in the educational system, which might not sound like a lot on an annual basis, but they don't have budgets.
Speaker 2: 06:49 That's huge. It's huge.
Speaker 3: 06:51 Fifty two speakers out in any given year, sharing one presentation for one hour driving business, so whether it's somebody who wants to do it on their own and go to attract more customers, or if you're like, man, I'm like Darryl and Russell and I don't want to be on the road anymore. I get too many requests. Then build a team of people that can go do it, but here's what stages does it expedites the sales cycle in 60 minutes. A lot of people, it might take them six, nine, 12 months to consume 60 minutes of content online, but when you've got a captive audience, it's called the one our launch because you've got their undivided attention for 60 minutes and we know what can happen when you get on a stage for 60 minutes.
Speaker 2: 07:33 I love it and I think people part I love the most is for one, your passion behind this. I get chills. I've heard you tell that story. I think six different times that I can think of about you and your dad and I get chills every single time because you have this ability to put yourself back in that actual moment to actually experience and have the person who's listening to you experienced the same feelings, the same raw emotions that you were going through right then and it's such a skill set that I think too often a lot of us getting this idea as far as you start telling instead of of of actually sharing and telling stories and as you know, you don't have joked all the time as far as you know, facts tell and stories sell and you're a. You are the master at when it comes to actually getting stories that have impact for people to then use those stories in their, in their presentation to connect with people.
Speaker 2: 08:23 And that's one of the things I love and I was out there to readmit learning from you and just seeing the way that you are so good at connecting with people beat. The one thing I know that a lot of our listeners, they've heard about this whole perfect webinar script from Russell for forever. And so we've talked a lot about webinars. The one part I want to, if you don't mind kind of address is this idea as far as how you made mention that they were able to delete, collect meaning collect when you typically couldn't sell. Most everyone I know when they think of going to speak on stage, it's a 50 slash 50 split. This is one of the things you kept slapping me in the face. And Dave, hey wait, there's
Speaker 3: 08:56 more, there's more. You actually can make more money not selling directly on stage. So if you don't mind kind of explore and explain to people how they actually can use that to build their business when they can't sell. So when you can't sell, there's two things that you're either in your presentation, your co, the we have, uh, we believe in your presentation that you start with the heart and you connect with people you teach and while you're teaching, you're embedding and you're sharing case studies and you're doing all of that. You're basically selling during the year, but you're teaching, you're teaching. But then in the call to action, the only difference between when you can sell and you can't sell as you're either collecting order forms, you're collecting leads when you can sell your collecting order forms. And that's the speak to sell world. And it's only one of four types of stages that you get.
Speaker 3: 09:39 Five types of stages that you can get on the speak to sell world. When you can't sell, you're collecting contact information by giving away a free gift. You give a free gift the way that gets them from a to B, not a to z because nobody's gonna read your book and nobody's gonna go look at your slides, but they will consume a piece of content for 10 minutes that will move them from a to b and when they see that piece of content that moves them from a to B, how to get a date in the next week, how to rent your house and save $10,000 a year, how to go when your first stage in 24 hours and they get that a to b all of a sudden how to build a funnel and in in one day or 10 minutes, you know when they get that a to b, they're like, oh my God, that's his or her aid to be what is going to be there a to Z. Guess who the A to z is here, the ADC and so after that free event, you're following up for 10 to 15 days with automation, with click funnels and you will begin to see sales close.
Speaker 3: 10:39 If it's a low ticket item, it's all automated. If it's a high ticket item, it's phone calls and one of the things that I get the biggest compliment for today on three different interviews, they said, Pete, you opened our eyes to the fact that I can't believe I never thought I could use a stage to sell an eight, 15 or $25,000 product. And then I saw you do it. I just did it at Jj Virgin's event. We couldn't sell in our first session date. We had a hundred and 10 people in the room. We gave free gift away. We did strategy sessions on site. We did 105 strategy sessions out of 110 people in the room and we saw 40 of them go deeper with us and then in the next two weeks we saw another doesn't go deeper with us. After that, you know, another 10 or 12 go deeper with us after that.
Speaker 3: 11:29 That's an unbelievable stage. And guess what, there's no splits. You know, there's no splits and that's the beautiful thing. And so I love the five types of stages. Yes, you can get paid when you get paid your lead collecting. Yes. You can do free events when you do free. Eventually collecting. Yes. You can do speak to sell. When you're doing speak to sell, there's a 50 slash 50, 60 slash 40 type of split. Yes. You can sponsored stages where you pay a fee and you get to keep 100 percent of your money or you're like click funnels, and I love this. How they built click funnels is by doing their own stages. They did, I don't know how many webinars in the first year to launch this baby, but they did their own stages and so that's the powers you. There's four of those that you can be on other people's stages and one of them is your own stage stage.
Speaker 2: 12:18 I love your passion. I love how good you are, what you do, and I think the part I. I had so much fun when we're together at your, at your event, was really diving deep into all four of those. Again, human, it's we. We've done a ton as far as webinars and we've really spent a lot of time on the 50 slash 50 side, but it was the other sides that I was fascinated about, especially as we start building out a speaker team is this ability to to land stages where we may be sponsoring or were there actually is free, which I'm still. I still need to hire you more on that so we'll work out the details of that later, but for me that the real benefit is to really understand how large the opportunity is. I think too often a lot of us in the online funnel world, we think of just webinars or or being at an event and just speaking and splitting it 50 slash 50.
Speaker 2: 13:05 There's such a much more broad opportunity out there and it's really why I wanted to have you on this podcast is to help people understand you're missing the boat. There's so much more opportunity. It's really why, again, pizza whole idea as far as this one, our launch formula or a workshop is set up for that one reason to really allow people the opportunity saying, listen, you actually can build your business in multiple ways besides just webinars and and a typical 50 slash 50 type of a Jv partnership type of thing. So if you don't mind, I know we've just got a few more minutes here. What are some of the things? First of all, I want to make sure people understand how they can get this. So what are they going to get? How do they get it? Where do they go? Yeah, so I'd encourage people.
Speaker 3: 13:44 Well, the goal was to one our launch workshops, spell one out o n e one our launch workshop.com, and we're going to show you how to actually use stages and to grow your business. We're going to show you what to do on the stage. Most importantly, we're going to show you how to get on this. Actually not most importantly, that's the easy part. How do you get on the stage and most importantly, how do you attract customers from those stages? Because Zig Ziglar said, I've never changed someone's life with a speaking Gig, but sometimes they buy my tapes and cassettes and I got a shot at changing their lives. What? Zig understood because the data showed him the data. Meaning his son told me a couple of weeks ago, Pete that had data to prove that dad knew that stages didn't change their lives because out of every hundred testimonies that came in, only one of them was about him impacting them on the stage.
Speaker 3: 14:33 Ninety nine of them were about the products and services that they invested in him with. So that's why we want stages because in one hour to expedite it exponentially exponentially expedites the sales cycle. And so the last part of what we're going to be teaching people is how to actually create customers in all of these different types of stages exist. And so we're giving away thousands access to thousands of stages and we'll be interviewing over 30 meeting planners who control thousands of stages all across the world. So you understand what they think as they're hiring speakers, so that's the one, our launch workshop.com that we're going to be doing the next couple of weeks and I'm really excited about a day, but you asked a good question. You said, what? What is this opportunity with stages in you have you have this opportunity? There's this, there's this pyramid that you can say, I either want to go do on other people's stages or I want to do my own stages.
Speaker 3: 15:25 Both are right. The answer is both are right, but what you're doing other people's or your own. There are eight different offline stages that exist in eight different online stages that exist and if you can just begin to build a portfolio of one, two, or three of the offline and one, two, or three of the online, it becomes powerful. And the thing is people in the Internet marketing space typically only know about a few of those like the speak to sell once, but there's associations, there's a huge association stages. There's seminar stages, there's local stages, there's end user stages, there's media stages, there's masterminds, there's eight different offline stages, and then there's eight different online stages. There's webinars, there's trainings, there's online media, there's podcasts, there's summit's, there's all of these stages that exist and what we basically are showing you how to do is how do you go get on other people's stages and I'll tell you the key is when they realize that you can solve a problem for their community, they'll open it up for you to be on their stage.
Speaker 3: 16:27 Dasia dates, letting me do a round table at clip, at funnel hacking live because he knows I'll provide value because he's seen me and what I provide and so there's this opportunity. J Dave have stages that exist everywhere and the big thing that will get really clear on the in the, in the, in this launch workshop is what's your stage portfolio? Because for Russell it's two to three offline stages a year and that's it. But for the speaking team, it's hundreds of stages for them. You know, for me this year it was 17 to 18 offline stages and I did 125 online stages, kind of like Russell did they get click funnels starting next year. That'll shift for me because now I have three speakers that are going out on my behalf to for Stu Mclaren. He's like, dude, I want to do four stages and I want them to be for big stages and that's it, and that will move the needle in his business on a big way. So for everybody in the season of life they're in, I want you to understand that this is so many stages and you don't even realize how many exists and we're gonna help you get really clear on your portfolio in this training.
Speaker 2: 17:33 I love it. For me, one of the things I get the most out of you, pete, is the idea as far as expanding my mindset with how many additional opportunities there were, and then the other thing was exactly how to get on those stages. I think a lot of the people I talk to says, well, I've got my presentation and I questioned whether you really do, but I'll leave that to let him deal with that. Whether you have your presentation pizza deal, but one thing I can't say that pizza, amazing that is helping you actually get on stages and teaching you how to get on stages. As I mentioned, we've hired will have probably some of the neighborhood of 15, 15, possibly even 20 different speakers this year to try to get on 500 stages and in 2019 and it's all because of pete and his skill set and helping us get on those stages.
Speaker 2: 18:15 That's allowing us to basically have a complete huge event team that's going to be going out this year again to spread click funnels, message to the world and we're so excited to be working with Pete and with advanced have reached team and really spending that kind of time. I can tell you if for me, if I was to, you and I talked back and forth as far as my past and different boards. I've been involved in real estate. I've been involved in financial services I can tell and a lot of internet marketing, every single business I've ever been in has always had a speaking component to it and it's the only way you can truly scale a business, so understanding that those guys who are listening right now, if you have a product or a service and you think you're just doing it online, I can tell you you can 10 to 20 times what you're doing online by adding the speaking component to it.
Speaker 2: 18:59 There's. You get so much more credibility. You have so much more of an authority figure when you start speaking and talking to people and they hear you, they see you. They connect. It's a relationship built. I mean, I go on and on about the importance of stages. It's again against the whole reason why a higher peak was to help us take our stages to the next level. So again, if you guys are in that situation where you're trying to scale your business, you're trying to add additional revenue, by all means, check it out. Again, it's a one hour launch workshop against one hour long. H O u r launch workshop, is that right?
Speaker 3: 19:29 Yeah, one hour launch workshop.com. And Dave, what I would say, and I got a funny story with data, but like I want to really. I've got a really funny story. I want to drive home like the power of the one hour launch, like forget that one our launch. So Dave calls me a couple of years ago. He's been, he's become a friend of mine. Like I'm so glad that Keith Yackey introduced us. We're going to be doing something cool this year at an event and we're going to be doing a lot of cool things, but in being able to help the speaking team, but they've called me a couple of years ago, a year and a half ago, year and seven months ago. I was like, dude, you never believe it. We just did 900 k on this stage and a lot of you know that because it was the first time at 10 x.
Speaker 3: 20:07 and I'm like, all right, he's just motivated me. So watch this. No, this is fun. And you've helped a lot of organizations or individuals go from zero to six using state agency or to seven zero to eight overall in their business. And we've never taken seeing someone go from zero to nine, I believe. I believe click funnels can be that organization. But here's the thing. We've seen a lot. We had seen a few million dollar stages at that point. I had seen it from our clients and I'm like okay, he did 900 k, I had a big stage coming up this January, this past January. And I'm like okay, I just want to be able to tell Dave what I did. And so Michael Phelps was the opening keynote. Howie Mendell was the closing keynote. I was the in the middle of that.
Speaker 3: 20:49 And by the way, they treat me dates. They paid me to be on that stage because of the value I provide and they let me talk about my products and services. And when it was all set in that said and done, that was a seven figure stage. We did over a million dollars from that stage. And I was like, yes, the one hour and I got Dave and Russell and then obviously all of you know the story, like I know Russell doesn't do physical stages much, but when he does, I think that's a commercial, but when he does a million dollars plus in, I am so excited to see what Russell does this year as well. And so like, look at your leader. He built his company in the first year on digital stages. Look at them in physical stages. When he does them, he knocks it out of the park, the one our launch really works. And so dave, thanks for having me. I love to have a lot of people join us in that one hour launch workshop name.
Speaker 2: 21:46 I love it again. So it's one our launch workshop.com. Go there, check it out. Uh, for one it's built on click funnels or it better be right. Maybe it's
Speaker 3: 21:55 well pieces of it or not. So yes, I'm a, I'm a two comma club guy.
Speaker 2: 22:07 I would love to get you to our eight feet. I should've had a ring here that, uh, I just, in fact, we just got a new ring for Russell actually as I'll show it to you later.
Speaker 3: 22:17 Hey, that stage I just talked about, for me, that stage was one with a click funnels page. They actually scheduled a call to see if they wanted me as a speaker on a clickfunnels page because our stage campaign is all built within clickfunnels self. Man, it's, I'm a big advocate of Cleveland.
Speaker 2: 22:34 It's just fun for me. I can tell you again, I bet you were such a dear friend and I love spending time with you. I appreciate. I know you're limited in the middle of the launch right now and I know how busy things are. You've got a million other interviews and podcasts and stuff going on. I appreciate you taking the time today. Again, people, anyone who's listened to this, I hold back anything that does these days, it's been so much fun. Uh, we actually are a crazy yacht coming up here with him and all this other stuff. He's always sucking money out of me some way or the other. Anyways, bottom line is again, go ahead and check out one hour launch workshop.com. I regardless, you've got to be doing stages and if you're not exactly sure how to do it. Pizza. The Guy I hired him and I totally. That'd be opportunity spending time out there with both Chris and miles. Spend three days with them. God knows what he's talking about when it comes to stage it, so check out one hour launch workshop. Again, Pete, always so much fun having any other parting words before we let you go.
Speaker 3: 23:31 Oh Man. Dave, thanks so much and I just thank y'all for. I'm excited to see click funnels in 2019 and the game plan that you have with this powerhouse speaking teams. So
Speaker 2: 23:41 thanks man. We'll talk soon. All right everybody, thank you so much for taking
Speaker 4: 23:46 the time to listen to podcasts. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others? Rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me or I'm trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over 650,000 and I just want to get the next few 100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and get this out to more people at the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'll be more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if there's people like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to Itunes, rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or I can do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.
