The Home Service Expert Podcast - Creating Scarcity and Building Emotion to Acquire More Customers

Episode Date: October 11, 2019

Rylee Meek strives to help entrepreneurs through the whole process of launching a dinner seminar marketing campaign through The Social Dynamic Selling System, a company that he founded in 2010. Over the course of eight years, Rylee has generated over $80 million in sales, and has worked with countless individuals and institutions for over a decade as a mentor and  motivational speaker.   In this episode, we talked about Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Relationship Marketing...

that's exactly what we do. I mean, we take people on this emotional journey to create that environment, that buying decision. Because I mean, nobody wants to be sold. Everybody wants to buy. And to do that timeshare example you just gave, like they got so emotionally engaged that they were like, I almost bought,

but then logic took over. And there's the disconnect there. And that's where cancels come into place. I would say we're highly, highly paid storytellers. Because facts given without emotion is not retained. But if we can create a story, a fun environment, we're capturing them, they're leaning in, they're listening to us, they're going to retain that information if I have them emotionally engaged with me throughout this whole, I don't want to call it a pitch, but just through this whole educational process to ultimately make that emotional decision. Welcome to the Home Service

Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Hey, welcome back, guys. It's Tommy Mello with the Home Service Expert. Today, I'm here with Riley Meek. We're going to go ahead and give you his bio. He's specialized in entrepreneurship, relationship marketing, and just general marketing. He's the social dynamic selling system and the founder since 2010, American Partners Group co-founder, managing partner.

And he's the founder and CEO of the Social Dynamic Selling System, an easy-to-follow program that walks people through the entire process of launching a dinner seminar marketing campaign step-by-step. He's generated over $80 million in sales in the last eight years, and he's out of Minnesota. Riley, what's happening? Hey, Tommy. How you doing, man? Happy to be here. I'm happy for you to be here, too. I think we can learn a lot about not only putting on a good seminar, but there's so many things that we could talk about, about just hitting the right avatar like we talked about earlier. Sure. And understanding, I mean, it's pretty cool. Can you just explain to the audience a little bit about your company and where you came from? Yeah, absolutely. Happy to, man. So the social dynamic selling system is at the core of it. We do dinner seminars and we sell one to

many versus simply one-on-one. My background was one of my very, very first jobs at the age of 19 was selling siding and windows. And I remember interviewing for that job and it was still ingrained to me today. I sat down in that interview and my manager at the time said, dude, 85% of this job is negative. But if you can focus on that 15%, you can make a ton of dough. And at the age of 19,

just being completely green, I was like, yeah, I'll do whatever. I mean, he's talking, making six figures here at a young age. And I said, I'll do it. Just teach me the system. And that's what I focused on was that 15% and experienced some success with that. But as successful, we'll call it, I guess, as I was at that time, I still knew that my

income was somewhat capped by the amount of time in a day. I could only do so many two to three hour presentations and call on so many people on a daily basis. And as much as I wanted to make more into the mid and high six figures, I realized that it wasn't really a system that was set up for that. And I ended up looking at different opportunities. And I came across this ad on Craigslist, of all places, and it said, make $10,000 a week, make working three days a week.

And I was like, well, yeah, right. But I had to inquire upon it. And that's when I was first introduced to this concept of selling to groups of people. And it completely blew my mind. The guy said, just come on down. I'm doing a presentation tonight. I've got like 20 or 25 people or so in the room. So I cruised on down there and it blew my mind. It's like he did this one rockstar presentation for like an hour and a half. He fed these folks a free steak dinner. So he picked up the tab for it. But at the end of it, he asked for an appointment. And he had eight solid one-on-one appointments to go meet with the next day. And they knew the product. They roughly had an idea on pricing. It was basically like,

they just wanted to see if it could be affordable for them. And I left that meeting going, holy cow, is this real? Because if he did that with one presentation, I'll do 10 presentations a week. And that's when it really opened my mind to this concept of selling to groups versus just selling one-on-one. And that's when things really took off for me. We've all been in a group where somebody's, whether it's been, there's a lot of online marketing that happens. We've been to seminars and they do their,

kind of the pitch. And everybody knows when you're going to a timeshare that you're getting the free meal for a certain reason, right? So I'm just curious because a lot of people tell me mailers don't work or I try to pay for it or click that stuff doesn't work. Or I'm just curious because a lot of people tell me mailers don't work, or I tried pay-per-click that stuff doesn't work. Right. I hate home advisor. And I'm like, I've had success with Craigslist. You know, if you do it and you're good at it, you could have

success with anything. So there's people out there saying there's no way I would ever buy from something like that. And here's the thing I've learned is you're not your avatar. Just like my technicians don't like to sell certain things because they never buy financing or they would never buy a Rolex. Doesn't mean you can't give the options to the customer, let them make their own decisions because you're not them. Right. So tell me a little bit about that.

Tell me like when you sit down with an owner and you got to break his, like about the results. So how do you walk into an owner? And you told me you like to deal with people with a little bit higher his, like about the results. So how do you walk into an owner? And you told me you like to deal with people with a little bit higher margin, like windows, stuff like that. So how does that look for, I'm the owner, let's do this right now. So I don't know about all this, Riley, tell me more. See, I love these conversations and really just, you know, kind of breaking down these barriers that people have, you know, personally, because I'm the same way. It's like, I would never respond to personally, like I would never respond to a free steak dinner. And it blows my mind that I've done over a hundred million

dollars actually in over the last nine years doing this, because for me, it's like, you have to pay me if it's something that I don't give two rips about, I mean, you're going to have to pay me to sit through something, let alone just come for a free steak dinner. There's just no way I would do it. But again, that's irrelevant. That's head trash to most people. And we always start when we're onboarding a new client, we always start with the end in mind, which you probably hear a lot. But it's like, who is that true client avatar? And direct mail might not be the best form of marketing to get that actual client of yours. But we've done millions and millions of pieces. I do hundreds of thousands of pieces of direct mail every single week. And all throughout the country country filling rooms of people that that fit a specific

client avatar you know and we can get real specific with this if if we determine that you're looking for 34 to 38 year old blonde hair blue eye women over six feet tall like we have that data we have the access to capture that and craft a message that can speak directly to them. And the steak dinner and things, I mean, I call it fishing with corn dogs. What I mean by that is there's not a fish in nature that will sustain a quality life eating corn dogs. But if I put it on a hook and I throw it in the water, every single fish will grab onto that hook. And that's all I'm trying to do is I'm creating that hook and then ultimately crafting a message that will get them to show up to that actual event. Then we've got them there and now we really dive into it and get that client

to actually know, like, and trust you. And that's what our campaign is. Everyone, regardless of the product, that's what it's all about is getting them to know, like, and trust you. And that's what our campaign is. Everyone, regardless of the product, that's what it's all about is getting them to know, like, and trust you, overcoming the barriers that you would normally get if you were doing a one or two or three hour presentation trying to take somebody from A to Z to the close. We're more of a two-step process where we're there to have a good time. We're breaking bread. The law of reciprocity is in play where I'm inviting you out to enjoy a meal on my dime. So when I ask you for an appointment, if I've gained that know, like, and trust, you're ultimately going to give it to me. I love learning about this because it could be used

in more than just customers. Like I'm a big fan of relationship marketing, but I'm a huge fan of JV deals. So I've got a garage door company who would be the perfect people to join a room with for me is painters to say, hey, you guys all get together. We'll talk about best practices. I'm going to feed you. I'm going to give you some tools. But here's the cool thing. You have a customer buy a new door from me and you get it automatic this much. And it's a simple program, but you figured out a way to get that perfect, whether it's a JV deal or the customer. So you use a tool like Adams Data or some type of data company to get the demographics of the average income. Does it have a garage? You can pretty much tell anything about the house, the income level, the certain attributes about the home. Do they have a pool?

Yeah. So you get all that data, you invite the stuff out to them. Do you send it in a letter or is it like a big postcard? It depends on the, again, starting with the end in mind, like who are we trying to target? If it's, you know, a professional, we may do a wedding style envelope that's, you know, very elegant looking. If it's a younger business owner that is always on the go, entrepreneur, heck, I might send it in a priority. You got to sign off on this thing to get it because I know they're going to open it. I mean, we can get elaborate with these things. I mean, we've literally sent plastic lawn chairs saying, you got to take a seat and listen to this. I mean, dependent upon the person we're trying to attract is where we start. And so if it's just the everyday homeowner,

a simple envelope, a postcard can work at sometimes. I mean, usually it's perceived as junk mail. So we want to get very personal with this so we can get as high a response rate as possible. Because everything that we do with any of our campaigns, we have six measurables that we're constantly tracking. And one of the very first ones is the actual response rate, making sure that we've not only... And starting with the end of mind, we need to craft the proper message

to not just get anybody to show up, but to get the right person to show up. And I often refer to this as... You hear a lot about these online funnel systems, which are phenomenal. They're great. But I really feel like we've kind of created an offline funnel system. And what I mean by that is these six measurables that we're continually tracking is we're constantly sifting the sand, ultimately making sure that by the time the presenter

or the business owner, entrepreneur, sales rep, whoever it is, by the time they're sitting down one-on-one with that individual or homeowner, that is their ideal client. And now they just have to make it affordable or meet their needs and what they're actually looking for. Can I guess the six KPIs? Can I just make a random guess? Sure. Yeah, man. All right. Let me guess. So first I would say,

how much does it cost to generate a response or a lead? Then I would say, how many of those do we turn into an RSVP? Then I would say, how many of those close when they get there? What's the average spread? Meaning how much did we make on it? Did we make 1500? Did we make 2500? I probably talk about an A-B test to make sure we're tracking.

We try three or four offers and make sure we're finding the best one. Ooh, let's see here. I don't know the other ones. Any of those right? Yeah, man, you're on the right track for sure. So we call it our initial, our response rate. So for simple math, it? Yeah, man, you're on the right track for sure. So we call it our initial, our response rate. So for simple math, it's like, all right, if I'm going to send

5,000 invites and I get 50 responses, like that's an increase. Yeah. So then now that they've responded, they've said, yep. Okay. I want to, I'm going to show up to your event, but they've probably responded 10 to 14 days in advance. So of those that we actually respond, we're doing little things in the meantime to make sure that they actually show. So there's a response rate and then there's an actual show up rate. Because what I've noticed

and what I really love about direct mail too is that I've never had the highest show up rate with anything. I mean, if you're doing online ads, SEO, Facebook, whatever, you get a ton of people that'll click, yeah, I'll come. And I quickly realized I need to get 100 RSVPs to get 40 of them to show because it's bunk numbers and it's just people just are a little bit flakier online versus when they actually are picking up the phone and talking to a human being saying, yes, I will show up and I will be there. And once we've got the show up rate, which again, is very measurable. If I've got 20 RSVPs,

I should have at least 16 to 18 show at the very, very minimum. And then once they're there, all right, now it's like, it's your show. This is your circus, you're the ringleader. And if you do a good enough job, we ask for the appointment. And that's what we would consider our appointment rate. Once we get the appointment rate, there's certainly the appointments that fall off or no show you or just cancel or whatever the case is. Once we close the deal, then your close rate and then certainly the stick rate, because I hate saying the cancellation rate because it's a bad word in any industry. But those are really the six measurables. And why we measure each one of them is because

if there's an outlier on any one of those, me being here in Minnesota right now, and if I have a rep in Houston, Texas that's doing these, we can get on the phone and we can talk through this on any one of those given measurables based upon, okay, what did you say? Or what didn't you say? Or why did we have such a huge increase in cancels here? Or why did people show? And it allows us or any business owner entrepreneur to be able to manage their business while not physically being at every event throughout the country. And that's really the only way that we've been able to scale. One of my first companies in this, we went from just me to within six months, we had six new sales reps. And by the end of that next year, we had 26 sales crews every single week doing events throughout the country.

And it wasn't because I was able to be at all of those events all the time. It was because we put together this scalable system that allows us to track these and all of our reps are posting these numbers to us, making sure that we're able to track these and properly give them guidance on what they are doing or maybe aren't doing in any particular event. So you're out there, right? And you're literally going out there. These sales reps work for you. You got 27 people that work for your company. Then the owner is actually,

is it the owner that's actually like part of the show for like five minutes or how does that part work? Yeah, yeah. So I'm just, I'm kind of referring to when I first got started, I've sold numerous products using this system. And when I first got started, I've sold numerous products using this system. And when I first got started 9 years ago, it was me constantly looking at, okay, what could I sell?

It's like we were successful with early on. We were doing in-home insulation, LED lighting, attic ventilation, just these little things that we could make homes more energy efficient. We then moved into windows. We moved into walk-in bathtubs. And I was constantly looking at like, okay, what else could I sell? I had the realization that the system is what was working. The product was really irrelevant. It was like, if I could just implement what else, what product, what had the best margins, how could I utilize this system to make as much money as possible? But I remember a clear day. One evening,

it was a Wednesday night. I came home from a pretty successful sales week. I'd been making great money. And it was just like, I just felt this feeling of just unfulfillment. I mean, I just sat down at my kitchen table, my wife and daughter were already asleep. And I just was like, gosh, this sucks. It's a terrible feeling for anybody that's made money. It's like, yeah, it's great. But just that feeling of unfulfillment was just draining on me. And I thought, what else? What's going on here? And I thought back to when I very, very first started in the struggles of constantly trying to find that next lead or that next sale or just the negativity of dealing with people and homeowners for the most part.

And I was just like, man, what if the system was the actual product? And I had zero passion for any of those products that I was actually selling. It was like, if you get to know me, you know that. I mean, my wife hangs the pictures in my home. I am the least coordinated guy when it comes to mechanical things. And I frankly hate it. So it was like, my passion was more people. And I thought, man, I know there's entrepreneurs, there's salesmen out there that have a passion for their product and service, and they just don't know how to reach the masses or they don't know how to take it to the marketplace. And I thought, man, maybe I could put this into a system that could actually teach people how to do this, that have a passion for their product, but ultimately take this to the marketplace.

And that's really when I had that aha moment and I just started writing. And I just put everything that we do that we had developed, I just started writing on from how do you identify your true client avatar to how do we choose our venues, geographically, also demographically, what venue is going to be the best to host that individual to taking into consideration the drive time and building out presentations, how I started to craft these presentations on taking people through this emotional journey to ultimately create that buying atmosphere, that environment. Because nobody likes to be sold, but everybody likes to buy. And to be able to create that sense of urgency

of why we're in that area doing this and establishing that individual or that company as the authoritative figure. And I just started putting this all down. And I thought, this is it. I could teach people this system. And that's when I really transitioned a few years ago into more coaching and consulting and teaching people how to do this versus me actually owning these companies and constantly looking to grasp that. What else could I sell? And so really what I do now for the most part is from a high level, we onboard new clients and teach them and train them how to roll this out within their own company or their own marketing platform. And so it's what I say that there's sales reps throughout the country, for the most part,

it's not my personal people anymore. It's companies that we're coaching and filling events for every single week. That's super cool. I love the process of it. And you're starting to bring up, when you talk about this stuff, I hear Robert Cialdini with the book Influence, where he says the law of reciprocation. Well, I just gave you a steak dinner. And there's all these things that go into it that bring up how to influence somebody to buy. Exactly. it in their head with their logical brain, but they buy based on emotion. So it's pretty cool stuff when it comes down to it. You reminded me a lot of, if anybody's listening and you haven't read the book E-Myth, which I've talked about all the time, in the Audible version, chapter eight is called The Franchise Prototype. And Michael Gerber talks about Ray Kroc. And he talks about how the way they put the pickles on the burger were exactly a science. Every single thing was a system. And if you got people to learn the system, you could have $10 an hour people doing it. And I think what you've discovered,

Riley, is a way to teach people this and you've got a good niche and people have great success with it. And you probably have some type of continuity program where they're buying the mailers from you or something cool like that, that you keep getting paid because once they learn the system, I want to at least have some type of SaaS model with it. But my question is, is most of the people listening don't understand data. And I used to be able to find, before Facebook got in trouble, I could find a pregnant woman in Gilbert, Arizona at the age of 32, who's three months out. And now that's a little bit difficult. So like, for example, I have this Christmas light business. I'd love to be able to find people that celebrate

Christmas to that next level. Like we know they're huge at Christmas. I know they're old and I know they can't climb a ladder anymore. Like what kind of data are we able to get out there? Like tell me like how granular we could get for every type of business. Yeah, we can get real specific to the point where it's, it's, it's scary, man. I mean, you mentioned, you know, Facebook getting in trouble with that, but we have access to a lot of different forms to collect. And I think back of one of my good buddies once had lunch with a top exec with American Express. And the data that they have is unbelievable to the point where... I mean, this sounds terrible, but what American Express would do is if they notice that, let's say,

the husband is booking hotel rooms within five miles of his own house, they would immediately start sending offers to the wife because they just assumed the husband is cheating and the divorce is evident. That's sick and terrible and wrong, but the information is out there. And we're able to get real specific. A lot of what we do is B2C, just because it works well to invite that consumer, that customer out to that free steak dinner, where it gets a little bit more challenging, just with the majority of the marketing that we do from a direct mail standpoint, is getting to the actual person that's going to respond to that. And what I mean by that is if I'm looking at B2B and I want to invite

a group of attorneys, for me to send an invitation to the attorney's office, there's always that gatekeeper. And to be able to overcome that perceived junk mail, to be able to overcome that perceived junk mail to be able to get them to actually open it up. That's the challenging thing. And so we're able to jump through hoops on figuring out either what that attorney's home address is or setting things more elaborate to get them to respond. You know, and the more expensive,

you know, when I say more elaborate, that example I used of like a plastic lawn chair, that showing up at a, you know, and the more expensive, you know, when I say more elaborate, that example I used of like a plastic lawn chair, that showing up at a, you know, attorney's office is going to gather some attention. You know, that's going to get past going, being thrown into the actual trash. And so those are the things that we always take into consideration in making sure that we're getting the highest response rate as possible. It's more than just getting the data because that's definitely an aspect of it, but it's also crafting the proper message to speak to that person, that actual decision maker that's going to respond to the actual invite that we send out. Yeah. Everything you talk about, you're reminding me a lot of so many books I've read because there's another book by Chet Holmes

called The Ultimate Sales Machine. And he talks about going after the top clients. And so I did this, I bought a hundred Rubik's cubes and I sent them out to my clients and I said, I'm still puzzled why we haven't met yet. And then I sent another, I sent a ruler and I'm like, are you measuring the results? It's just kind of funny because-

I love it. You can do that kind of stuff. And guess what happens? It gets through the gatekeeper and it gets open a lot of the time. But when you're talking about customers, so here would be something cool. If I could find everybody that made

over a million dollars a year that was about to have a wedding that was six months out, because I do lights, right? And in the off season, if I could target these people, I could send them probably something pretty damn nice. Like,

oh, you know what's really cool that we should talk about is if you go to topofmindcards.com, you just send unlimited greeting cards as long as they their custom message to people. Like, it's crazy how it works. It's true, send out cards, but these cards work really well. You should look into

it. But, um, you get a steak dinner, right? You get a steakhouse. How does that, because you're doing this all across the country, how do you learn what restaurant to pick and how do you negotiate? How does that even look like? I've never done it. I'm just curious. Yeah. You know, just with the thousands and thousands of events that we've done, I've, you know, really developed a database. So, you So in any state, pick a state in a city, I could probably give you a steakhouse or not even a steakhouse necessarily, but what really works well,

if anybody's thinking of doing this, finding that locally family-owned venue that people know and recognize. And part of the reason that we get such a great response rate, I'll just tell everybody, if you're doing them in hotel conference rooms, don't do it. Because that's a cold atmosphere, a cold environment. Unless you're looking to pile in 300, 400 people and you're rah, rah, rush to the back of the room. That's not what I'm talking about what we do at

all. Ours is more of that relationship approach where we get them out there into an environment that they already are familiar with. They've been there. Heck, they might know that the owner of it. It just makes it comfortable for them where they're just going out to a nice local dinner. They're going to have a good time and we're there to host them essentially.

And so again, there's certain ways that we go about searching these. And I've developed scripts for people to be able to book their own venues. Because really, man, when I first started writing this whole program out, I was like, what did I do when I first did this and that and everything that I had learned? I knew that not everybody could afford just to hire me and nor would I even have enough time to do it. Hence, I can only really take on personally more higher end clients personally.

But I remember when I started out, dude, I literally had $673 in my bank account. I had just an idea and a hope. By the time I put this first plan into action, I was like, let's make or break. It's do or die for me on this thing. And I remembered that in making this plan and putting this together. And so I wanted this to be available for the hustlers. If you have an idea and are a hustler, I've put everything together in just an academy that is just... It's turnkey for anybody that wants to utilize this system that doesn't have a budget to hire

me on personally or anybody on my team. And so I wanted to be able to help all of those in that respect. And so we put these scripts together on how to do the invitation, how to negotiate with the restaurant, just different strategies to keep your costs down, to, you know, how to design your presentation. Should I do a PowerPoint or should I not? Do I use props or do I not? You know, and all of that's put together in a very turnkey academy that's super affordable for anybody just starting out. Okay. One more question while we're at it, because you just got me thinking about a lot of things and it might not be anything that I could offer for my services, but I'm sure people out there that are listening, their heads are going, would this work for me? And if I was to invite the general population of homeowners,

usually we're, they call it marketing to the affluent, right? I think Dan Kennedy, I think I got it. So some of them that he talks about is going to the yacht clubs and finding out who subscribes to the yacht club magazine. And that data is out there. They'll sell that list. And then you just know certain things about them, but what day and time tends to work the best. So you're negotiating. You don't want to negotiate with a restaurant at their busiest time because they're going to be like, I can't give you 30 chairs for this, you know? So what's the best success? Does it depend on the time of year? Does it depend on what works the best for you? Yeah. I mean, it really does. And that's something to always take into consideration because early on we would schedule these and all of a sudden i'm like yeah i'm in um

what call it phoenix arizona on a monday night i'm trying to do an event and the freaking cardinals are playing monday night and it's like dope what was i thinking you know so there's there's lots of things to take into consideration and it really does start with okay who am i trying to attract if it is 50 to 70 year olds-olds, a nice steak dinner, maybe around the six o'clock time is going to be a good time. If it's 70 to 90-year-olds, maybe it's breakfast. We've done that on a Saturday morning because they're up and at it. It really just depends on who you're looking to target. Is it husband and wife, or is it just one or the other? And all of

that is taken into consideration when planning these out. Because if you're going to more of a rural market and there's a big high school event going on, you're going to have a bad show rate. You're going to have a bad response rate. I mean, all of those are taken into consideration when building out any campaign. And that's where it gets tricky. I mean, the larger you grow and the more you scale, that's where it's definitely important to delegate and have the right team that's looking out for all of those hiccups or things that could make or break a campaign. I mean, it's happened. And some things are out of your control. I'm up in Minnesota. And come February, when I go to Bemidji, Minnesota to do an event, dude, it could be a winter storm

and people just won't come out for it. Some things are out of your control when it comes down to it, but we do everything that we possibly can to make sure that we're scheduling it at the proper day and time. I love Mondays and Tuesdays. Wednesday nights, it's usually a hit and miss. Sometimes that's, again, dependent upon the area of and time. I love Mondays and Tuesdays. Wednesday nights, it's usually a hit

and miss. Sometimes that's, again, dependent upon the area of the country. That can be like the church night. But usually, Monday, Tuesdays, Thursdays are solid nights of the week, throughout the week, if that's where the timeframe that you're looking to actually host the event is an actual dinner. So what's interesting to me, and I'm confused in a lot of ways because I get this question all the time and I don't have a perfect answer because people say, who's your clients? And I say, anybody with a garage door, right? And that's a very general statement. But now I specialize in custom doors and I do a lot of things. But the first thing of marketing is, do you understand your avatar? And my question is, you said if your group is 70 to 90 or 50 to 70 or 48-year-old men

or I love how you said 34 to 38-year-old blonde haired six foot women. I was like, I want to be at that seminar. But how do you figure that out? Because it's not like, what do you do? Go on a drawing board and say, I think this is them? Or do you analyze your database of what came from the biggest tickets? I mean, what's the easiest way to get that kind of data? we can go off of. But if you've been in business for a year or two and you've got 100 clients or 200 or 500 or 1,000, we should be able to peel that apart and find that data and what that true person actually is. There's ways to reverse engineer that and find out who your actual customer is, not only demographically, but geographically. If you're just starting out,

though, sometimes it's just a shot in the dark. If you're brand new, you got an idea. I mean, we can work with it. But the best determinant of future success is past performance. And so it's like, if we can know what your existing customer base looks like, it certainly does help us target that. Some people have no clue. It's amazing. Whenever we onboard a new client, that's one of the main things that we spend. We spend the first half of the day peeling back the onion and developing like, okay, who is your true client? What is your existing client acquisition cost? What does it cost you to get a client right now? And what's the lifetime value of that? And it amazes me how many business owners have no clue or have never even thought about looking at that. And that simple exercise alone can add commas to people's bottom line if they

actually figure that out, whether they use our system or not. But if they can figure that information out, then they can go about it. And, you know, our system might not be the best way to do it. It's not for everybody by any means. I mean, if you're selling a $48 widget, I'll be the first person to tell you to not do dinner seminars, but that actual exercise alone can, can increase somebody's bottom line dramatically. And I'm sure you've had campaigns fail. I mean, it's inevitably, you can't win every single thing. So I guess the question I have is, you said, well, we craft a really nice letter

that looks like a wedding message or this or that. Sure. I think everybody could get something out of this with the questions I'm asking, because sometimes, like for right now, I could go to Velasquez and I think I could get 10,000 oversized postcards sent to a certain list of 10,000 for 18 cents that's color on both sides so that's like but you know what I get that shit and I throw it out right if I get a handwritten letter at least it looks like it's

handwritten it tends to get open looks like it's handwritten, it tends to get open, especially if there's something that looks like a stamp on it. So I just think there's a lot here and I'm trying to unpackage it a little bit so everybody gets a lot out of this. And the data, I use a thing called Adam Data and I use a million different things. I've got a database of people that have opted in that I work with this largest data company. They work with Quicken Loans and it's crazy. They can skip trace people. It's crazy what you can find out about people. But I've never been able to really find out. There's not one spot that it all lives that like, if they post on there that they're having a baby shower,

usually social media grabs a lot of this data. Yeah. And they can correlate certain things and you got to hit them at the right spot. Like you got to know that the baby's just born to hit certain offers. Right. So, and I feel like Facebook's kind of getting throttled a little bit, but it still has some of that data, but it doesn't really just freely share it now. Right. Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. And that's part of the data situation is some of it is, it's only as good as the person providing it. And we get our information from a number of different sources, but we're usually cross-referencing those to kind of verify or double or triple verify that information to be accurate. Again, it's never a perfect system, but I know the numbers work out.

And on that note, when you mentioned, you certainly have campaigns that fail. And absolutely. I mean, I'm not saying this is a completely perfect system. No system actually is. But whenever we onboard a new client, we always make them commit to 8 campaigns. And the reason for that is because of what we talked about before. It's like, if a winter storm comes in, or there's something out of our control that happens, and that was your one and only campaign, it's like, well, now what? And part of what we do, it is kind of a slow moving ship here with what we do. Because if I'm planning an event right now, I'm already planning and have booked out all of our November events. And we're working on December right now. Especially December right now because of all the holidays and Christmas parties

and events and venues that are getting booked up. And so, you know, and not only are we doing reservations or reserving the venues, but we're also then, we're purchasing the data, printing the invitations, and then we have to mail these invitations out because the ideal time for these to hit homes to get the best response rate is 10 to 14 days in advance. And part of that is out of your control as well. I mean, we are somewhat subject to the wonderful postal service with this. And sometimes they're not as reliable as they should be. And sometimes they'll sit on mail for a day or two before it hits homes. And so, again, we do everything we can to control every process, but there are a few things that we are a little subject to being in the hands of somebody else.

So we always make them commit to these eight campaigns because I know if you stick to our system, eight in a row, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you're gonna be working through some kinks, especially if you've never spoken in front of a room before and we can move on the fly. And that's what we're there for from a coaching standpoint is, okay, well, let's try this or we're going to do this. All right, we had low dinner counts at that one, but great, we got 40 people coming to this event.

And if we can commit to that, without a doubt, we know that we're going to have a proper return on investment to make this thing successful. The only time things have really failed is if someone's like, well, I'm just going to try this and do one and it just didn't work. And God forbid it actually did work. Now we're starting from scratch and it's another four weeks before their next event. And there's nothing more frustrating than that. It's like, great, I just made a ton of dough and now I gotta wait. And so that's where we make them commit to make this thing going

because once you hit that week three, week four, you're usually in stride. And now you have that proper return on investment and it's just a system that if I have a slot machine and I put three quarters in and I know on the fourth quarter, I'm always gonna get six back, I'll never stop putting those quarters in.

And that's really what this system is all about. Yeah, you guys got trial and error, the close ratio, you try different things. So it's about an hour dinner, right? Usually, yeah. I mean, hour, maybe hour and a half. I always like to start out with salads and we chat while food's cooking.

And I don't like just making people wait, being starving. You're hearing tummies growl, they're getting grumpy, they're falling asleep. We make these environments fun and interactive. Again, because the goal of it isn't to sell. The goal of it is to get them to know I can trust you. That's 100%. Every action, every one of those six measurables has a goal in mind. And you can't get past one goal without hitting the first goal. And so we take this as a step-by-step system to get to that ultimate buying decision. So let's just do just an overview. I'm sitting there for an hour, okay?

And we're just going to do windows for the sake of just this call right now. So you introduce, is it your teammate? And when does a business owner come in? And really, I just love to hear, I don't care what it is, call it widgets, but I love to hear how you create scarcity and build emotion and talk them through the story. Like, can you just, and look, I don't think you're giving away too much and it's always good to give value when we're doing something. So I really, I'm just interested in hearing how I would react. So I'm sitting there, you know what, what's crazy about it is I've talked to a lot of people that like go to these things, especially like for timeshares and stuff. And they're like, oh my God, I almost bought it. And I knew walking in,

I wasn't going to want it, but they make it, they just make it make sense. You know, it's like, wow. And a lot of it's like blue ocean. Like, you know, this timeshare is not about the timeshare. It's about the family life and being able to be here. That's close to home and the people you're going to meet in the lagoon over here, whatever it is. I don't know, but yeah, man, you're nailing it. And that's exactly what, what we do. I mean, we take people on this emotional journey to create that environment, that buying decision. Because I mean, nobody wants to be sold. Everybody wants to buy. And to do that timeshare example you just gave, they got so emotionally engaged that they were like,

I almost bought, but then logic took over. There's the disconnect there. And that's where cancels come into place. I would say we're highly, highly paid storytellers. Because facts given without emotion is not retained. But if we can create a story, a fun environment, we're capturing them. They're leaning in. They're listening to us. They're going to retain that information if I have them emotionally engaged with me throughout this whole, I don't want to call it a pitch, but just through this whole logic. Anything that's going to stick from that three-day cancellation rate or whatever your state has, has to 100% be backed by logic. And that's where you have to take everything into consideration when building out this presentation to even the next day when you're in the home, the message has to be completely consistent through the entire

process. If at any point they're like, wait a minute, that doesn't really make sense. Or he just gave me a 40% discount just because that's not a real discount. People aren't stupid. Consumers are becoming more and more... They just know all the old sales gimmicks and tactics. And it's like, my wife and I just went out to Napa last week or two weeks ago. And we're at the wine tours. She's like, oh, this bottle is only $150. Normally, it's $335, hon. I'm like, babe, you do know that that's not a real number, right? Anybody can put that on paper and say you're getting a great deal today. I mean, consumers are not dumb. And that's where the emotion gets them

like, oh, yeah, this is a good deal. But by the time they are signing the paper and they're talking to their friends and family and going, sounds like you got taken. You have to address all of that in order to get that customer to stick. And then ultimately provide you referrals because you've gained that know, like, and trust, assuming you're a good product or a good service, then we have additional systems and things in play to go back and host additional events for their friends and family and things along those lines. And so I feel like I could talk for hours and hours on this, but there's so much to take into consideration when developing the presentation because any of our sales reps or companies that come on board, if they're up there just to teach,

they're not doing a good job. You know, they're not, they're never going to get an appointment if they teach. You have to speak to express, not to impress. And we do that by taking, using, you know, sales tactics like neuro-linguistic programming and getting them to become emotionally engaged to ultimately want. My goal at the end of any presentation is not necessarily asking for the appointment, but I have people, me asking, I have people asking me, how soon can we meet? Or how soon can I get this in or installed? And that's the whole goal of that hour to hour and a half presentation where they didn't know you, but now you gained their trust and they're excited to meet with you the following day.

So you said you have a product that if I wanted to see the framework of how this all comes together and maybe this product, let's just say I want this just because it sounds great. I could see some things, but I don't have, maybe I only have a hundred dollar widget, but I still, do you have like a, uh, some type of course or some type of system that we can purchase? How does that work? Yeah. Like I said, I wanted to be able to help as many people as possible with this. And I know not everybody has a, you know, a, a budget that can afford this. And, and so what I ultimately did is I put this down into a book format. It's an Amazon bestseller now. It's called Food for Thought,

how to use dinner seminar marketing to grow your business in ways you never thought possible. It picked up on Amazon, you know, either paperback or even on Kindle. It's a simple read, but I basically broke it down into like these six actual modules that take people step by step. And if it's something you need additional help or engagement with, I've put together an academy, which is literally me on video. I provide the scripts, the templates, how to craft your message,

how to identify your true client avatar, how to identify what your actual client acquisition cost is right now. Is there a lifetime value? I've put all of these into real practical things that you can do to implement into your business. Whether you do dinner seminars or not, I wanted this to help any entrepreneur starting out to have an idea or to put together a vision for what their product could become. And again, that's whether it's a $48 widget or a $14,000 walk-in bathtub. And then from there, you literally have everything you would need. I have like our top 50 restaurants throughout the country,

as far as response rates and things like that are all within there. So it's really good stuff. That's a part of the Academy. And then from there, you know, ultimately, I know some people just want a done-for-you type system. And that's where I would offer a half-hour consultation with myself or one of our team members just to see if it makes sense. Because it doesn't do any good for us to put together a campaign if it's not going to be successful. Because like you said, the only way I would be successful in onboarding anybody new is if it's a long-term relationship. I'm not interested in just making a quick buck. It's

like, let's build this thing out. And there's nothing more fun for me than to peel back the onion and to really scale a company to seven, eight figures, which we've done multiple times in multiple different industries. So I just bought the book. It's 15 bucks right now. All right. So yeah, I'll go through it. And somebody wants to reach out to you and they don't have a chance to get the book. What's the best way to reach out to you? The website is socialdynamicselling.com. SocialDynamicSelling.com. You can contact us there.

You can download those six modules. I think we put together a blueprint for people to walk through step by step. We've got a website, WorkWithRiley.com. And my name is spelled a little different. It's R-Y-L-E-E.com. And you can reach out to me anytime on either of those websites.

And I'm happy to help or at least just rap with anybody that's even questioning, like, could this work for this product or this service or have this idea? Like, that's what I geek out to is sitting back and really trying to determine if this is a concept that works

within any business in any industry. So we got all that. The book is, I've got it right here, Food for Thought. And you put in Riley Meek, R-Y-L-E-E Meek, M-E-E-K. It's the number one bestseller now, which is awesome. So the last thing I'd like to ask, and then we're going to do one last question is, there's a lot of books out there. I named a bunch of them. Do you have any books that have changed your life? Or it could be fiction. I don't care what it is.

It doesn't have to be about business. But do you have a few books that you'd recommend to the listeners? Sure. Gosh, when I was younger, you know, when I was in high school, I knew I loved entrepreneurship. And I think Think and Grow rich was probably one of the... Reading it back then, it took me a while to grasp that concept, but it really put me on a trajectory of being an actual entrepreneur. Another great one as I was diving into owning my own business, transitioning from sales to actually business owner was the science of success. I thought that was phenomenal. I think the guy actually went to prison.

The concepts in that book, I thought were very practical, is great. And then the book you'd mentioned, Influence, man, that's been a big influence on a lot of things and how I approach business and life as well. Perfect. Right now I'm reading that book by Napoleon Hill again. I've read it several times. I love Dale Carnegie, or How to Win Friends and Influence People. There's a book I just read, which is a good book, but there's one chapter in particular.

It's called Shut Up and Listen, Hard Business Truths That Will Help You Succeed by Tilman Fertitta. And there's a chapter in there. If people get a chance to read it, it's the 5%. There's one in here that's called the 5%. It's a really good chapter. I actually have my whole management team listen to it. Anyways, I want to always close out with one last kind of final thought from the guests that we have on the podcast. Just if you could tell

anybody one thing, one takeaway, one good piece of advice, anything you want, what is it? Go with your gut. I mean, that's a huge thing for me is that I would oftentimes, you know, analysis paralysis things. And if you're early on and have this intuition, I mean, I truly believe that that's God given. And, you know, if I had not done that, you know, if I would have logically looked at my bank account when I first did my campaign, it would not have made sense, but I knew it was going to work. I knew within my knowing that it was going to work. And if you've got that feeling, just do it. I mean, you got one life to live

and just do it. I love it. And everybody here, you know, the main thing is the hardest part is getting started. For me, I tend to get started and things fall off, but making it part of a habit. So I really appreciate you coming on, Riley. I got a lot out of this. I got a ton of notes. I'm getting your book. Definitely check out your websites. And yeah, one of the things you mentioned was NLP and Neurologistic Programming. And wait, is it Neuro- Linguistic.

Linguistic. Yeah. And there's a lot we can learn about, learning about what happens in our subconscious. So really appreciate it. I got a ton of stuff. I'll probably read the book and get you back on here because that's what I love to do.

So appreciate it. And we'll stay in touch, my friend. That was great. I appreciate it, man. Hey, I just wanted to take a quick minute and thank you for listening to the podcast. You know, most people don't understand this, but the way that the podcast has grown is when people subscribe and they leave a review. So if you would please, please, please, Wyatt's top of mind, take a quick minute to subscribe and leave a quick review. It'll help me out so much. If you just took a little bit of time right now, I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate the listeners and the feedback. And also when you subscribe, what I'm going to do is

let you know the next guest coming on the podcast. And I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that next person coming on. All the pros I have on here. I want your feedback. I want you to subscribe so you can start giving me the questions you want me to ask and help us grow together. Also, I'm giving away my book for free now. All you got to do is go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. You got to cover the shipping and handling, but I'm giving the material out for free. It's 200 pages. It's a hardcover book, homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I appreciate each and every one of the listeners and thank you for making this Home Service Expert podcast a success. I hope you're having a great day and thanks again.