The Soloprenur's Secret to High-Converting Virtual Events

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Think you need a big budget and a bigger team to run successful virtual events? Think again.

In this episode of The Aspiring Solopreneur, Carly Ries and Joe Rando pull back the curtain on how their small group consistently uses virtual events to generate leads, build trust, and grow their community—without the overwhelm. From low-tech tools (spoiler: Zoom wins again) to their secret sauce for nurturing attendees before, during, and after the event, they’re dishing out practical tips any solopreneur can use.

Whether you’re planning your first interactive workshop or looking to boost turnout and conversions, this episode proves that big results don’t require big resources—just smart strategy and a solid run-of-show.

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Episode Transcript 

Carly Ries: In this SoundBite episode of The Aspiring Solopreneur, we pull back the curtain of our most powerful lead gen strategy, virtual events. And while you don't need a fancy platform, massive audience,

or giant budget to make them work, We break down the simple yet wildly effective behind the scenes process, share the exact tools and tactics that boost attendance and engagement, and reveal how even a six person event can land you to new clients. So whether you're a solopreneur just starting out or looking to level up your lead generation, this episode is packed with real talk, relatable examples, and ready to use tips.

You're listening to the Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for those just taking the bold step or even just thinking about taking that step into the world of solo entrepreneurship. My name is Carly Ries, and my cohost, Joe Rando, and I are your guides to navigating this crazy but awesome journey as a company of one. We take pride in being part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all aspects of solopreneurship that has empowered and educated countless solopreneurs looking to build a business that resonates with their life's ambitions.

We help people work to live, not live to work. And if you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the show for you. So if you're eager to gain valuable insights from industry experts on running a business the right way the first time around or want to learn from the missteps of solopreneurs who paved the way before you, then stick around. We've got your back because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone.

Joe, people sometimes ask, like, what our lead gen strategy is and all that jazz. And one that I say time and time again, we have a bunch of different lead gen areas. But the one that has proven to be most effective are our virtual events. Correct?

Joe Rando: Correct.

Carly Ries: And I think some people think that in order to put on a virtual event or a webinar, which we usually don't use that term, they think you have to be a big company or you need to have a big team to run the behind the scenes. And so I thought we'd just kind of peel back the curtain today and kind of explain what we do. We do not need a ton of people. I mean, what, for our problem solvers? We really only need three of us there in reality.

I mean, we all show up. But from a making it run smoothly, we'll need a handful of people.

Joe Rando: Yeah. I mean, if you look at problem solvers, really, it could be done with two people. You could have somebody hosting and somebody running the chat in the breakout rooms. You know, we have George do the hosting because he's just dynamic and fun.

But you could do it or I could do it, and you have somebody like, Stacy, in our case, our community manager behind the scenes running the chat and running the breakout rooms and that kind of thing. and if you don't have breakout rooms, you really can do it with one person.

Carly Ries: You can. And let's actually talk about this like, the running the show and the tech side of things really quick. So, Joe, a few years ago, we

Joe Rando: I know what you're gonna say.

Carly Ries: I know. I know. We were and I won't say the company, but we were tempted to use a different platform other than Zoom for these events. And in theory, this was a really cool platform. It had, a back page.

Joe Rando: It was cool. It was really cool. There's a problem. Nobody knew how to use it. So people came in, and there was a learning curve.

You come into Zoom, though I mean, I don't even wanna know the person that says, how do you use Zoom? You know? I mean, it's like, grandparents are doing it now. I should not say that I am a grandparent. But

Carly Ries: It's true, though. And so if you are tempted to use other platforms, maybe it'll work for you. But we have found use what people know, use what people are familiar with, take away that barrier that people might have. Like, if they go into a room and they have no idea what to do, they might bounce. And but if they see a Zoom link, then it's like, I know I don't have to install any additional software because most people already have Zoom.

Joe Rando: And if you're doing something fancy, I just wanna throw a pro tip in. And this is something that I don't know. Maybe it was Stacy realized this. But when you do a lot of these webinar apps as opposed to the Zoom, you find yourself making it so that people can't see the other attendees. Right?

They have this stay virtual stage and somebody's speaking, but they don't see the other folks that are there. And that really robs the feeling of the kind of getting together, especially for solopreneurs especially because, you know, we're on our own all the time. But I don't know if it's just something that really never crossed my mind that that would be an issue, and yet people miss it if you can't see other folks.

Carly Ries: Yep. Exactly. Well, another thing I wanted to say from a setup standpoint is to always have a run of show. We've been doing these virtual events now for a couple years at this point. We still use a run of show to figure out what we're gonna say, when we're gonna say it, down to the minute.

Like, it'll say, 01:00, let people in. 01:02, talk about this. 01:04, put the poll question up. Down to the minute. And so far, we've really kinda stuck with it.

I think the only times we've gone over is if we've had a success sessions, our educational events, where a speaker may have gone a little bit over. Yeah. It really does help. And we send the run of show to the speaker ahead of time so that they know they're talking from 01:07 to 01:47. Like, they have the exact minutes ahead of time.

Joe Rando: Yeah. And it helps a lot. We really haven't had a lot of problems. We did have an issue, I think, once with a workshop we did on websites. And I think so many people wanted their website reviewed.

We ran a little over on that or, you know, ran yeah. I think we ran over a little bit. But that was great because people were enthused. You know? So it was a good problem.

Carly Ries: Yeah. The other thing is provide value and then make an ask at the end. But don't make a big ask. Like, do a little nudge. Like, you may be just meeting people for the first time.

Look at it as dating. This might be your first date. So just get them something a little enticing to get them to the second date. Don't go all in for your thousand dollar offer.

Joe Rando: Definitely, you know, you're we're using these events as a way to engage people to build trust, to build resonance, to say, hey, we get it, understand you. We don't do a lot of pitching and selling during these live events. You know, you're getting their email address by virtue of them signing up. There's plenty of opportunity in the future to, you know, pitch them, but we're big fans of nurturing and building, like you say, that, having a dating relationship first. And we even have a free tier, right, of our offering that we get people to come into.

That's not salesy. Right? That's like, hey. Join us in this free tier. And so it builds that trust, and people don't feel like they're just a number, you know, that you're trying to crunch through to get to the next sale.

Carly Ries: Mhmm. And, Joe, I'm so glad you said nurturing because that is another secret sauce. That's another tip we have for our events and why they're successful, and that's because we nurture. We don't just send out one email, do one social post letting people know that event's coming up. We do multiple promotional emails to our database, multiple social posts.

And then once a person registers, we send them a day before email, an hour before email, and a five minute before email with the links to get in, as well as the talking points that we'll have or what they're gonna expect in there so that it's not one of those things I signed up and then forgot about it. Like, you still stay top of mind. And I mean, solopreneurs are busy, and their schedules fluctuate every day. So keep like, staying on top of the communication with them is so necessary. And I really attribute our emails to to the success of the InSales side.

Joe Rando: I think that's true. I think a couple of important nuances there. When you're communicating with them, be sure you're telling them what's in it for them. Right? Don't say, oh, you know, free webinar on our product or, something about the actual, topic.

It's like, what are you gonna get at? You know, save ten hours a week of your time with these great, productivity hacks or something where people are gonna go, gee, I could really could use that. that's something I could use. So talking benefits, talking, pain points and solutions as opposed to just, learn about how to use Salesforce to run your business. Why?

Why do I wanna use Salesforce? Well, maybe you can close, 20% more sales in the same amount of time. Well, okay. Now I'm excited. Right?

So and then the other thing is get on their calendar. We, and sadly, it appears that the only really effective way to do this is manually, but when people get tell us they wanna come to an event, we put we send them a calendar invite just like you would for a regular meeting with with, you know, with with a with a colleague. And it really makes a difference because when it's on their calendar, they see it coming. They don't block it with some other meeting. It's really, I think that's been powerful in terms of getting people to show up.

Carly Ries: Oh yeah. No. I would absolutely agree. Well, in terms of getting people to show up, Joe, can you spill how we get a lot of the people who we like, how we find the invitees?

Joe Rando: Yeah. Well, we use we use Sales Navigator, which is LinkedIn product, and it's helped us to really identify the kinds of solopreneurs that we want to invite to these events. And once we identify them, we just go in and message them inside of Sales Navigator and invite them to the event. If they don't wanna come, they say usually say no. Thanks.

I think I've literally in the thousands of messages I've sent, I have, been kind of dissed twice. You know? Two times people kind of were nasty about it out of all that time because I was I'm just polite. I'm just explaining, what we have and, you know, if you can't do it, great. The other thing is that a good trick is you can ask to connect to people, and once you connect to them, you're not using up those InMails.

The thing is you can't do you know, people vary, but my number I'm hearing is a hundred invites a week. But that's a lot. You know, that's a lot. So if you can invite a hundred people a week to connect that you want to connect to now I know there's a whole debate about, connecting to people you know, only who you know, and not being a LinkedIn open networker lion, they call them. And I used to fight that battle.

I only connected to people I knew, and I gave up. You know? So now I connect to people I don't know as long as I know that they're kind of the kinds of people I wanna be connected to and then I try to engage them after the fact. And so that's just, a strategy that you can use and you don't have to worry about running out of InMail credits and all that stuff.

Carly Ries: Yeah. No. Absolutely. Well, there are two other points I wanna make. The first is always make sure that you have your next event lined up because then you can announce it during that call.

And so when they're excited and they're like, wow, this is awesome, You're like, well, this is coming up in such and such such date. It's gonna be about this topic. So you kind of tease them into the next one, which helps retention as well. And then lastly, you're a solopreneur. You may not get a ton of people right off the bat.

If it's your first one, do not be discouraged if you have five to 10 people. I was on a webinar or a virtual event. It wasn't even a webinar. It was an interactive event where there were six of us, I think, but two of the six converted. And the gal running the event only needs a handful of clients.

So it's like, don't look at it as a number of attendees game. Look at it as a number of conversions game. If you have a great quality content, that's all that really matters.

Joe Rando: Yeah. And, you know, that you can use these things as lead magnets. I mean, we use it as kind of a lead magnet, but very gently. Right?

But you can use it as you know, if you have something that you do for people and you can solve a series of problems that they have and you use a free event as the first solving the first problem, well, now they still have to solve the next five. Right? So you can then offer make an offer to say, you know, if you're interested in this stuff, you know, here's my program, little pitch at the end. You know, if you if you gave them what they expected, if you promised that you'd solve pain point number one and you solve pain point number one, nobody's going to call you a, you know, a liar, and nobody's going to be mad at you. And they're probably going to be impressed that you solved their problem, and maybe they'll sign up.

Carly Ries: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Joe, that's what I have. Do you have any last words of wisdom?

Joe Rando: Oh, just that, you know, you do a nice job of following up with people after the fact, and sending an email the next day, maybe asking for, who knows, a review or take a little survey to understand, you know, what was valuable, what wasn't, just something. But a little ask after the fact and, you won't get as many people as you would think responding, but you'll get some responses, maybe some good insights, and just keeps you top of mind.

Carly Ries: Joe, you teed that up perfectly because speaking of making the ask, we wanted to thank you all so much for listening today, and please leave us a five star review. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, share this with a friend. We love your support, and we love doing this. And we will see you next time on the aspiring solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone.

In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.