Monica Froese [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Empowered Business Podcast where strategy meets action. I’m Monica Froze and I’m here to help you create, sell and scale digital products the smart way, using AI and proven strategies to build a sustainable, profitable business. If you’re ready to turn your expertise into digital products that sell and eventually grow into a thriving digital shop, you’re in the right place. Each week I break down real world tactics, unfiltered insights and bold business moves. Because building a digital product business should be sustainable, scalable and designed for long term success. Let’s ditch the fluff, leverage AI to work smarter and turn your expertise into a thriving digital empire on your terms. Let’s get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Empowered Business Podcast.
Monica Froese [00:00:51]:
As you know, we have been on an AI kick around here and that is going to continue into today’s episode, except we’re going to be spinning it a little bit and talking about events. Now. I have run a lot of events in my business. I have done bundle summits, I have done live challenges and I will tell you that it is a lot of work and if you’ve ever run an event, you know it’s a lot of work as well. And in the age of AI, connection is becoming even more important, which of course we know. And so Michelle is turning this on its head and coming up with different ways to connect with her audience. Given the fact that AI is really accelerating everything around us right now and again, making that human connection just so much more important. Michelle is an easy events expert and lover of low lift strategies to grow your business without overstretching your limited time, energy and capacity.
Monica Froese [00:01:46]:
After quitting a shiny career as a Hollywood set decorator and moving to Paris, she spends her limited desktime helping you grow your list and boost your visibility by hosting impactful yet low lift online events like a summit conference, bundle giveaway and more. Except her strategies are making it even easier to run and always leading with that human touch. So let’s dive in and hear what Michelle has to say about how you can implement some of these low lift strategies for events into your business. Michelle, welcome to the Empowered Business Podcast. I am super excited to talk to you today all about your easy events that you’ve been putting together. I have lots of questions as you know about this. I really think this is a good thing to talk about, especially in the changing landscape of AI and how we communicate with our audiences. But before I dive into events, I would love for you to tell us a little bit about yourself and of course your entrepreneurial journey.
Michelle Ponvert [00:02:42]:
Yeah. Hi, I’m Michelle Ponvert. If you want to get really French about it, Ponfert works great too. I’m Australian natively. I’ve taken my husband’s name and I’m now having to deal with the French pronunciation of everything. So I basically had a second sort of career change after going to film school. I worked in the film industry in America. That’s where I met my husband and loved the industry, hated the work, completely burnt myself out and realized I’d built a dream for myself that didn’t actually fit who I was as a human.
Michelle Ponvert [00:03:12]:
It was a lot of 12 to 14 hours work, driving, never knowing when work happened really hard on your body and just life. I was getting to a certain stage where I was seeing like, oh, I would quite have children. I have no clue how this fits in this industry. And seeing people above me who decided either not to have kids or had to leave the industry when they had kids. And I was only like, I think 27 when this hit me. But it hit me really hard. And so I did what every sane person does and leave the industry, move to France, like start again. Didn’t speak a word of French and kind of started my life over again with this clarity on what I wanted out of life.
Michelle Ponvert [00:03:48]:
And it took me a little while, got myself into the marketing industry. Really quite liked it because I used a lot of the same, like creative and project management skills I’d learned in film and found myself into the online business space as a web designer to start with. I think I learned a lot of really great skills in web design, but clearly did not love the client. One piece of it, I’m just not built for it. My kid has extra needs and that was just a really tough thing to balance with clients. So I pivoted again quite sharply into digital products and courses and found myself posturing through this, teaching online marketing to online marketing people for a little while. And it took me really until I started to face the challenge myself of how on earth am I going to grow an audience for these digital products, for these courses if I can’t show up live that much, have pretty limited social battery myself, don’t really do well on Instagram. Social media is not my cup of tea.
Michelle Ponvert [00:04:42]:
SEO is really long term and hard. Like, how am I doing this? And so I started participating in other people’s online events in summits and bundles. I’ve been in over 50 events in the last year and a half. Like I went hard and got really obsessed and I was Watching what everybody else was doing, taking notes in the background of what I liked, what I didn’t like, what I could see myself realistically doing, what felt aligned with how I like to run my business and how I like to do things. And then at the end of last year, I started to dip my toe into hosting my own events, but really trying to be intentional about designing these events around my real lived capacity, the way my brain actually works. I’m also neurodivergent and needed things to work a little differently than maybe they’re taught in the industry. And crafting these events around my own intentions, my own capacity, my own way of working opened something up in me that got me really excited, but also made me realize that not everybody else was approaching things this way, was giving this level of critical thinking to how we do events and why we do events, and really purposefully designing the events to fit us and our businesses, not just fit the mold of what we think an event is. And so earlier this year I pivoted again hard into the online event kind of industry, but really positioning myself as someone who leans into things being low lift and easeful because they’re not just easy by being simple, yes, simple, strategically simple is a big piece of it.
Michelle Ponvert [00:06:09]:
But also being really thoughtful about design around the person operating them and their capacity, their needs, their goals, their aspirations for the events. And so that’s how I came to this niche. I now host my own events fairly regularly and teach others how to do the same. And yeah, that’s my little industry story.
Monica Froese [00:06:27]:
Because I’ve told you that I very events nowadays are going to catch my eye. I have a million emails like everyone else and I don’t have the bandwidth to participate in free stuff. Hardly ever. I can’t even think of the last time. But your recent podcast based event, Evidence of Humanity caught my attention because it was a very timely topic and something I’m feeling pain points in my business about. I have to. So I know it’s gonna be a great conversation about this, but let’s start because I honestly know about that event because I actually did participate in it. What was the first event that you hosted when you made this pivot?
Michelle Ponvert [00:07:03]:
Yeah, so I’ve hosted two prior to Evidence of Humanity. One which was my very first baby. One was actually a pop up collaborative blog post which sounds really clunky when you think about it. It was just 4 of the people and we all shared our own story on moving from client work to digital product. And it was these like four different avenues all of us asking the same questions and sharing our different stories and perspectives. It was only available for a week and it was just a really lovely collaborative way to create something free and fun and interesting for our different communities and kind of share lists. So it was really scoped, really tight in terms of an event, but had great list bump for all of us for the amount of incredibly minimal work we put into making it.
Monica Froese [00:07:45]:
Did you sell anything on the back end of that one?
Michelle Ponvert [00:07:47]:
So we each did have, I think, tripwires set up off the back of our freebies. So people would sign up for basically just getting access to the vlog and then joined whoever’s list they wanted to off the back of that. And we all had tripwires. And then I think quite a few of us, myself included, happened to have timed a launch quite close to that event. So it was partially just a list growth sort of experiment to see what worked, but I think it was quite timely for at least three of us to have launches really close to it as well.
Monica Froese [00:08:15]:
What was the next event?
Michelle Ponvert [00:08:16]:
The next one was another audio summit that I did in January. It was called Energy Savers and this was a celebratory event. We were not really talking about one specific topic, but sharing stories of people who were doing something different in their businesses to preserve energy or find more energy in their work. This was specifically for me to get leads into my program that I was launching off the back of it. That’s no longer around because I pivoted. But it was also a way for me to really experiment with bringing my audience that was previously really focused on just general online marketing and online business along to like really talk and think about events. And for me, this was a turning point event for me to test the waters with a new niche, bring people along with me on this new direction of the business and get people talking. Because previously my email list had been active selling, but quite quiet.
Michelle Ponvert [00:09:08]:
And this was around the time of all the Google Update, so we had to do all that like domain authentication nonsense. For me, this was like, okay, all of the people I know in my business space need to get our emails, active replies, we need conversations, we need clicks. And so this was, yes, for me to get leads, but also for us to bring email back up to speed.
Monica Froese [00:09:28]:
That makes sense. How many people participated in that audio summit?
Michelle Ponvert [00:09:32]:
That one was, I think, 32 people. That was my biggest event. The evidence of humanity that we just did had 27 people total.
Monica Froese [00:09:41]:
So for the energy savers, one, the. What was the topic then? Like things that you can do to save energy in your business, essentially.
Michelle Ponvert [00:09:49]:
Essentially, yeah. It was things that like people had done to implement something that made the processes work faster or had some kind of system they built in their business or something they cut out of doing in their business. It was a much broader topic and it did bring in people from different, I don’t know, different parts of the industry. But I did really, I invited everybody personally and I did keep it pretty closely tied to people doing online business in kind of the way I do it with similar niches. So it wasn’t my most tightly themed event, but it was very much that bucket of people talking about these same topics.
Monica Froese [00:10:24]:
Interesting, because now we’re going to talk about aspects of humanity which I feel like in pretty significantly. So I’m curious, I want to talk about what it was so people have context. But I also want to. If this, if you feel like this event was like the turning point for you, you know how we always. There’s always that point when like something pops off and I feel like that, honestly, just the fact that you got my attention with it. I’m wondering if this event really popped off on your side, if it was.
Michelle Ponvert [00:10:48]:
Yeah, yeah, I like so.
Monica Froese [00:10:50]:
And let’s talk about what evidence of humanity is and how you came up with the idea.
Michelle Ponvert [00:10:55]:
So it was another audio summit essentially where I had a group of people who I respected in the online business space sharing about what they were doing in their businesses right now to embrace and show off more human touches in the face of the rise of AI and automations. And really that was my point of it of we all know AI is here, it’s all coming now. What’s going to be critical to small business is that human connection, the human to human piece. Because the AI stuff is taking care of a lot of the other parts of our work. And so it was really bringing into kind of conversation, even though we weren’t actually sitting and talking to each other, how we’re all differently approaching these things, how we’re using or maybe choosing not to use AI and really bringing in a respectful conversation around what are we doing now as an industry now that AI is here.
Monica Froese [00:11:42]:
Yeah, and again, incredibly timely because that I’ve talked about how I ignored AI because of my personal life just being off the rails for two years and then it’s like you always in online business, if you’ve been doing it for a long time, you see the train coming, but it’s not like a typical train that came every day. There’s dozens of new tools popping up and like skill sets you need to learn and it’s distracting people and it’s also change shifting the work that how fast we can work in our business. So what we need people to help us with versus not and then what our audience needs like I’ve mentioned and I’m eventually going to record a podcast about it. I think that the death of self paced courses because people have the idea that they can get it all from check. It’s just really changing how people want to consume our content and buy stuff from us. So it was definitely like I was like, yes, I really want to know what people are doing to combat this. What kind of unique ideas are we coming up with? I consumed it on my walk. I take daily walks and I had been looking for something that really touched that pain point and it was great.
Monica Froese [00:12:42]:
So kudos to you for the. How was the participation between the two events?
Michelle Ponvert [00:12:49]:
So pretty similar except so some backstory. On my event that I ran in January, I was really proud of how it came together, but I was incredibly sick during the entire event, like in my bed, absolutely flat out. And I hadn’t added in a community element because I was so sick. And so there were lots of signups, lots of downloads, but I think I missed out on the opportunity to actually really connect with those people that I then brought in. I still had like great retention from those leads, but I did feel like I’m seeing more and more the people who are actually buying are people who’ve had some kind of interaction with you, either asynchronously, but really more directly. And so I really saw that pain point in that previous event. And so for me, the key difference I did in Evidence of Humanity was adding in that community. And I saw the people who joined that group were really engaged, were really wanting to come into conversation with me and were really open to dialogue.
Michelle Ponvert [00:13:47]:
And that’s what I think is so needed. And I think this is like living out what I was trying to share in the event of what we’re all craving. What we all want as humans right now isn’t more AI stuff because we can all get that. We can all find that what we want is the actual human to human connection. Learning from other people’s experiences, learning from other people’s mistakes. It wasn’t just teaching. It wasn’t like here’s how I did X, Y, Z. It was here’s the problem I was trying to solve, like how I figured out how to solve it for myself and hearing people’s thought processes through solving problems I think is really interesting because we can then extrapolate how we might approach our own problems differently.
Michelle Ponvert [00:14:24]:
Because if we’re just learning how to, we’re not really learning how to ask better questions to ChatGPT or AI, we’re not learning how to problem solve better. And that will always be a skill set humans need. I think we’ll always need other humans to figure out the better questions to be asking the better problems to be solving. And that’s why we really wanted to bring it into a community space this time. And I think that was really successful, really engaged group and really brought me a lot of leads into what I was selling later. But I think it was really that difference between having just standalone value that I shared and then bringing that value into conversation with people with the community too.
Monica Froese [00:15:04]:
I had first of all, why Slack?
Michelle Ponvert [00:15:06]:
How did.
Monica Froese [00:15:07]:
Because there’s the typical in the entrepreneur groups is someone’s gonna run an event and inevitably they’re like oh, are we really getting engagement on Facebook anymore? Do we really wanna be on Facebook? But where can we actually get people to show up? Because getting people off platform is still. This has been a conundrum for us for years. So how. Why did you decide on Slack?
Michelle Ponvert [00:15:27]:
Yeah, I’ve been in some Slack communities for like masterminds and group programs I’ve been in and I like it because it’s a platform I can log into on my phone, log into on my computer, but I can turn off to. And I’m personally not like the biggest fan of Facebook. I find it very hard to navigate different groups. And so I liked the idea of creating the pop up community because it was ephemeral. It went away as something that you could dip into. It was all there and you could dip out of again. So Slack really appealed to me for that. It was also very personally something I’m testing because I want to put my program there.
Michelle Ponvert [00:15:58]:
I want to move my student only group there. So it was like testing the waters to see how my audience dealt with Slack. But I’ve tried so many different community apps and a big piece that was a problem for me in the past is like the onboarding and continued access to things school or a circle or Heartbeat is there’s quite a lot of work you have to do to access the things inside the community and then remembering how to log back in and find it was always a challenge. And I do like the directness of Slack of you just sign up and it’s there. And that really appealed to me for particularly an event where I’M like, there’s nothing else here. It’s just a community. We’re just talking. I don’t need you to also find a course.
Michelle Ponvert [00:16:36]:
I don’t need to also find other content. It’s all just conversation. So I quite liked that it was a bit more narrower space.
Monica Froese [00:16:43]:
And you just recorded a podcast for your podcast said something on there that stuck out to me about the topic, why you chose the topic. You know, we talked about that, but one of the things you said to me was that you wanted to reach a certain kind of business owner. Can you talk about that? Because I’m going to relate that to something about Slack.
Michelle Ponvert [00:17:01]:
Yeah. So I obviously think that AI was a really important topic to hit on. It was something I was trying to explore in my own business. But what was really appealing to me in this sort of pivot I’ve been going through in my business is I want to speak to a business owner of a certain level who’s past the kind of beginner stuff and really working on higher level problems that an event might help them solve. So to help position me around those people having these problems that I’m wanting to help them solve, I wanted to start having higher level conversations. Not just creating a summit or a bundle. I wanted to instead bring people into a community, into conversation with me around topics that are very topical. It could have been anything.
Michelle Ponvert [00:17:44]:
AI just was the thing that we are very much dealing with right now. And I do stand by it being on its own. A very interesting conversation. But I think for me it was much more about creating conversation with the right people, regardless, somewhat of what it was.
Monica Froese [00:17:58]:
Yeah. And when you say the right people. So basically you wanted to hit people that are at a certain level of business and to relate that to the Slack group. Most of us, like I use Slack for my business already there, we’re already trained to go to it. And that, that again has always been the conundrum of getting people off Facebook. We’re trained on Facebook, so getting someone to then go to school or to Heartbeat. But if you’re using Slack every day in your business, which most of us are, it’s gonna be an easier sell to get people to communicate there. So I think that was actually a pretty smart decision.
Monica Froese [00:18:28]:
Now, I admittedly did not participate in the Slack group because I have been going through just a lot of transition on my side. I’ve taken a lot more back tactical back on in my business. How many people would you say were actively engaged in the community?
Michelle Ponvert [00:18:40]:
Yeah, I think I had about 60, 70 people. It was open for five days and I had, I think I counted like a thousand two hundred different messages throughout that time, which, for a summit community. Let’s put this back in perspective. That is enormous. Usually these are dead. I’ve been on a lot of summit. A lot of it is just broadcasting stuff. And nobody answers the fact that we had so many people messaging.
Michelle Ponvert [00:19:04]:
I’m super.
Monica Froese [00:19:05]:
And were the conversations like deep conversations?
Michelle Ponvert [00:19:08]:
We had a lot of people obviously showing love for today’s episodes or certain conversations. But we really got into, like, how are we going to deal with AI in our businesses? And what does that mean for the work we’re selling and getting into spaweets and stuff? Three people who are really wanting to have this conversation. I’d actually have two of them join my program afterwards. So I can say it also really worked for that nurture piece, for really wanting to dig into that conversation with me and with each other, too. You never want to force people to talk to each other. It was really lovely to see these organic conversations starting because I just provided a prompt and then I was chiming in, too. I wasn’t trying to say, here’s what I know, here’s how I see things. It’s more.
Michelle Ponvert [00:19:46]:
Here’s a question I’m also dealing with. Let’s talk about it. And that really opened the room for everybody to talk, including me, about something we’re all dealing with.
Monica Froese [00:19:54]:
Was there any particular audio or strategy or that popped off that really stood out, whether it was like the number of downloads it got or just like the amount of activity of the chat around it?
Michelle Ponvert [00:20:08]:
Yeah. So I had Julie Chanel, who is for me a bigger business than I have, had a really great presentation about her second brain, that the way she uses AI to put all of her thoughts into one place and help it hold those thoughts for her. That was super popular. And then Natalie Bullen also talked about her kind of approach to money. She’s a money coach. And that one got a lot of really interesting conversations of. Yeah, like, how are we dealing with our money now that we’ve got AI and automations taking care of a lot of them, like, managing it, how are we making sure we’re keeping an eye on it? How are we dealing with spending? How are we like, it was very interesting. I just had a look before we hopped on at my hello Audio because that’s what I use for my podcast.
Michelle Ponvert [00:20:47]:
And I could see some of those episodes actually had a big increase afterwards because I give people much longer access time for the podcasts. Than typical. I don’t take it away after the event’s over. I give them for this one 30 days to listen. So I’ve got people still accessing all these audios and so I’ve got maybe the bigger name, the flashier episodes that get the spike at the beginning. And now I’m starting to see some of the slow burns, starting to get that really nice peak now and probably even into the next two weeks. And that’s been really fun to see when things hit people too.
Monica Froese [00:21:18]:
Okay, so this brings up some strategy questions for me. That one, the logic behind keeping it open. I think it’s fairly obvious that you’re keeping it open because you want people to actually consume the content and we are all busy. Audio I will say is definitely for me the easiest way to consume. If you had made this a summit, I would have been interested in the topic and probably watched nothing, to be honest with you. If I can listen to it on my walks, because that’s the free time I have. But I’m not watching a video on my walk. So that was super helpful to get me to consume it.
Monica Froese [00:21:50]:
But I’m curious now about the backend strategy. You opened a program called Easy Events and you mentioned to me before that it was the two month container, like live implementation. There is some pre recorded stuff, but it’s really meant for you to help people come up with their own event topic and get their own event, low lift event out there. But you’re closing the doors to it. I think you said tomorrow, so why close the doors before the end of your open audio period?
Michelle Ponvert [00:22:20]:
So the timing on this was a little tricky because in France we shut down in August and have no childcare and I really wanted to time my program so that I was available for as much of it as possible over the summer. So it was like my personal constraints to when I needed to open my program. The other thing, this is like behind the curtain. I have a downsell coming off the back of this launch and I wanted to have people still thinking, grueling on this stuff even after the program launch in case the downsell is a better fit. And I think this kind of gave them that like little bit of extra thinking time like still being on their podcast when my downsell shows up as well.
Monica Froese [00:22:57]:
Okay, Mind sharing what the downsell is?
Michelle Ponvert [00:23:01]:
Yeah, actually it’s really fun. I’m doing a choose your own adventure downsell so people can pick from three different things to meet them where they’re at. So I have some that are very like beginner get your event idea figured out, self paced stuff. And then I’m launching for the first time an event idea session. Essentially we’re going to sit down together and map it out. I do some research ahead of time to map out opportunities for their event and I’ll sit down with them to actually figure out the topic and the format that’s going to really sit with them and their goals and their business. So I needed to launch that before August. When childcare falls apart.
Michelle Ponvert [00:23:35]:
That’s how everything turned out for me. Wanting to make sure that had capacity to do those after the downsell as well.
Monica Froese [00:23:41]:
I can certainly relate. My kids are 7 and 12, my.
Michelle Ponvert [00:23:45]:
12 year old especially.
Monica Froese [00:23:46]:
But we’re making her volunteer in summer camp because she’s too old to go to summer camp because she could be home. But she was salty with us about it. We’re like one, you need volunteer hours for school. It’s structure’s good. But what she doesn’t understand is that she still interrupts us a lot. Like I’ll just get into the flow of doing something. It’s mom, can I make a grilled cheese?
Michelle Ponvert [00:24:05]:
Or mom, can I go down the street?
Monica Froese [00:24:06]:
And it’s like she doesn’t understand that those interruptions break up our. We can’t. I’m not as productive with her in the house and she’s.
Michelle Ponvert [00:24:13]:
But I’m easy mom.
Monica Froese [00:24:14]:
Yeah, you need structure too and I can’t provide that to you while I’m trying to work. But it’s funny because the summer is. I completely relate like it. Oh, it’s chaotic. I didn’t realize that you guys was.
Michelle Ponvert [00:24:27]:
Down for an entire bonkers. Like the entire Paris is just quiet. There’s no restaurants open, nothing open. My son has additional needs so childcare is like quite challenging. And one of my rules for myself in my business is I don’t work when he’s home. I don’t work. And so that’s a really hard boundary for me that I bake into everything I do. It’s how I plan all my launches and I think like everything.
Michelle Ponvert [00:24:49]:
And it was really important to me that if I am doing this beta program and I am taking up that big piece of my capacity, anything else I sell has to still fit in that chunk of time I have while he’s got childcare and that I’m available for him when he doesn’t.
Monica Froese [00:25:03]:
Yeah, I’m the same way. I have 50. 50. But I say like when the girls are here, I don’t want to be working the whole time. But I also do have to pay the mortgage, so it’s such a balancing act to fit that. Yeah. Closing down for a whole month. I do not envy you.
Michelle Ponvert [00:25:17]:
Good luck. Thank you.
Monica Froese [00:25:19]:
And you told me earlier you don’t have air conditioning.
Michelle Ponvert [00:25:22]:
I love France. Except for in August.
Monica Froese [00:25:24]:
I don’t blame you. Okay, so I’m very curious. We’ve been talking a lot on the podcast lately about AI. Of course.
Michelle Ponvert [00:25:31]:
Hello.
Monica Froese [00:25:31]:
This is like the point of your event too. I think it’s so fascinating. Like your objective of the event to talk about AI was more that you were just looking for a timely topic that would bring your ideal customer to you. Well, what are you doing with AI in terms of integrating it? Is it going to be a big part of this, the easy event program you have? Are you integrating AI strategies and helping people with their events?
Michelle Ponvert [00:25:55]:
Yeah, I’ve been building out some tools, maybe more on my end, so I may end up selling them as like products on their own. But what I’m looking for is ways to help synthesize what’s in my head and synthesize what’s in their head and help us get to the answers faster. I have still mixed feelings about AI in Europe. It’s much more controlled and we didn’t actually get access to a lot of these tools until way later than the rest of the world because of our legislations. So it’s. I felt a bit behind the eight ball on this. Like, I don’t feel like I’m up to speed on it, but I’m really interested to see how to integrate what I am learning and use it in a way that feels good to me. However, for me, the purpose of this program that I’m launching isn’t more learning, it’s the doing.
Michelle Ponvert [00:26:39]:
Personally, I’m a doer. I think that’s the piece that people are missing and people are really wanting, is helping execute on the ideas. So I’m happy to use AI in the ideation and in the planning stage so that I can preserve myself and preserve their efforts for the doing, because ultimately we’ll always still have to do that bit. So I think as I’m building it out and as I’m doing this beta, I’m also testing to see, like, where do people need those tools? Where will it speed up that stuff to free them up, to give them space, to give them capacity for the doing and to make sure they have still energy left for the launch and the promotions after their events. Because that’s a big pain point for people who often run Typical events.
Monica Froese [00:27:19]:
So do you think you’ll have custom GPTs eventually built out with your IP logic, helping them come up with their event ideas faster and stuff like that?
Michelle Ponvert [00:27:28]:
Exactly, yeah. And probably on the planning side as well, I’ve got one that I’m working on to help them come up with the timelines and tasks and to do stuff. But even if you give people a beautiful plan, it’s only part of it. It’s great to have a great plan, it’s great to have a great idea. But if you don’t do it and if you don’t stick to it, that’s a whole other problem. That’s what I’m there for. They can use tools, they can use all my curriculum to come up with the idea and the plan. I’m here to help them get it done and get it done without burning out.
Michelle Ponvert [00:27:54]:
I’ll preserve that and I’m happy to use the tools to free me and them up for that piece that I think is really the thing only we humans can do.
Monica Froese [00:28:04]:
That is so fascinating because in my main program that I just redid for AI, which is the Empowered Business Lab and it’s all about creating and selling basically load like your entry level digital products. And I really have identified that there’s three pillars of GPTs that I could create. The one to help them come up with their product idea, what the product’s going to be, what’s going to go inside the product, how they’re going to structure the product. Then the next one is now you got to build the sales funnel. So you know all the funnel copy the post purchase emails. And the third one, the one that I feel is like the gold because a lot of people don’t like numbers. They just don’t. They look at numbers and they’re like great, I see the numbers but I don’t know what these numbers mean.
Monica Froese [00:28:43]:
And they almost always, I always think of it like pulling back an onion, right? And people usually default to oh, no one wants my product, it didn’t sell back the onion. It’s the product wasn’t even the problem because look how many opt ins you like your opt in was failing or whatever. And I have reviewed hundreds, thousands of digital products in my time as a teacher. I have all this knowledge in my head but people still struggle. So this GPT I’m working on is like all of this knowledge that I have. If this then that kind of knowledge. But what I found is still at the end of the day I can get AI to tell people I can Get AI to like literally layer on my brain and all this knowledge that I have. But people still want the human sign up.
Monica Froese [00:29:25]:
They still want me to say, yes, go that direction. That’s the direction. I’ve seen the data, I’m interpreting it the same way. And what I’ve come to learn is like the AI, what it does is sometimes it gives us a really great idea. Oh yeah, I didn’t think that we could change that. And then I’m like, okay, yes, based on what I know, on all my knowledge. And now what it just told us, it’s like the human element mirroring it together and being like, okay, here’s your sign off, here’s your check mark to go do it. I was almost thinking it could be almost like a hybrid kind of done for user and I’m seeing like, I could see like basically they run their stuff through the GPT and then they send it all to me.
Monica Froese [00:30:00]:
And it cuts down on tons of work for me because the work AI really did the work based on my logic and now I’m just making sure that it aligns. And I could really see something like that for you. With events, they get access to your brain in such a different way, but then it cuts down on a lot of work. AI got them so far down the path that now you really can use your expertise, like you said, for the execution, getting them to actually take action.
Michelle Ponvert [00:30:26]:
Yeah, I think the piece that is so quirky about events is that it’s not something you just do on your own. You have to interact with other humans. And I can give them all the tools to help them keep on schedule and remember all these things. But if you don’t have a conversation, reach out to people, be human when they maybe need more time or follow up with them. That stuff is the biggest pain point I hear people have when they are hosting an event and is the thing I think can only really be solved by having another human being like, yep, let’s work on this, let’s hold that boundary. Here’s maybe where we should be compassionate and how to be compassionate with that human situation. Maybe it’s time to cut them loose. Maybe it’s time to look for something else.
Michelle Ponvert [00:31:05]:
And I think that’s the kind of nuanced stuff that I really love doing that I think people really do still want another person to run by on top of also just holding them accountable. The number one thing they all want is just accountability. Just poke me, just make me do the thing. And as much as you can, ask a GPT to do that. It’s very different. When you paid me to poke you.
Monica Froese [00:31:27]:
Even before AI across the board, it was people wanting accountability. And I always tell people when I kick off those kind of events, listen, I still can’t do it for you.
Michelle Ponvert [00:31:35]:
At the end of the day, you.
Monica Froese [00:31:37]:
Still have to like accountability. It’s funny, it’s almost like that’s what they want. But at the end of the day, accountability will still always rest with that person. Because you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink it. And I tell my kids that a lot too. It’s like, I have set you up, kid. I have set you up. But if you don’t want to take the.
Monica Froese [00:31:56]:
It’s like giving them their space for homework, giving them quiet time, giving them structure. But I can’t make you pick up the pencil and write the work. You still are accountable for the final. The final draft.
Michelle Ponvert [00:32:07]:
Exactly. Yeah. And I think there is something to that, that we are also humans running these businesses and we are imperfect. And I think we do take on a lot of other people’s stuff when we’re putting on something like an event or a launch or a product. I think the other piece that is harder, I think probably not impossible, but harder to get a GPT or something to do for you is to hold you accountable to your own goals and your own purpose for the event. I think something I also have seen a lot of is people overcomplicating things as they go because they’re second guessing or this looks shiny. That sounds good. That looks like I’m optimizing and being really smart, but actually just adding a whole bunch of extra work and you lose track of that thread.
Michelle Ponvert [00:32:49]:
That really was why you didn’t event in the first place. Like what? You’re purposeful. And that’s the other thing that is really valuable. Having another person in the trenches with you is saying, hang on a sec. Yes, that sounds very nice and shiny, but that’s not what you wanted this for. This is not why we put on this event. This is not why you designed it this way. You wanted this.
Michelle Ponvert [00:33:08]:
We calculated out, we figured out this is what we need to do to get there. Let’s stay the course. Let’s not get distracted by optimizing it with a bajillion other things too.
Monica Froese [00:33:16]:
And we talked on your podcast about how like the summit I did in October, the striking gold summit. I feel like summits can get really bloated and there’s so many moving parts and we add on gamification and this and that. Before you know it, I had told you. By the time I got to the pitch of my own program, I was completely burned out. It’s just so much work. So you’ve been using this term when we’ve been talking about this low lift. And when you say low lift, that makes me think of basically conserving your energy. The most amount of payoff.
Monica Froese [00:33:43]:
Right. I put all of my energy in up front and then I was completely burned out as the event was going on. You want to be present and be excited about it and so is that what you mean when you say it, low lift?
Michelle Ponvert [00:33:53]:
Yeah, exactly. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And I think we forget that after the event’s finished and you’ve said goodbye to everybody that it’s not over. By keeping the event itself ruthlessly simple, you preserve as much energy as possible for the sale afterwards, for the launch afterwards, for welcoming those new people into your world and making a really good impression on them, to make all that effort of the event worthwhile. And I think we often put too much focus on just attraction and not enough on retention. And for me, I’d much rather you have a smaller scoped event that brings in maybe less people, hopefully a bit better fit that stick around, that pay attention, that know who you are and are really watching what you’re doing, than having a huge, big, shiny, fancy summit that brings in tens of thousands of people who forget who you are instantly, who unsubscribe right away, who don’t end up actually sticking around, who aren’t going to not only buy from you, but be referrers, be collaborators, be people who shout you out in rooms you’re not in. And that’s what I think. These smaller, tighter, more focused events can be the lower lift on your end because you’re not complicating them to the end of the earth.
Michelle Ponvert [00:35:03]:
But they’re also focused on really making it something that you have still capacity for. The other pieces that come from an event, the launch, the collaboration, the conversations.
Monica Froese [00:35:12]:
Afterwards, like me who was like, okay, now I’m so burned out a week. And it was like all it felt like off a cliff. And that’s not what you want to feel after you put all this effort into this event. You want to energized by it. As a business owner, it doesn’t feel great when something makes you feel like you just dove off a cliff instead.
Michelle Ponvert [00:35:32]:
Yeah, I liken it to planning a wedding. Lots of people plan these like big shiny weddings and they’re really complicated and really expensive and they don’t have a good time on their wedding day because they put too much pressure into it. And what I’d rather you make is like a small intimate gathering that you then have a really great day and you feel really good the day after we’re making like an intimate elopement when not making a big shiny wedding.
Monica Froese [00:35:55]:
This is so funny because I was just talking to someone yesterday about big weddings. Oh, someone we were talking about saving for our kids future. And the guy I was talking to, and he goes, yeah, like if they want to have that big wedding, so I’ve got girls, right? And I said, oh, I’m not paying for my kids weddings. And he was taken aback by it. And I said, why would. I would much rather get them a safe car or invest in their educational future. Like you have this big wedding and it’s, it’s just for what you spend a lifetime of savings for this 12 hour day and that’s it. And then most marriages end in divorce anyways.
Monica Froese [00:36:31]:
I’m like a little bit skeptical over there considering I went through a divorce, but I just can’t. It’s like a lot of work and.
Michelle Ponvert [00:36:37]:
Effort for just what a good picture at the end. And that’s what I think people get sidetracked by. They’re like, I like the sound of the big numbers that a big summit or a big bundle can give you. But for what? Like where are those people going? What are you actually getting from it long term as a business owner? And how do you feel throughout it? I think it’s. Yeah, throwing a party you don’t even enjoy. What’s the point? I want you to enjoy your own party too.
Monica Froese [00:37:02]:
So could you tell me, are you structuring this with a certain type of event you’re teaching people to do? Is it going to be audio based?
Michelle Ponvert [00:37:09]:
No. So we’re actually pretty loosey goosey with the formats because I think it matters a lot less than people think it does.
Monica Froese [00:37:15]:
Okay.
Michelle Ponvert [00:37:16]:
You know what I think really is important is figuring out your event. Why, like why on earth are you even bothering to do this? Who are you trying to attract? What do you want them to do and how can we get them to do that? And whatever that thing they want is will help lead us to the format that makes sense. I do these event ideation sessions at the beginning of the program and we untangle together what it looks like. I don’t come in with a preconceived idea and we’ve come up with like collaborative cookbooks and roundtable conversations and all sorts of really creative formats, you’re selling them afterwards, introducing them to what you’re going to be leading to afterwards, and attracting people who are going to be a right fit for that, while also showing you off in your best format too. Maybe not everybody has something great for a bundle or has something that then upsells from a bundle into whatever they want to sell afterwards. So we want to also position you to be at your best. I want you to be the star of the show. So we’re matching together what’s going to make sense for your goals, your business and you, and whatever that is helps us figure out what the format is.
Monica Froese [00:38:16]:
Okay. And then in terms of their goals for the event. So the events that are used for lead gen or events that are used for selling on the back end. And then even like Gemma with her AI Unlocked, I think it’s AI Unlocked unleashed. Maybe whatever her AI Summit is, she talks about how the event is the product and it’s not focused on selling after. She’s focused on selling the event itself. So would you say those are like.
Michelle Ponvert [00:38:42]:
The three models of event building your network and collaborations? There’s a lot about nurturing the existing audience you have. So rather than being about attracting new leads, it’s about really warming people up already in your world. There’s a lot about to positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry and pivoting or moving your business into a certain level. It can be a really powerful way to basically just bring some attention to your business. What you do with that attention afterwards is up to you. And that’s what we figure out. We need business attention. We don’t just need it for sales, we don’t just need it for marketing.
Michelle Ponvert [00:39:15]:
We also need it for visibility, for invitations to things, to be in the right room, to position ourselves amongst peers. There’s lots of other reasons why we might want to have an event.
Monica Froese [00:39:23]:
We talked about with my 40 and fearless bundle, it ended up being the biggest payoff I got from it was because it was reintroducing me into that B2C mom market again. And I got invited. I have to look, but it’s at least five to 10, like summits and bundles that honestly, if I had not done the 40 and fearless bundle, I wouldn’t have been on these people’s radar because they didn’t know I was back into the B2C space and really actively promoting it again. So mine ended up being the collaborations that came off of it.
Michelle Ponvert [00:39:52]:
Yeah. And Every time I’ve posted an event, I get definitely way more invitations to events, but podcasts and other ways to just work with other people. Recommendations. My affiliate program grows every time I’ve had paid speaking opportunities off the back of them. It’s a way to let people know what you’re about and draw some attention to it. And I think that in and of itself can also be a really powerful reason to host an event. Even if you’re not actively aggressively selling something off the back of it, you’re selling yourself, you’re selling the brand, the business.
Monica Froese [00:40:21]:
How much lead time did you have for the evidence of humanity in terms of from pitching, getting everyone’s stuff in, putting it together? Like how much time?
Michelle Ponvert [00:40:32]:
So I did that one in six weeks. I count every time how many hours I did. I did 34 hours. I’m all on my own. Like, that’s it. The one before, I took three months because I had the summer, the Christmas holidays, and that one took 33 hours. The collaborative blog post, we took four hours and took two weeks. So it can really scale up and down with the capacity you have.
Monica Froese [00:40:52]:
How do you track your time for it?
Michelle Ponvert [00:40:54]:
I time block. I just put on my calendar when I’m working on stuff and then I go back and just count how many blocks there were.
Monica Froese [00:41:00]:
Do you time block everything in your business?
Michelle Ponvert [00:41:02]:
Pretty much. I tend to plan ahead of this is what I want to do. And then at the end of the day I just go back and adjust it so that then I have a nice log of how long did that take me? Oh, maybe next time I do this. I know how long this takes me. I’m a very organized person. So that also just makes my brain happy to go back and be like, yes, this neatly fit.
Monica Froese [00:41:17]:
I love that because I was thinking, what do you use, like a time tracking app?
Michelle Ponvert [00:41:21]:
No, it can’t be bothered.
Monica Froese [00:41:23]:
That’s a really cool idea.
Michelle Ponvert [00:41:25]:
I think it’s really important to know how much you’re investing, not just monetarily, but like energetically and time wise. Something I did for the Energy Savers event because the theme was energy. I don’t know if everyone listening is going to be familiar with the spoon theory. It’s basically something we use as chronically ill and neurodivergent people to quantify how much energy you have each day. The analogy is you open the drawer and you have a bunch of spoons that the day we have lots of energy. But as you go throughout the day, different tasks require more energy. Take away the spoons and at the end of the day, you may have no spoons left. You might be in debt.
Michelle Ponvert [00:41:54]:
I also counted how my spoons were throughout the process, how much energy it took me. And I could see, oh, these tasks were really draining for me. These tasks were easier for me. And I could map those then onto the following event. The evidence of humanity, of making sure those really draining days happen. When I have more energy, when I’m in my cycle, in a time that I feel a bit more human, that I have had a good sleep and really played with that capacity piece as well.
Monica Froese [00:42:21]:
Interesting. So do you love potentially your spoons for your time blocks?
Michelle Ponvert [00:42:25]:
Like how just for the events, I should do it for everything. But I just like in my Google calendar, it’s very simple. I have the block being like, I worked on my event and then I just edit the title being like three for three spoons. I do it out of four or four and I can just go back and look like, oh, that was a four spoon task. That was a two spoon task.
Monica Froese [00:42:41]:
I love this. So are you going to teach people in easy events to time track?
Michelle Ponvert [00:42:45]:
I think if you are someone who has chronic illness or deals with fluctuating energy levels, I think it is a really important piece of the puzzle because we don’t come to the desk every day with the same capacity. And I think if you know ahead of time, oh, pitching people is going to be really draining for me. Or setting everything up on the backend is going to be really draining for me. I know this is the stuff that’s hard. You can be a little bit flexible as you’re planning out and going, okay, I know that these are the things that are going to be harder for me. I’ll give more time or make sure I’ve plotted that on a week, I’m more likely to be okay. So we’ll definitely talk about that. But I don’t want to prescribe it because it’s not the same for everybody.
Monica Froese [00:43:19]:
Yeah, that makes sense. But really cool tip because I feel like that will resonate with some people. I actually think I might try this next time. I would love to really understand where my energy levels are with it and how much time it really is taking me to put that on. So that’s a cool little trick.
Michelle Ponvert [00:43:33]:
Yeah.
Monica Froese [00:43:33]:
Okay.
Michelle Ponvert [00:43:34]:
A really fun exercise in the spoon theory idea is also to look throughout your day of like, when do you have more energy? And I find I’m much better in the morning. You also see, oh, is it like after food or after different times? And even Just throughout the days. Oh, if I have to do a scary hard task and I know I’m doing a bit better in the morning, I’ll just do it first. I know I’m really better in the afternoon, I’ll just save it for then.
Monica Froese [00:43:55]:
It’s funny because I always tell people I am not a morning person. Forced me to have to get out of bed sooner than I want to and stuff. They do definitely help with the routine. But when I sit down to work, my deep thinking work does not happen in the morning. Mine happens from 12 to four every day. So if I have to do slides, if I have to do content, I am doing it in the afternoon. And that’s why, like the BRO advice of miracle mornings, it’s yeah, and your wife was the one getting up with the kids and doing everything for you. Because my miracle mornings, consistent herding kids out of my house and you just.
Michelle Ponvert [00:44:27]:
Happen to be born that way and there’s nothing you can do about it if you’re not programmed a certain way, if you’re not born a certain way, if you don’t have a certain brain business world that isn’t made for everybody. And I do think that what I focused on, my previous sort of niche and what I’m taking into this is we are still humans operating these businesses. We have to remember we have the lived capacity, the lived bodies, the lived brains we are actually dealing with to contend with too. We can’t just be perfect robots every time we sit down, even if we happen to have what I call desk time. And I think it is important to pay attention to that, to adapt to.
Monica Froese [00:44:58]:
It too, a hundred percent. This has been a great conversation. I’ve enjoyed it. I love the way that you’re approaching these events. I love when someone captures my attention because it’s so hard to do. So kudos to that. How can people find you?
Michelle Ponvert [00:45:14]:
Yeah, I’m easy to find. I’m the only Michel Ponvre out there. So my website’s Michel Ponvert. And then I will have for you a workshop debrief that I did of the Evidence of Humanity event where I share all my numbers, all the results, like all the fun stuff. I don’t hide any of it. And then the second part is a workshop where we kind of work through what your event might look like together. So I’ll give Monica the link for that so people can go and watch that and see for themselves, like what this looked like in real life. Awesome.
Monica Froese [00:45:38]:
Love a good debrief. I will certainly be watching that. Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge on events with us today.
Michelle Ponvert [00:45:44]:
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Monica Froese [00:45:47]:
That’s a wrap on today’s episode, but your next step starts right now. If you’re serious about selling digital products and want the AI powered tools, expert strategy and real human support to make it happen, then you need to check out the Empowered Business Society. Inside. You’ll get AI driven trainings to create and sell digital products products faster, a private community for expert feedback and real time support. Exclusive access to the Monica Memo podcast and if you go pro, you’ll get monthly marketing shortcuts, live Q&As, and 20 off of the empowered shop perpetually. Because smart business owners sell smarter, they don’t work harder. And the best part? You can get started for as little as $9. The best business growth happens when AI and real humans work together.
Monica Froese [00:46:31]:
Together. Ready to make your next move? Join us inside of the Empowered Business Society. You can check us out at EmpoweredBusiness Co Society. See you in the next episode.
