The Simple Client Event That WOWS: How to Strengthen Relationships & Grow Your Business

Think client events have to be expensive or complicated? Think again! In this episode, Garrett Maroon and guests break down the simple, cost-effective ways to host client events that WOW—without breaking the bank. Learn why the invitation is more important than attendance, how to leverage social proof, and creative ways to engage your community through events. Discover practical strategies for planning successful real estate client events, partnering with lenders to lower costs, and using technology to streamline the process. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just getting started with events, this episode is packed with actionable tips to enhance client relationships and boost your business.

Key Takeaways:

✅ Client events don’t need to be expensive to be effective.
✅ The invitation is often more valuable than actual attendance.
✅ Hosting events fosters deeper client engagement and trust.
✅ Partnering with lenders and local businesses reduces costs.
✅ Fun and simplicity lead to better attendance and enjoyment.
✅ Social proof builds credibility and strengthens community ties.
✅ Gathering reviews and testimonials at events increases social proof.
✅ Using technology can streamline event planning and invitations.
✅ Regularly hosting simple events keeps client relationships alive.
✅ Creative event ideas allow you to connect with diverse client interests.

Episode Chapters:

⏳ 00:00 – Introduction to Client Events
🎯 03:02 – Understanding the True Value of Client Events
💰 06:06 – How to Plan Cost-Effective Client Events
🎭 08:56 – The Role of the Host vs. The Organizer
🎉 12:08 – Best Types of Client Events That Get Results
😂 15:08 – Why Fun Events Lead to Better Engagement
🏆 18:01 – Event Examples & Proven Best Practices
📈 20:52 – Leveraging Events to Grow Your Business
📬 23:49 – Creative Client Engagement Strategies
💡 35:35 – Mastering the Art of Effective Invitations
📲 42:06 – How Technology Can Simplify Event Planning
🚀 49:07 – Innovative Ideas for Client Events & Community Building
🎤 56:18 – Final Thoughts & Planning Future Events

Resources & Opportunities:

📅 Join The Faithful Agent Retreat – March 25-26, 2025, in Virginia Beach, VA
🔗 Register here: faithfulagent.com/conference

📞 Want to be in Business with Garrett and Christian agents around the globe? Schedule a call to learn about the 2:10 Collective @ eXp Realty
🔗 210collective.com/podcast

🙌 Join Garrett’s FREE online community for Christian agents who want to sell 3-4 homes/month:
🔗 https://www.skool.com/servingnotselling/about

📩 Send Garrett your Hampton Roads & Richmond, VA buyer/seller referrals:
🔗 faithfulagent.com/referral

📲 Follow Garrett on Instagram for more insights and encouragement!

🔗 https://www.instagram.com/garrettmaroon/

Transcript

0:00

the So today we are talking about how to do a simple and easy. client event. Show of hands are perfect in simple client event. Show of hands who has done a client event in the past. Only a handful, okay. Show of hands who has heard about client events. Okay, I was hoping this. Prescinda didn't raise her hand right away. I'm like, have you not heard about a client? Show of hands who would like to do client events. Okay, and final show of hands, who hasn't done one because they seem too expensive and complex? Okay. Yeah. All right. So today we're going to change that, right? Because client events don't need to be complex. They don't need to be expensive. And I know from 11 years of working by referral, when I started in this industry, I started with client events and I started with really fancy client events. And guess what they didn't do? more business than the really cheap ones that I do now. Right. As I started to understand how this industry works, as I started to understand how to make everything simpler for me and less expensive, right. For anybody that knows me, I hate spending money unless it's on technology. Then that's a problem. But I hate spending money in my business unless I know it's necessary. So I was spending $2,500 to $5,000 per event early on in my career. And it got to 2018, I'd been selling 50 homes a year by referral. And I remember asking myself at beginning of that year, I wonder what would happen if I just spent less money, right? Like what's the actual use of events? And so I started not only rearranging how I was doing the bid, but I started learning and understanding the psychology and humanity behind it. And that year I cut my costs in half. And guess what happened? Same amount of people came, same amount of business. Right. So the next show I was like, what if I even do it cheaper? How can I do that? Did it again? Same amount of business, same amount of people. Right. What I learned was there's two pieces to this from a consumer side, from an agent side, the consumer side is we, the value is not in the fact that I'm throwing this massive expensive party. No, no doubt that can be fun. The value to a consumer is no one else is inviting me to events. I don't know about y'all, maybe I'm just not that cool, but people aren't just randomly inviting me to events all the time. Like, hey, we want to buy you a movie. Come, bring your family. Hey, we want to take you to ice cream. Come and just do it. The value is the fact that humans as a whole, sadly, the average person has fewer than two close relationships per a bunch of surveys. The average person is just alone. And so what's the value of the event? The value of the event is me saying, I care enough about you to put something on for you and I want you to come because I want to see you. That's the value. The cost is not the value. From an agent, does that make sense? Yeah, cool. Thumbs up. Yeah. Make sense? Ask any questions, make me go deeper, whatever. From an agent side, the consistency I've heard as I've coached agencies, and that's why I asked earlier, they just seem too complex and they seem too expensive. So I'm just not going to do client events. I know I should do them. I know I should blah, blah. They're too expensive, too complex. So we're going to fix that problem today. So here's what I want you to think about. First and foremost, the cost of your event In my opinion, I average $5 to $8 per person who attends. That's it. Okay. And we're going to talk about super simple events. The purpose of a client event is twofold. Number one, it gives you an excuse to invite them. The most valuable piece of a client event is the invitation. It is not the attendance. It's the invitation. That's the most valuable aspect of throwing a client event. The fact that I get to reach out to them for a purpose, the fact that I have something to invite them to, the fact that honestly they might be sad because they can't come, but it's okay because I have another one coming up. That's good. It leads to so many other things. It leads to my ability in April when I'm going to reach out and check on all my people to also have a reason and say, man, it was great to see you at March at our movie event, or hey, I'm sorry you missed it. Don't forget in June, we've got an ice cream social coming up. I'm always the center of this community building. So the invitation matters more than the attendance. That's number one. Number two is though, it is by far the best leverage on your time to see everybody all at once is way better leverage on your time than trying to individually be in front of people when you have a database of whatever your database is, 50, 100, 200, doesn't matter. It's really hard to go have dinner with 100 people. You can see 50 people all at once at a client event. And when that many people or 20 people, it doesn't matter. My events were small when they started. It's great social proof. And what we've seen and what I've seen through research and study, social proof is an extremely valuable thing, right? When you, I use TripAdvisor for everything, but if you are going out of town and you want to find a hotel to stay in, For me, I look at TripAdvisor, right? And if a thousand people I've never met, let me use a better example. So on Amazon, right? If I look on Amazon and I see two different things and they look the same, one is a thousand reviews and one is 10, even if the thousand reviews a little bit more expensive, what am I going to buy? The thousand reviews, right? People I don't know have said it's good. And so I just trust them. That's social proof. Social proof happens at events when they think, okay, I really like Reshinda. She's cool, but I don't know. Is she a good agent or not? When there's 20 people there and they're all there because they all like Roshina because she did a good job, guess what it's telling everybody else. Hey, you can feel confident about this person. She does a good job. We like her too, right? You're creating and cultivating community and you're creating and cultivating social proofs. Okay. Does that make sense? up. So let's get to the good stuff. Here's what I've learned. Number one, you want to play host. You don't want to play organizer. Okay. Play host. don't play organizer. Early on in my career, one of my challenges was I was coming up with these really elaborate ideas on client events. And what would happen when I'd actually show up to the event was I realized I had to run every aspect of this event to make sure that it worked. I had to coordinate with this person. did one of our events, we did a In my backyard, we had a caterer, we had a live band, we had an ice cream truck come, we had bounce houses, we bought a tent and put that up, right? And all of it felt to me and it was really expensive. And so what happened? Maybe it was a great event, but what did I not do? I didn't get to see any of my people, right? Like I didn't get to spend any time with them. It totally defeated the purpose. They could have just gone to any random person's event, had the same experience and not have seen me and it would have been the exact same thing. Right? Doesn't make sense. And so don't play, play the role of host. Don't play the role of organizer. Right? Now, when I think about planning an event and I'll walk you through every single event I've ever done to give you ideas, ones that work, ones that didn't. But now when I plan an event, it has to be the least amount of effort on my part possible. So for example, one of the things we shifted to, as I mentioned in June, I've done for four years in a row, I've done an ice cream social. So what does it mean? I don't want to be the organizer. I wanna be the host. I call a local ice cream shop down the road from here and I say, we're coming again, right? From 11 to one, we wanna come on this Saturday in June. Can I do that? I'll give my people tickets. When they come in, they order their ice cream. And then at the end, I'll pay you. We're like, of course you can. Cool. Can I put my sign out front? Yeah, 100%. Awesome. So what is my responsibility now? Literally nothing other than inviting people. I show up, I sit out front, I have ice cream. Obviously, because my wife won't let me other times. No, I'm just kidding. Sorry, baby. If you you'll never watch this. What am I saying? So that doesn't matter. can say whatever I want. It's awesome freedom. So all I do is I sit out front with my ice cream. My kids are running around there getting ice cream and people are walking up and say, it's great to see you, man. How are you guys doing? we're great. Thank you so much for putting this event on. Of course, guys, go inside, get your ice cream right and come back out and let's hang out. That's it for two hours. That's it. I'm just hanging out with my people. Right. And I'm providing them ice cream. Not only is the law of reciprocity really powerful, right. If you give me something, I feel like I better give you something back. It's totally real. It's the fact that I'm providing them something for fun that they might want to go do anyways. Now, when I share my ideas and what we're doing, it doesn't mean it's going to work for all of you. Right. Let's say Dave's audience is older or way younger, probably older because you're 81. So if Dave's audience If dad used that so many times, it's still funny. thinks. Okay. So if your audience is way older, right? I mean, they probably like ice cream, but maybe you're not doing ice cream or maybe the kind of movie you're going to show is different. Or, you know, if you work with a bunch of singles, you're not going to do a family photo event probably, right? Like be intentional with who your people are. The point is play host. Don't play organizer. Like anything in business, in my opinion, if it becomes too complex, don't do it. If you can't essentially show up, pay for it, and then engage your people and not worry about anything else, that's too complex of a party. Questions on that? Connie, your brain is chugging, I can see. Does that make sense? Brian raised his hand, but Connie, go ahead first. Yeah, all sounds good, but how can you be too old for ice cream? Maybe all my clients are lactose intolerant. Yes. Yeah. Find that out first. so, again, it's cheaper. You can come, but you don't have to with Okay, I'll bring Real quick, we have an event like that and maybe we'll get into questions later. don't know. are you getting exclusive access or are there other people showing up that aren't strangers that are invited? Yep, so in the ice cream event, which again, I'll walk through the events, the ice cream event, anyone, it's open for anybody. That's why they gotta have a ticket. So again, what great social proofing, right? So our family photo event, excuse me, it's this local park, there's animals and stuff. We rent the pavilion for like a hundred bucks. We're photographer, we get donuts and coffee, right? Everything is around food because it's my excuse to eat it, all right? Let's just be honest and my wife lets me do it then. So. What we do, Brian, at that event, for example, is I put out our sign, right? Here's our, and Dave and I just merged, so now it's a 210 Realty Group, a sign right there in the pavilion. There's a hundred, well, last year, without even merged with Dave, we had 175 people there, right? And they're seeing people are coming into the park and they don't know us. What are they seeing? Wow. There's a lot of people here for this real estate team. Like who are these people? And so I actually like when there's public around. Right now for our movie event coming up in a week and a half. We rented those three theaters so no one else can, of course, walk into those. But again, depending on where you are in your business, you're not going to do the exact same things that we do. Excuse me. I like the public aspect. I like that there's people around seeing, look at me serving my community. that answer your question? Yeah, okay. Yeah, but like, for example, the ice cream one, are you paying for people that weren't invited that are there for that? That also show up because they get a ticket or something. You got to be one of my people to come get it. Yeah. The ice cream is come find me. Right. And I'll give you a ticket. And so that's what we do. So again, I'll walk you through all the events that we do. But number one, you play the host. Don't play the organizer. Number two, find a lender. Lenders will pay half. In fact, lenders can actually pay the whole thing. They're going to tell you that it's a respa violation for me to cover the whole thing. That's not true. Now it's probable that they'll just cover half and whatever. That's okay. But for example, last year at the ice cream event, because we're talking about that, I had 100 people there. It cost $800. I paid 400 bucks. You know, that's not a lot. And again, everybody's in a different space. But what I'm saying is $400 for me was seeing 100 people, right? Those 100 people on average, no, 256 people. I loved 100 people today or that day, and I reached 25,000 people. That's the math. That's it for 400 bucks. Tell me any other better marketing event. It doesn't exist. It's not real, right? And what did they see? They saw your face. They heard your voice. You got to see them, right? For me, they see my little kids. They've been with me long enough to know I didn't have kids when I started, right? They're engaging and they're getting connected emotionally to me and my family and I'm connecting to them. There is so much value in showing up and providing them something. Don't pay the whole thing though. Get a lender. Get a lender to cover half. I don't care if you're new. I don't care if you're super experienced. I don't even care if it's the lender that you always quote unquote send business to. Lenders will do this, right? So go find a lender. And especially for us, like try to find a Christian lender. That's awesome. But that's, there's huge value for them. So never pay the whole thing. That doesn't make sense at all, right? Make it even cheaper. So partnering with the lender, play the host, partner with the lender. And then finally, last point is choose fun things. Now that's, you're like, why am I writing it down? Because I've done unfun things that were too far outside the box. So I'll give an example. One event we had in my backyard. So I'm an advocate for inviting people to your house, right? At least one of the events is around your home. You don't have to. But the reason I like that is you all have invited me into your home plenty of times. I want to invite you into mine, right? Like there's just, you don't, who do you invite into your house? A friend. There's a familial aspect of that. So I like that, right? We can talk about that, but I enjoy inviting them. Anyways, one time we invite them to our house. I forget, actually, I think it's because we had our second or third kid, I can't remember. So it was supposed to be in July. It was a summer event and ended up being in November. Well, we had bounce house, we had food, we had all this cool stuff. It super fun. But I had also rented a dunk, what's it called? A dunk? Okay. What are those things called? Okay, yeah, thank you. And we were gonna raise money for the local food pantry, think, something like that, right? So they had to pay money to dunk somebody. Well, what I didn't realize was it was November, it was freezing cold, no one else wanted to do it. So it was me the entire time. And then the only people that wanted to pay for it was my own team. And so I just kept getting dunked. I made like 100 bucks and it cost me like 500 to rent the dunk tank. That was a mistake. And then what was it? No one thought it was fun, except like the first time I got dumped and that was a total flop, right? It was really awkward. I've had plenty of those moments. So, but, but I wasn't thinking, I was just like so far outside the box, dunk tank. Of course people will do this. Like there was no thought process behind it, right? I've done an event where this was good idea, but it was the end of the year and we were going to do an event for all my clients that had bought and sold that year. So they all came to my house. We had hot chocolate. had some Chick-fil-A and sorry, Dave, before I knew all the ingredients. then I rented a 56 passenger bus and we were gonna go tour Christmas lights, right? That sounds fun. I thought that was fun. Well, instead of doing research, I hired the cheapest bus that exists. It was still 1300 bucks. I'm like, that feels like a lot. They get there. The bus driver, first of all, is not a nice dude. He's smoking. He's just weird. Just not dressed up nice, whatever. I get in the bus to check it out and I'm like, why is it so cold in here? It's like the heat doesn't work. Okay. And then I said, can you at least turn on some Christmas music? the radio is broken. you kidding me? So if you could imagine, here's this event of all of my people. right? And they're sitting and they don't, you know, they kind of know each other. They don't really know each other. It is. There's no noise on the entire bus. It is so awkward as we drive. People are freezing cold and I'm walking from seat to seat, like just trying to talk to people just to do something. I try to get some people up front to start singing Christmas carols. Nobody wants to do it. And so not kidding. By the time we got to the Christmas lights, I was like, all right, it didn't work. We wrote through the Christmas light, just total silence. as people watch. And the best part is because these are people that I know, right? I mean, like I built relationships with them at the end, we're back in my house and I said, well, I don't know about you guys, but that totally bombed. And they're like, you are right. And it was funny and whatever, but like that was an expensive bomb. And I just didn't think about it, right? It was like, this would be cool. We should just do it. And now I thought about doing it again last year and we just, we've shifted how we've done things. Now figured out what works. I figured out what doesn't cost a lot of money. So even if it goes wrong, I didn't throw away 1300 bucks, right? So I've learned a lot through this process. is, do things that you think is gonna be fun for everybody. I thought it'd be fun. In fact, I think it's fun even now how awkward it was, but I don't know that that was the best event I've ever put on. so play host, not organizer, get a lender to sponsor, make it fun. Right? Any questions so far? Because then I will talk about the actual events we've done. We're going to brainstorm together things that you guys could do. And then I'm going to talk about what the invitation process is, because we also get that wrong typically. So any questions so far? Krista, you said are all these events just for your active slash closed clients or for prospective ones too? Great question. So Krista, if you haven't, in the school under classroom there are five e-courses one of them is immediately unlocked for you. called relation. guess. No, no, the referral blueprint. Okay, I go in there and I'd watch that. And it's kind of an overview of my entire thought process and system behind developing your database, building out a Legion system for creating referrals. And the reason I say that to you is anyone from me that is in my database is a qualified member of my database, AKA, I've actually asked him. If you had a friend or family member thinking of making a move, do you have an agent you'd refer them to? And they've said, you'd be my guy, right? Everybody in there is qualified. And so they all get invitation to the event. Hopefully that answers it, right? So it's not prospective versus past, whatever it's. Yeah, if you're a past client, you're in my database as well. Yep, you're welcome, Grisa. You're in my database as well. But, but also if I just know you from church and we've had that conversation, then you're in my database too. And in fact, you know, I don't want to get off topic. That's a really great way to add people to your database. You know, I've done that as a side note in the church, because it's weird for me. We've done a podcast episode, if you want me to post, can, on how do you lead generating the church? Is that appropriate? Right? Because the church is not for that. But there's relationships there. So for example, one of the ways I've added people to my database through the church is gone to them and say, genuinely, man, I'm sorry, I love you. You're a good friend of mine, right? We're in Bobbist City together. And I realize I'm sending out all these events to everybody. and inviting them to come to this cool stuff and I've never sent one to you just because I've never asked do you have an agent you refer a friend or family member to and every time they're like yeah it'd be you like dude that's totally on me why did I not invite you to begin with right man let me grab your information and make sure that you get those invites in the future right so there's value there that you can also use to grow the database that's you know whatever kind of it to 102 good question any other questions about the broader kind of thought process behind events Nope, good. Good? Good. All right. So I'm going to walk you through some events that I've done and stop me at any point if you want more details and I'll tell you the ones that I think work really well. Here's the four events that I do right now every single year, done them year after year after year. The first one is the most expensive one. In March, we have a movie morning. So we ran out of movie theater. So that looks like a local movie theater here. We reach out to them. This is our sixth year doing it. And now Dave, as we merged, Dave's doing it with us. And so all it is, I pick my database is mostly younger families, not exclusively, right? But tend to be look more kind of like me. And so we're doing PG movies or under just to respect everybody, right? So this year, last year was Kung Fu Panda 4. This year is Paddington in Peru. I'm not excited about that, but that's fine. Hopefully it will be. And so to buy every ticket, every seat in the theater, excuse me. And the first year, We only bought one theater. paid for every ticket. You get a discount paying for it in full. I think we bought 70 seats. Well, it filled up. So we had to buy an 80 seat theater as well. So we had 150 seats this year. We have 230 seats that we've pre-purchased. We have three full theaters for our people to come into. And what we've said is we've bought you a ticket, right? We bought you guys a ticket to this event and we get them a little snack pack, right? So they get a ticket for a snack pack and it's like a little drink, a little popcorn. gummy bears or something. don't know. Dave. They're not healthy. Some will do celery next year. That's it. Right. And here's the process. What's cool about that is that's a really well attended event. I mean, extremely well attended event so much so that every year we've actually had people who couldn't get in that wanted to get in because they just didn't RSVP quick. Is they come all it is is what we do. And in every event, I follow the same process. OK, well, that's not true. I follow the same process to try to generate Google reviews. So events are really good to see all your people. It's a really good time to get a bunch of Google reviews too. Or Zillow review. Don't use Zillow. Zillow is terrible. So Google is the place to be. So here's what happens. We set out our sign, 210 Realty Group, right? As people come in, we've got a table, we're checking them in. They're coming in and man, it's great to see you guys. We're so glad you're here. Here's all your tickets. Here's your snack packs, right? It's us doing that. Or like, I'll have my oldest daughter with me this year, let her help with that because people like that. And I'll just be mingling and talking to people. And then we'll also say, hey, by the way, if you haven't left us a Google review, here's a QR code to scan, scan it, leave me a five star review literally right now, show me, I'm going to write your name down here, Andrew, to win a hundred dollar Visa gift card or Amazon gift card or whatever. I mean, we've collected so many Google reviews just doing that. Like, why would I not also do that? It makes sense, right? I'm trying to collect that information. Everybody comes, they check in. Great, here's your theater. Awesome, awesome, awesome. At the beginning. Excuse me, this is at least what we've done. And you guys know I'm loud, so I like this kind of stuff. You don't have to. But I would go into each theater and just say, guys, we are so glad you're here. Thank you so much for coming, supporting us in our business. It is such a joy to be able to provide this for you, because you all have given so much to us. We're going to take a selfie video or selfie picture, right, as you just call it a selfie. I'm getting old. We're going to take a selfie with all of you in this theater and we're going to post it. We're so glad. And guys, when you're done with the movie, I hope you love it. We'll be right outside and we would love to just see how it Right. So that would do the boom bounce for us. We'll bounce to the three theaters, selfie, exciting, blah, blah, blah. They go sit and watch a movie. I mean, I don't to do anything. They go sit and watch a movie. And as we step out 10, 15 minutes early, we just wait. You know, there's the hallway that everybody comes out. We're just standing there as they come out. Man, how was it? Oh, it was great. It was so much fun. Thank you so much. Of course. Give them hugs, all those things, right? The easiest thing I could ever possibly manage. They go watch a movie. And then when they come out, they're super excited about it. I'll give you a horror story though once, but that's the most expensive event. Okay. When it was just me buying 150, the total cost was 2,200 bucks. I split it with the lender. So was 1,100 bucks. by far the most expensive event no other than I do comes even close to me is total of a thousand dollars but that's by far the most expensive event. Okay. We had a, does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. We had a horror story once. So I have strep throat, wake up in the morning, I have strep throat. We're supposed to do this movie event and we have 150 people come in and thankfully my team was good and they were still going. I just didn't go. I strep throat is like my least favorite thing in the world other than sin. Okay, I'm good guys, I'm holy. That wasn't funny. Brianna didn't laugh. So I feel awkward now. So anyways, did that out too. So wake up, Godstrap, don't go to the event. And Jesse and my whole team's there. Well, somehow the theater thought or forgot we were coming, so they didn't warm up the projector thingy. It takes an hour and a half to warm up the projectors. And so here they are. Everyone's already sitting down in the theater before they tell us. or tell them my team. And they're like, we're really sorry, guys, it's gonna be an hour and a half. We're like, are you kidding me? Right? So anyways, a bunch of back and forth. And I wasn't there for but bunch of back and forth. They finally gave everybody pizza and they tried to figure it out. Right. But it was apparently terrible. mean, people were texting me they were nice about it. But they're like, dude, what happened here? Were you not ready? Like, why did you do this? We're sitting here. My kids are going crazy. It's nap time. That was pretty bad. But that's okay. We're still doing it because people still like it. Right. Sorry. Things don't go the way that you want them to. That's so movie event. Really, really good event. I'm just going to keep talking. Stop me at any point. Ice cream social is then what we do in June, as I was mentioning, literally reach out to an ice cream shop locally. Hey, I'd love to do a client event in your ice cream shop. Can I do that from 11 to one on a Saturday? Can we come and I'll just give out tickets or you guys give out tickets? Maybe they shouldn't do that because they don't know who's who. And when they come in, we'll settle up at the end. Is that cool? Yeah, of course. Can I put my sign out in front to show people where we are? Literally, they walk up, get a ticket. Excuse me. I did the Google review there too. One year, this also backfired because it didn't work. One year, I paid for all of us on the team to get t-shirts. And the back said, scan me to leave a five-star review. And it had a QR code. but apparently that doesn't work very well on a shirt. So no one could actually scan it. And I had spent like 150 bucks. It's awesome. What a great idea. Let's do that this year, Dave. Oh, anyways, but how easy is that? Come up, get a ticket. Boom, there it is. Go inside, get ice cream, sit inside, come outside, let's talk. Man, it's great to see you all. And there's a follow-up process to everything. So I'll explain that. That's how easy is that? 100 people cost 800 bucks, split it with a lender of $400. Anybody can do that. Just call an ice cream shop. Anybody can do that. In the fall, in September, we do our family photo event. So again, I go to a local park. There's a place near us called Bluebird Gap. It's got animals. It's a local city park, whatever. A hundred bucks to rent the pavilion, which we already have. A hundred dollars to rent the pavilion. And then one of my clients is also a photographer, right? Just like agents, feel like there's photographers everywhere. So you find someone you know that's a photographer and say, hey, can I pay you for one hour? One hour to take family photos for me. And so the way we do it is the event is 930 to 1130. We're probably gonna do a little bit longer this year just since we've merged a lot more people, but 930 to 1130. so, excuse me, the only planning required is in advance, I call a local donut shop. I say, I need this many donuts and this much coffee. Can you get that for me? Sure, of course, whatever. We go pick it up that morning, we show up to the pavilion, there's tables already, everything, and we put it out and people show up and from 10 to 11 they know the photographer is gonna be available, she's gonna take family photos, right? Boom, and then you're done. Guys, hang out, enjoy. There's animals, go play in the park, go play whatever. So easy, grab a donut, have coffee, and then I just get to walk around and talk to people. I mean, that's literally it. And that one averages, I think around $800 also. So it cost me 400 bucks. And again, that was with 150, 175 people last year. Now I went with Dunkin' Donuts and they were really disappointed last year because it was, you know, it was lean, right? It was a little lean last year. And so now I got to go back to my expensive donuts, which is a local place. So maybe that's why it costs 800 bucks. So maybe it costs a thousand bucks and 500 to me, right? That's not a... You know, bank breaker, wallet breaker, whatever that whatever the term. So we do that September. In December, I do a Christmas lights drive-through. We shifted. do you have a question, Brian? Yeah, sorry, you saw that. Yeah. What was that place that you do in September? Is it a you said again? City park that happens to have animals that just works really well. I mean, could do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You it anywhere. And then they're just really cheap. mean, city it's it is like a hundred or a hundred fifty dollars or something to rent the. So you could put out your sign again, all those things, I mean, just easy. And then in December, we're incorporating a VIP event this year. So I'll mention it. I don't know how well it's going to go, so I'll. tell you how it goes before I encourage anybody else to do it. But in December, we always do a Christmas lights drive through. So we shifted this in during COVID. But this event's been amazing. Every year, honestly, I've thought I should cancel this event. And then 40, 50 cars show up every time. And I don't know why. But so here's what we do for Christmas lights drive through. Now it helps because I live in a cul-de-sac. If you don't, maybe wherever you could find a place for people to drive through, whatever. But so here's what we do. They just stay in their car, right? The intent is this, you guys are gonna stay in your car. We're gonna print off a list of the best lights, Christmas lights for you guys to drive around. It's got a Christmas lights list. It's got on the pack, we create a mad lib because it's fun. We have hot chocolate, we have candy, we have little like reindeer ears. We have little like Christmas glasses. I'm trying to think. We just have fun stuff, right? Two is we're out front of my house on a table. They pull up in front of the house and we say to them, right? Hey, what's up? It's awesome. Super excited for you guys. And they're always excited because getting my database is younger families. They don't want to get all their kids out of the car. And so it was like, great, man, I'm glad you guys are here. How many hot chocolate do you need? Oh, OK, great. And for me, like my kids actually do it. And so people think that's fun. Like my kids run and give it to them. And then we give them a bag of candy. Right. And then we give them a list. We talk and then say, man, go have a good time. Hope you guys love the lights. And we do it on a Tuesday night from four to 6 p.m. They don't have to go that night. Maybe they don't. Maybe some people stop on the way home from work. Maybe they bring their whole family. You know, like it's easy. It's simple. I mean, that probably cost 600 bucks total. So 300 to me. It is not complicated. All I got to do now that's I probably do the most physical work for that, which I just put the bags of candy together and that's literally it. Show up. My lender goes. and finds a place that will do like big boxes of hot chocolate, right? Like they would do with coffee and that's it. Pull up, got cups, here you go. Having an awesome time guys. Like we love you, thank you for your support this year. That's it. It is so simple and every year we think we shouldn't do this. No one's gonna come in every year. Tons of cars come, I mean tons. And it's fun. So. We got a VIP event in October, which is to be a little more high end. And the way they earn a ticket is they either work with us or they refer us this year. And so we are giving out at each event. We've got little cards. We've got little cards that say, like, we'll hand out, like, hey, don't forget, like at the movie party, guys, don't forget, we've got this awesome VIP event for y'all this year. And it just like, Holly Fork Farm, here's what we're doing. Two ways to earn a VIP ticket, work with us to refer us a buyer seller. Right? like part of what I'm trying, again, I don't do this yet. I don't know how well it works. Part of what I'm trying to do is are there ways for us to talk about real estate and generating referrals without talking about real estate and generating referrals? Right? Like, can I hand this to you and say, Hey guys, this is going to be awesome and get them excited enough that it actually triggers in their mind to think about it. They're gonna get another one of these at the ice cream shop. They're gonna get another one of these at the family photo event, right? Is this going to move the needle? I don't know yet, but we're gonna try. And if it works, I'll tell you. So this is the VIP event that we're doing as well. Any questions on any of those? Any ideas? you want, I mean, I literally, I've done this for 10 years. I've done so many variations. So the VIP event is, It's on a Saturday in October. I know a lot of people have soccer and so it starts at one actually and so it's a Holly fork farm. So it's this cool. actually surveyed some of my best clients and said would you rather me? I used to do a lot of like adults only parties. And you know a lot of people really like that, but I asked him would you rather me do that or do like a really fun family fall festival type thing and they're like family fall festival. So we're going to this Holly fork farm. It's got. Hey rides, it's got a pumpkin patch, it's scarecrow slide, it's got bounce houses, tire fun, right? Like it's just a fun family thing. And, and I don't even know yet, like, honestly, depending on how many people are coming, we might not buy them food. Maybe we just buy them tickets. We're not sure yet exactly how that's going to go. It depends on how many people it's going to be. But it's to say like in our area, at least people love going to these like pumpkin patches fall place, whatever. And I think a lot of people do too. So we're just saying, guys, we're paying for it. Here's how you get in. Work with us or refer us. It's that simple. it specifically says, like, for you and your immediate family. They can't just bring anybody. So we'll see if that moves the needle. I used to do an at-home wine tasting event for VIP. That's really fun. There's different companies that will come just to, like, basically free wine tasting. and And I just like pre-bought a few bottles because that was how it made it worth it to them. That was really fun. man, we've done all the variations of things that we've done. I've done a lot of events, like I said, at my house. Having an ice cream truck was really fun for people to have that pull up again. I don't know your database. Like you gotta know who's in there, but there's something that they'll like to do. And again, it's about the invitation, not necessarily about the attendance. There are so many variations. So before we into the invitation process, I I've been talking a lot. Any ideas or any questions about like, what about this event or how would you do this or this is my database? What kind of event would you do for them? Anything like that. So I'll share. I was doing about two to three events with our team, but they were a little more expensive. And I call them reverse Popeyes for anybody who's familiar with Bafini. I got tired of going out. so I did a and they're not like they were unique 10 years ago. But we do a chocolate giveaway at the office. And so I just got boxes of chocolates. We have a little spread out. We had a chocolate fountain. and people would come in and get their box of chocolates, hang out for 10, 15 minutes, grab food, say hi. And kind of like Garrett saying, I was able to just have somebody man the table or woman the table. And then I could just kind of be there, take a picture, talk to clients. And then I did the same thing. A couple of years I did a summer event where we actually had a venue, kind of like Garrett was saying, we had a band. One, we had a pool there and so people could come. come to the pool, we had the band playing, then we had like a taco bar. That was probably more, a few thousand dollars, honestly. And then the chocolates now with inflation, they're probably more like 13 bucks, 14 bucks for a box of chocolate. I would usually go to Costco or one year we went to Walgreens because Costco was out. So we literally hit every CVS and Walgreens in the area. I don't recommend that, but we did get enough. And then the pie giveaway has been our biggest event. And so we usually have, you know, the last year we probably had 200 people come out and I get them from Costco and Sam's Club. A little pro tip for you, the pumpkin at Costco has to be refrigerated because it has dairy in it. The pumpkin at Sam's Club does not. And the apple pie at Costco is better than the, better tasting than the apple pie at Sam's. So we would get the apple from Costco, the pumpkin from Sam's and do the same thing. Just have them come to the office. We'd have a spread of food. And I mean, the pumpkin's probably eight bucks a pie. And the nice thing with those events are you don't have to buy ahead of time. You're obviously putting out the touches beforehand. you know, if you're going to have 100 people, 10 bucks a pie, you know what the cost is. And same thing, split it with the lender 50-50. But people love the pies just because most people are gathering with other people. So it was just one less thing they had to do. And a lot of them looked to it. so they could bring it with them. And I would always joke and be like, well, just take it of the plastic van and put it in your own little thing with some tin foil. They'll think you baked it. But yeah, so those were a couple that have worked well for us. The pies, like I said, in some markets is a overdone now. So you just kind of have to feel out the chocolates. I don't see done that much, but feel out what would make you a little more unique if you need to. and as the That's good. No, thank you. Yeah. I mean, there's all kinds of things you can do. Right. And I honestly, here's what I would encourage after this. Think of what's one thing I could do. What's one event I could do that'd be easy, fun and try it on a lender and just try it and post it in the school. Like, Hey, this is what I'm thinking. What do y'all think? Get feedback on it. Right. Why not? It's going to cost me 2000 bucks. Like I'd probably say that. Why? Why is that so expensive? I don't understand. You have a lender, you know, how many people are coming. Right. So just get feedback. But the beauty is it doesn't have to be complex at all. I mean, I've helped people do a cookout at their house with a handful of clients and we call it a client event. Right. I've had people, know, Jesse, he, my lead agent, loves, he has a boat. He loves it. His client event was he did a, he had a few friends on his boat. All right. That was his client event. They went fishing together. You know, we've done pop-up like, look, we have local breweries. We've done like a pop-up brewery night. or they just come hang out and our lender buys them a beer if they want one. And we just hang out. you know, it doesn't, the point is this, no, again, maybe you're different than me. It's very uncommon in today's world that someone is planning an organizing event just because they want you to come have fun. just doesn't happen. That's it. That's what we're doing here. And it's a great way for us to love on those goals. Yeah, actually, Rasinda, real quick. Yeah, go ahead. Then I'll answer it, Chris. questions. Thank Do you find it more effective to mail a physical invitation to your people or email or text or do you do one and then follow up with another? Yeah, good. So Krista asked basically the same question. I hate spending money, so I don't mail anything. Here's, I'm going to show you what we do. So real quickly and easily. So here's our team site. So I send everybody to our website, right? Doesn't hurt for them to, to, uh, to see it. So they come to our site and you'll see events, right? And these are all the last ones, but this is the one that's up now movie morning. So here it is. They have to come here and then they have to click RSVP and it's just a Google form. Okay. That's it. But I want them to, I want to funnel them to a website. And so they go to the website, again, sorry, that was pretty quick. They go to the website, at the top is events, click on movie morning, and here it is. So here's the actual invitation process for us. So, and I'm gonna just give you the list. So three Mondays before your event, so if your event is March 8th, then, Three Mondays before that, I don't know why I said that. Three Mondays before the event, email invitation. Right. You know Monday movie morning party We're excited for our sixth annual movie event. You know, here's the little flyer And make sure you click here to RSVP and learn Right Do that the next week. So two Mondays before the event Send another email in case you missed it. Here's the invitation. We hope you can come The next day so Tuesday after that to Tuesdays before the event, I send a text message to everyone in my database. And it's, hey, in case you missed it, I would love for you to come because I'd love for you to see you. I'd love to see you on this date and this date. We're doing an event. We've rented out the theater and or whatever the event is, right? We've rented out the theater and it fills up quickly. So here's a link. Go to our website. RSVP right there. We'd love to see you. Right. And I get plenty of people. Again, it's about the invitation. OK. Excuse me. In that, I use the app. Hit. them up, HIT and then up, hit them up or the app reach. That was called, yeah, or the app reach. Those allow you to put. people's names into what is essentially a mass text. Now you got to still send them like one at a time, but man, that I used to just do it all. would copy and paste to the next person. It took me forever. These apps saved me so much time, so much time. So I would use that for the text. So you did that. So three Mondays in advance email, two Mondays in advance email, the next day, Tuesday text, the following Monday, another email one last time, because we'd love to see you all. We've got this movie of it coming up. Hope you can come the next Tuesday. Hey, in case you didn't see it, my friends, just following up, right? I don't, I don't, I, all I do is say just following up and add in the linking, right? Cause they would have just gotten a text from me. So I don't need to say, here's all the details again, right? Hey, just following up. Want to make sure you saw this. Cause I would love to see you, right? Everything's about, I want to see you. obviously if it's someone that's already said, I wish I could be there. We can't be there. Then don't keep sending him that text, right? Use your own discretion. and then the Friday, the day before the event, I'm just sending out an email that is, or text to the people that have RSVP. Yes. Don't forget. Here's the details. See you there. That simple. Right. So, but, but the cool part is I'm getting a ton of touches around this one event. And then the day, not the day after because it's Sunday, but the Monday after the event, or at least a week after the event, I'm handwriting a note to everybody who came. Connie, it was so great to see you. Thank you so much for coming to the movie event. It's always being such a great supporter of me and my business. Looking forward to seeing you at the next. Boom, in the mail, right? Just follow it up with a little hand and note, a little personalization. Added benefit of inviting them is for the people that are some of your best referral sources, whatever. If they say, man, Rashi and I would love to be there. can't, we've got so and so going on. You know, we've got baseball. Then maybe on Monday you make a note to say, hey, how did baseball go? Right? it was great. Like, yeah. You how was the movie event? it was amazing. I'm sorry. I missed you. I'd love to catch up anyways. Right? Is there a good time for us to grab coffee? Me, what I've realized is so much of my communication with people centers around these events, right? There's a reason for me to reach out to you. I'm not just like, if you have anybody thinking about buying or selling a home, please send them my way. Like I don't want to keep saying that, right? They're going to get annoyed for me continuing to say that. I'm just inviting you to stuff. I'm showing up. giving you fun opportunities to do things and hang out and create community and have a good time with your family for free. That's what it is. So that was really fast. Did everybody get that? Anybody need me to go back over that? Make it easy, make it simple. Don't complicate it. We use Send Pulse is what I use for emails. Send Pulse. I think it's cheap if it's like, or free if it's under 500 people. And then it's really cheap after that. And I think Synthpulse is totally fine. I don't need anything fancy. It's really easy. So that's what I use for all of our emails. And then I think I said hit them up or the app reach for sending texts. And that's it. Funnel them to your website. Now we're going to try this year for the first time, we have a Facebook page that's, that will become 210. My old team is the Marin group, the Marin group VIP group on Facebook where we would also post the events. We've never done, so we'll do it again. We've never done a, like created an event through that. So we're going to try that too. But there's an aspect of like, if you say you're coming there, but you didn't RSVP, like, I don't know you're coming. So, you know, I'm not sure that's good idea. That was Dave's idea, obviously. So we'll see if we actually, we'll see if we actually end up doing that or not. I'll actually speak to that too. So it does add a little complication because it can accept the invite, but we would just go back through and cross-reference with the person just to make sure. In this case, like when we did it for Pies, they would put sometimes, because we would mail and we would do an email and a text and the Facebook. And so we would try to push them towards, I have an ops director, so we would try to push them towards her email or phone number to respond. But when we started doing the Facebook events, the disadvantages we would have to cross-reference, the advantage is there's just a segment of the population that does communicate a lot on Facebook. And so it's really easy for quick responses and that kind of thing. Whereas the hard mail sometimes, I agree with Gary, probably not worth doing that. So yeah, pluses and minuses at least on Facebook. But I liked it just because I got more engagement that way. And then closer to the event, we could pop on that page and say, We're looking forward. Can't wait to see everybody. It's going to be awesome. And we get the team members to come in there and just keep the excitement and the buzz going. What do you use for your website? For someone like me, I'm trying to get started with everything up and running. I just built it on Squarespace. I've gotten better at it just because I've done enough of it, but yeah, it's pretty... You can use... what was the name of it? One second. It's called D, not D script. durable. D-U-R-A-B-L dot C-O. That will build you, it's an AI, it'll build you a website really fast and they look awesome. And then I've done it just to play around with it, but I've never like kept it so I don't know what to do, but. Pass that, but you could check that out too. Yeah, unless you feel like you've got some skill set and figuring out square space or whatever that could be waste. your time, but yeah, good question. What other questions? I think I hit everything. Sorry, that was a lot of information in a short amount of time, but any questions, any thoughts, any comments, anyone have ideas on what they would want? to do. We have pond in our front yard and our property is somewhat secluded off the road and people like coming on our property. It's a narrow tree-lined driveway. I'm thinking about like a father-son activity, but that kind of limits your family's. and And that once you said invite you like inviting people that okay cool. So like people I think would be blessed to want to be invited onto the property for. Yeah, that's great idea. Chris, I saw that. Go ahead, Connie. Chris. I was just going to ask. saw Chris just come up to you. Has anybody done like a Norfolk admirals game or a tides game or something like that? League, Hockey, Hockey, and Minor League. yeah, sorry. I forgot we're all not here. Yeah, I just my husband and I go to a lot of those events. And I always see realtors out front and they have a tent and they're handing out like spirit type gear or, you know, tchotchkes, popcorn. snack certificates or whatever to get into the game. And they're just, mean, just tons of people funneling in and going through this tent and getting, you know, from these realtors. And I just thought, man, I wonder. I don't know. Are these people that know you think or they just there to market? Oh, no, because I tried. I went up to the table and was like, you know, what's going on, you know, kind of a thing. And of course, they didn't know who I was. And they said that I needed the ticket in order to do whatever they were doing. So I don't know. It looked like they were having a ton of fun. I don't know what the cost on anything like that would be. mean, tights games are pretty cheap. I don't know. Yeah, that's a good idea. We don't well we have several minor league teams in Greenville But we have a minor league baseball team. It's been sort of the longest running team and we've partnered with them for the last two years and we're doing it again this year where We just contacted the the ball field and Went through their marketing department and basically they have these like event spaces where you can do all kinds of things but for us it's like a They get it's like a ticket to the game, a hot dog, some sort of hamburger side item, know, basic drinks or whatever. And, what we did, I have a lot of people in my database that are part of my church. We partnered with the local women's ministry that sort of like, you know, kind of in a constant battle against Planned Parenthood and things like that. our. client's ticket to the game was to bring a donation for that place and one of their representatives came. And so we tied our event to that, like, come to this family friendly thing. Also, we're raising donations for this organization and people brought all kinds of stuff. And that lady came, so I didn't have to carry it all away. She came to take it because otherwise I would have spent all my time trying to load it in my truck. And then, yeah, then I just get to walk around and talk to folks and eat hot dogs and watch baseball. It is not cheap, but I got a lender and an attorney to partner with us. Our attorneys do all of our closings, title works, stuff like that in South Carolina. And then we had baseball hats made and these little like stress balls with our logo on it and like gave this out to the kids. So. That's awesome. Is that the one event you do for the year, Todd? Like, some people will blow up one event or are you doing multiple events? What are you doing there? Yeah, we've we've done that event. I used to partner with my children's school had a fall festival and I would piggyback on that as a sponsor and then we would give away some big item to collect people's info. That event went away and then we we also have like these our county parks. There are like these small water parks and so you can actually rent out the whole water park and we've invited families. to that kind of thing. So a lot of families in our database. So that's sort of the target there. Sometimes people are weird about like whatever, bait and suits and what have you, but those people won't come. So. Yeah, that's awesome. With Dave on my team now, that's my highlight is. That was a weird comment. But never mind. I mean, with Dave on your team, Dave. Steve, just stop. Steve, just stop. I feel like, you for your Christmas event, you've got to, you've got to elf to hand out hot pink candles. That's me. I'm the short. but I. That's fair good point. Like it. No, that's awesome time. Yeah. I mean, I think there's my way is not the only way by any means. I like doing smaller, less expensive, more events because it's a much more often of a touch point and the higher likelihood that I see everyone in a given year. Uh, and so that's just been my philosophy, but I'm not love that idea. Todd, maybe one day we do that. If y'all are newer to events, don't do something that expensive. Like Connie, you've not done, don't do that expensive. Just feel out if anybody's going to come do an ice cream event or whatever. Like, is anyone going to show up? I don't know yet. I really like the drive-by ideas. think my home is, sorry, my dog's barking. My home's located on a cul-de-sac and I think that's an excellent idea. And I actually have the VP of a lender of a, yeah, VP of a lender company that lives next door. So I'm thinking that would be a great idea to partner up with him and we're a cul-de-sac. It would be easy. So, yeah, I like that idea. There's all kinds of ideas. So don't get in your own head. Just do something and make it easy. That's literally all you got to do. Chris said, to your point, you asked if anybody's done a game night. I've had people, like I had somebody I helped. She loved, she was like, I can't do anything with this. I love true crime podcasts and I love good wine. I'm like, yeah, can't true crime and good wine. That sounds like a client event, right? So she just invited a bunch of women over that are in her database. How was that not a client event? It is a client event, right? and the people in your database are probably like, like you or they like something about you, right? You know, if Dave and I are talking about doing the pickleball event, because we both love pickleball and that'll be something fun for people, right? Like, because it's the greatest sport the Lord ever. Amen. Yes. Bridget, let's end it there. All right. See ya. No, make it simple. Make it easy. Just do something. You're going to be bad at it at the beginning. You'll get better at it. You're to be bad at the beginning. You'll get better at it. Right. The whole point is you get to invite them and you get to see them. Trust me, there is no better leverage than that. Right? So I hope that this is helpful. Mitzi, I saw your message. I think you meant that to me. Just text me directly. Happy to talk with you about that. I'll be with that. Real quick announcement. The faithful agent is having a retreat coming up. We just announced. We know it's super late. We ran into so many roadblocks. We were trying to do a full on conference. and we ran into so many roadblocks, but we wanted to offer something. So March 25th and 26th, 25th is just a kickoff, like a dinner fellowship kickoff. And March 26th is just the day and then we're done in Virginia Beach. I would love for any of you to come. I can get you all the information. Just ask me for it. You can message me in the school. And for those that can't come, know, Brandon, you're in Arizona, Chris, you're in Michigan. That's probably hard for you to get here, totally understand. Prashinder, have no excuse to do Utah. I don't care that it's seven hours, you can drive. Just deal with it. Just ride together, get some other people, not just the two you. That'd fun. Some other people, but we're doing, we're going to try to do a full on conference in the fall. That's the intent and we should be announcing that soon as well. For y'all to plan on that. There is, I don't know who has Connie. You've been obviously Dave. You've been I don't think anyone else has been there is nothing like it. I mean, there just isn't a room full of believers that are also in real estate that know where your work in your heart is just, I don't know, with something super. So if you can make it, I absolutely encourage it. This first one's 49 bucks. We'll we keep it. It's a nonprofit. Like we keep it as cheap as humanly possible because we want as many. So anyways, anything I can do to support you guys. If you can't go Tuesday night because we have a I have a legacy men's lit up the did and try that again I have a Gloucester legacy group Yeah, like if you couldn't make it until Wednesday, that's totally fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The fellowship kickoff is, yeah, one of the best parts. But absolutely, if you can only come for the day, that's OK. Yeah, yeah. We probably wouldn't want you at dinner anyway, Steve. So yeah, that's good idea. Alright, cool. Let me pray and we'll peace out. So I went over a few minutes. Heavenly father, thank you so much for your kindness. Thank you God for the time that we have here. Thank you for everyone on this call. Thank you for community of believers in real estate. Lord, I pray that you continue to add to this number of that somehow, some way people find out Lord, just get of and be in community and fellowship with more agents around the country and the world or that no one loved Christ and want to become more excellent. So I thank you for the purposefulness of everybody on this call to come and try to grow and learn. We love you Lord, may you bless that work. May we honor you this day. Alright, love you guys. Have a great week. See you next week. real quick, super quick. I'm going to bring on next week and I'll post, I'm going to tweak my health and nutrition coach. I'm going to bring him into the community because he's awesome. And it's helped me so much to be better at my work because I have more clarity and energy. And so I'm going to bring him in. Is that okay? Do you guys want to hear from a health and nutrition coach? His name is Matt. He's a believer. So that's why, and ladies, he's very handsome. None of you You're not. My jokes led with I know that you're married. That was just awkward. It's like we're on a bus with no AC or sound. This feels like all right. So anyways, I'm doing it. OK, cool. See you next week. I'll keep his video off. All right, see you buddy.