Ep #317 – Adam Adams – Creating a Successful Real Estate Meetup Group

Here is some of what you will learn:

Building your network
Strategies for a successful meetup

  • Standing out from the crowd
  • Positioning
  • Promotion
  • Profit

Bringing in guest speakers
Piggybacking events
Facebook promotion
Internal and external promotions
Engaging your audience
The “No Agenda” meetup
Best places for a meetup

To learn more about our guests click here

Full Transcript Below:

Adam Adams –Creating Successful Real Estate Meetup Group (Ep317)

Intro: Hi! I’m Rod Khleif. Each and every week I record an interview with a thought leader that I know you’re gonna get a ton of value from. Now here on YouTube are the video versions of my podcast, Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing. Now to make sure you get the latest information please subscribe and hit the notification bell. Let’s get started.

Rod: Welcome to another edition of “How to Build Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing”. I’m Rod Khleif and I’m absolutely thrilled you’re here. And I will tell you it’s a real treat today to interview my friend Adam “Triple A” Adams and many of you probably already know Adam because he’s just a rockstar on social media. But he’s been educating literally hundreds of thousands of investors through his podcast. He’s got an awesome podcast creative real estate podcast. He’s got meetups but he doesn’t just have meetups we’re gonna talk about that in a minute. He’s like the Rockstar in meetups but he’s just a super guy. Forty-five million dollar portfolio and in multifamily and probably soon to be about 55 million. He’s in my multifamily board room mastermind because I just you know knew that I wanted him in there and so super excited to have you on the show today my friend

Adam: It’s exciting to be on the show and one thing about your mastermind oh my goodness I remember I had about a hundred in maybe twenty doors and now I’m at six hundred and twenty doors. So just a few months of being in that mastermind, they hold you to high accountability so thanks again for the

Rod: Love it love it no absolutely. I know that’s thank you for sharing that because it’s so powerful you know who you are around as who you become and we talk about an incredible group. There’s about four billion dollars in there. But let’s talk about you. Tell my listeners about your real estate journey. We’re gonna dig in to the whole meetup thing because that you’re a rockstar there and I think it’ll really add value as it relates to raising money and building a network but tell your story first if you wouldn’t mind

Adam: Yeah so I’m originally from Utah. And I’ll give the story in the quickest way possible so originally from Utah right. And I was born on a polygamist colony of all places my mom got remarried when I was very very young. My stepdad he owns a ton, ton ton ton of real estate and so when I grew up with my stepdad I just that was like the normal thing is real estate and he was an entrepreneur. And I kind of watched that and he used to tell me Adam you need to invest 10%, you need to buy real estate and I was in college and I was like dad when I get old and boring like you I will do that. I’ll go ahead and do that but like not right now. I mean I’m a college student and I could barely pay for my college. I don’t know how this is going to happen. So what ended up happening is my dad said I’m just gonna give you a piece of land. So it was Christmas, I got a piece of land and then he bought it for a hundred bucks off a tax deed and then he made me pay him a hundred bucks. It was like this was a Christmas present and I have to pay you exactly what you made you paid and I don’t see that being a fair trade but I it took me a couple weeks. I made 100 bucks extra from serving. Gave it to him grudgingly of course and to and I just was holding on to that the next thing that happened with that that piece of land is they they, I mean the county said you owe us taxes and it was another hundred bucks and I was like, Dad do I have to pay this? like I have this thing that I thought was an asset and now I had to pay another extra hundred bucks for it? and he’s like oh yeah yeah that’s normal whenever you own real estate you got to pay taxes. So like okay so again I grudgingly paid the hundred bucks and then somebody said hey I’ll pay you twelve grand for this piece of property and I did the math after real estate commissions it was like around 8,300% return and so I did that and then that’s where I decided I’m gonna be in real estate like this is a powerful thing. So I started, I read that book Rich Dad Poor Dad. For your listeners, I’m Dyslexic I don’t read books ever and my dad tried to get me to read this book and it was that little 8,300 percent returned that made me say I’ll go ahead and read that book and see what this is all about. And the more I studied Robert Kiyosaki I even went to some of his seminars, the more that I learned that he didn’t do single family. He got his wealth through commercial multifamily. So I said that’s what I’m gonna do. So it was 2007 that I started being a property manager and I bought my first my first multi-family in 2008 and rapid rapid fast forward through several several years of ups and downs. It was 2016 that I was brand new to Denver and I heard this thing somebody said your network is your net worth. And I said I don’t have a network like I just want to get back into real estate I got hit by the crash back in 2008 and so now I’m sitting here I’m gonna get back in and how do I make a network? And so I learned about meetup.com and that’s really where I started to kind of learn the ropes of meetup.com and I grew my network fairly quickly and here we are today I’m joining in your mastermind group and getting a lot of value from that. And we’re just closing deals through syndication

Rod: Yeah love it love it now I know you are really most famous for you’ve got one of the highest-rated meetups in the world. I mean not even just the U.S. I’m in fact didn’t I didn’t meet up like fly you out to their corporate headquarters or something

Adam: Yes so they flew their top hundred 50 organizers from around the world and they asked eight of us to be speakers. So I am in the top eight out of 225,000 meetups

Rod: Wow! So we are gonna dig into that today guys because many of you listening want our aspiring real estate investors, you want to be a syndicator, you want to put deals together, you want to join venture deals, you want to buy multifamily, and you’re starting to realize if you haven’t heard me say it a thousand 50 times that it’s a team sport. And all the successful operators or syndicators or GPS or KPS they all it all means the same thing, all of those the successful ones have created a network. And they’ve done it through a number of different ways. Many of them write books. Me, I’ve got a podcast. You’ve got a podcast Adam. They’ll do it on LinkedIn. They’ll do it on Facebook. I’ve got a Facebook group. They’ll do it on Instagram and some do it with meetups. I have my coaching students could have, I’ve got probably close to a dozen that have created their own meetups and some of them learn directly from you Adam. But in fact I’m gonna start a meet-up. I’ve just decided. I just made this decision last week when I was in Houston doing a keynote for an event there for some friends of mine that I’ve decided I’m gonna do a meet-up in Tampa. So I’m doing it and so let’s talk about strategies for doing an effective meetup. It’ll help me and hopefully, so guys the reason I want to do this is you need to pick your vehicle for building your reach okay. You need to pick that vehicle be it what you know with social media it’s so amazing I mean I’m at over 5 million freaking downloads on my podcast. I never would have in a million years thought it would do that. My YouTube videos were watched for 30,000 hours last year I was blown away when I heard that. And so the social media is so incredibly powerful in such an incredible resource and I know that you’re gonna talk about how to use social media for meetup here in a minute but I just want to kind of foundationally say, you’ve got to pick a platform to to extend your reach. Be it writing a book or social media or whatever it is and but today we’re gonna talk about meetup. And so take it away my friend. Tell me what to do

Adam: The first thing is that I never I never expected meetup to propel me where it did but it can be powerful but to get it powerful you have to do it a little bit differently than other people .So that’s the first thing that any listener needs to focus on is being different standing out from the rest of the crowd. Now if you want to be part of the 99% that’s easy you just do what they do but if you want to stand out you have to have to have to do something a little bit different. You have to try that one extra percent to do something different. So that’s the first thing to think of and the waste that you can do that are almost innumerable. There are ways to actually let me think what I’m saying here. If you want to stand out here’s one thing you can do. You can have your meetup name completely different than everybody else’s meetup name or you can have your meetup topics be something unique. If you want to stand out you might be able to, maybe all the other meetups in your area all charge 20 bucks per day or 200 for the year and so either you can choose to be free or you can say this meetup is a hundred a month just to be a part of it and all you have to do is differentiate yourself. So literally the truth is it doesn’t matter. If all the other groups are doing one thing, you do something else and then you would explain exactly why you’re doing something else. Here’s a great example. I’ll use you as an example Rod you have a podcast that’s called Lifetime Cashflow.. “Lifetime” cashflow and we know there’s a lot of syndicators out there that are in and out trying to get in and out and you take another approach and you focus on it and you actually differentiate yourself purposefully on many of your episodes. So you say this is what I do it might not be what everybody else is doing but I believe in this model and this is why and that’s the same thing you have to do at your meet-up. So we talked a little bit about how meetup, you might be able to have a different cost here’s another thing that I did kind of just differentiate myself. I made a lunch Club I looked and saw lots and lots of lots of different meetups and I noticed that they all met at 6:30 at night during the week every single one of them. So I said well what would happen if I had a meet-up that met at lunch in the middle of the week what might happen and so I just tried it and that’s the meetup Rod that we have 4000 faces a year in just that meetup. And if you do the math that’s a lot per month right so even though it doesn’t seem like people can get there at lunch as soon as you do something different, you’ll be able to attract your specific following. Another thing that I did is I called it creative real estate. There was all of these other real estates that were seemed like they were generalizing. There was one that was multifamily but I realized that there was nobody focusing on lease options in subject 2 and I thought I might be able to track to somebody. So I did a different name. The last thing that I did specifically to differentiate ourselves I kept it free by the way the last thing that I did is we decided to meet weekly and this comes really good. It doesn’t mean everybody listening can do weekly. So I don’t want you to start something you can’t finish if you start a podcast do it for several years. If you start a meet-up get consistent. Don’t be sporadic you’ve got to be consistent so that’s super super important. So if you’re going to start a weekly make sure you can hold on to that weekly for at least a year. I did it for two years straight and then I backed off this year but when I went into the weekly, I didn’t just have it weekly rod and listener I didn’t just have it weekly that wouldn’t be good enough. The part that made it work is when I got to the event I actually differentiated ourselves. Why we go weekly and why we don’t do the others. So I would tell my people it usually takes six touches before you start to network and work together. So when you want to partner with other people raising money finding deals whatever, when you want to do that, it’s going to take you six times. So what’s going to happen if you go to a monthly meetup? A half a year from now you’re gonna be successful that’s why all right we meet up we you know you’ll let include it instead of I, that’s why we meet up every single week because you come here every single week within six weeks you’re going to be starting to do deals with each other. And so that’s really what we’re talking about is the first thing is just differentiate yourself. If there’s no other multifamily meetups you need to start the multifamily meetup. If they’re all paid you have to start the free one. If they’re all free, you have to start the paid one. If they’re all at dinner, you’ve got to start the lunch one. Some way to really be different that’s the first thing that I would say and then after that here’s the thing, there’s three P’s so we’ll slow down and we’ll write down the three P’s. They always go like this. One is you position yourself. That’s what I did I found out what everybody else was doing and I positioned myself differently. That’s number one. Number two, P is promote so now you have to find a way to let people know your positioning. So position promote and that’s when you Profit. Once you position yourself and you can figure out good ways of promoting yourself which is marketing. So I did it differently to market it not just on Meetup. I went on Facebook to market it and I took more pictures there. And I made it sound more inclusive like I took pictures and I’m we had a good time or if you missed it, I would say stuff like, if you missed it this is what we learned and it started to create a community. And the third thing is profit. So Position yourself, Promote yourself or your meet-up and then Profit from it. And mine was free so how did I profit well I was doing deals and I’ve so far raised 5.2 million dollars of what I’ve raised for all of our real estate deals has come directly from that meetup group. So if you can find a way to stand out and let people know how you’re standing out. You’re going to find success

Rod: So let’s circle back. We talked about positioning and the pieces you gave regarding positioning really related to differentiating is what I saw. And being different and figuring out how to be different than the herd. And like for example in Tampa I know there are numerous meetups and I’ve spoken at most of them you know they’ve had me up and so you know I’m gonna look and look for differences um but let’s spend a little time on promote okay because I think that’s the area that people probably need the most help with. So can we talk about some maybe some Facebook strategies or any other promotion strategies that you’d be willing to share

Adam: Yes the first one that I like to do is I need I like to get a headshot in a bio

Rod: Okay

Adam: And it doesn’t need to be difficult. You see a lot of podcasters out there doing something similar to this. So you kind of get a template that is where you all you’re going to do is you’re going to put their face on the template and you’re gonna put what you’re talking about and

Rod: Oh you’re talking about your guests, the people you have to come in to talk

Adam: Oh yes thank you yeah so the speaker that I’m bringing in, I want to get a head shot of them and a bio and I want to create the I want to create what the topic of that meetup is and what I like to do and this is great for anyone. What I like to do with the topic is push people’s buttons in some way and anything really truly works. You can you can push people’s buttons like by saying something completely opposite than anything they’ve ever heard or you can draw out a need okay. So you’ll say something like why fix and flipping is the best thing on the planet? or why cash flow beats fix and flipping? And a lot of people are like, wait a second, so you’re getting attention and then a lot of people it’s like a train wreck. You don’t want to watch a trainwreck but you it’s really interesting it’s like what’s gonna happen here when you say cash flow out beats this. Some of the people that are fixed and flippin are gonna be like well let’s see what they have to say. So they’re more inclined to come at least once. Now once you get them at your event it’s important that you keep them at your next event. So when you were asking about promote. I like to first start by getting them there and to do that I like to make an image and say something catchy that makes them want to come. I might be solving one of their problems or I might just be saying something completely against what they’ve ever heard. And then once they’re there it’s important that you get them to go to the next one. For instance my creative real estate meetup, we might have a wholesaling person who’s really focused on teaching wholesales on one on one day and then I already have my next event up and run I already know what’s going to happen I know where it’s going to be. I got the address and everything. This is very very important because you need to utilize the inertia that you’re building up as this momentum is already going. You just have them come to your next one. So in if what you’re doing is just having one event stopping and then go ahead and later you promote a new event, you’re not gonna get hardly anything but if you have a wholesaler come today at the event, you can talk about by the way next week or next month depending on when you meet, next week we actually have one of the top fix and flippers on the planet and if you are a wholesaler you’re gonna learn how to utilize a proper scope of work which is what most wholesalers aren’t able to do is know what a scope of work is because if you don’t know that then you’re not going to be a good wholesaler. So now you’re playing to the wholesaler to come to a fix and flip workshop even if they don’t do fix and flip and then you say and if any of you wholesalers want to be promoted into fix and flip you’ve got to learn this stuff. And then you’ll also talk it to all of the people that have been fixed and flipping and you’ve got to kind of use your imagination on psychology like what are the hot buttons for them. And you might talk to something like this because almost everybody who’s tried to fix and flip literally has lost money. Almost everybody who’s done fix and flips especially if they’ve been doing it for a long time sooner or later they’re gonna lose money. I run a mastermind group and in my mastermind group there’s a lot of high-level people every single one of us have lost money once at least in a fix and flip. So here’s what you say to them you’ll say something like, I once lost a bunch of money and this how I solved it was by learning the scope of work. So for those of you who are really focused and already doing this, I know that you’re gonna get value by really diving deep into the intricacies of scope of work. So I’ll see you all next week and then you’ll even do that again with multifamily. So they’re all there to learn scope of work and then you kind of talk them into coming to your multi-family. Hey we have this we have this expert talking about how you can take what you’ve learned here and do it massively to scale and so if you want to come next week, this is what we’re gonna get. So you always do that now other things to promote it would be

Rod: Let’s talk about inside of Facebook I mean before you get started what would you do like what should I mean of course I’m gonna mention it on the podcast I’m doing it right now. I’m kind of, this kind of mentioning it right now but other people that don’t have that kind of reach what might they do on Facebook to promote it?

Adam: Good question there’s two things. One, I know how to build your reach on Facebook and number two it’s okay if you don’t have that reach. What I would do honestly is this. Let’s just say you’re really in that situation. Step one is you go to all of the Facebook groups around the industry that you are interested in bringing people together for. So I would do this. I would start going in Denver fixing flippers I would go to Denver Realtors. I would go to Denver a multi-family. I would go to Denver wholesalers because that’s where I am that’s where I live and I would I would find a way to hack into all of those systems. Now here’s the best way to hack the system and I use that as a very good word. Some people think hack could be negative but no you utilize the platform to the best of its ability and here’s where that here’s where Rod and I have gotten a lot of success and this is where you’re, the listener are going to get that same success it starts by adding value. So here’s what I would do. I would go into those other meetup groups around real estate and I would actually start adding as much value as possible. Start connecting people that’s one of the best ways is, Hey I noticed that you’re a wholeseller, I would love to introduce you to this guy that I met online who’s a fiction flipper

Rod: So you’re saying actually physically go there and do this

Adam: Nope we’re on Facebook

Rod: Oh Facebook

Adam: We are currently on Facebook and you’re seeing people post in those real estate groups

Rod: In those threads. So you go on the threat and say hey I see this and you need to meet so-and-so and tag them

Adam: Yeah exactly. You tag them or you ask if you can put them in touch with a fix and flipper you all that kind of stuff. Here’s see somebody who’s doing whole sales you ask them if they’ve ever thought about whole selling bigger things because you have a friend who’s buying multifamily in that same area. And should I put you in contact? Just simple things like that or if you have knowledge about a subject that people somebody’s already posting you just answer you just give a little bit of knowledge just a little golden nugget and none of this can be self-promoting. That’s the important thing is you add value just to add value. You’ll get the value back but you can’t do it like you can’t try to get the value back by that one post. You’ve got to try you just give the value so many different times willingly. Eventually it’s like a bell curve where you’re putting out and laying down all this value in all of a sudden one day it just skyrockets and everybody knows who you are and they all come to you to be connected with other people or to go to your meetups or to learn from you. So that’s how I would play that strategy and if you were able to start that today and do other things that we’re talking about as well. You’ll notice that all of these people will start to gravitate towards you and then all you got to do is just say, this has to be a direct message this is very important who write it down it’s a DM every single time. Once you start to build connections, by the way there’s no reason to offer invite people blindly, they’re just going to hate you but after you build a connection you say to John or Sarah who your newly connected with over the last couple of weeks or months, you’ve interacted a little bit you might say something like John would you like to be on a panel at my event? I’m going to have three wholesalers and we’re gonna talk a little bit about wholesaling and what I’ve noticed is there’s two ways to grow your Meetup. One is by inviting people that have a really big name and the other one is to invite people that are new and excited and motivated. And Rod there was a time when I used to get invited to an event to speak and I was like that was in the beginning and I would they to myself man this is so awesome I’m gonna post this on Facebook. I’m gonna tell everybody that I’m gonna go speak here I’m gonna call my friends and family and ask them to support me. And then when I got speaking more often I don’t have the same feeling about it. So I might have a bigger name but I don’t necessarily like think into it like I need to tell everybody. So it goes both ways and you need to be thinking about this as an organizer of a meet-up. Number one, you invite somebody where you obviously know it’s their first time gonna be there and they’re excited and they’re gonna tell everybody and number two you invite somebody like Rod Khleif to speak at your event so that people from all over are like, oh well that’s Rod Khleif, he has a huge name I’m gonna go just because of that. So if you come to my meetup Rod, I’m gonna promote you. I’m gonna tell everybody that you’re coming but when I have a newbie like maybe three wholesalers or three people that just did their first four-plex or whatever, all of those guys are going to promote themselves and tell their family to come with them. So these are the two ways to hack. You have to be really careful to know both of them and I would bounce them back and forth I would I would get a high profile name and then I get a couple of newbies on a panel. High profile name, a couple of newbies on the panel

Rod: Oh so you’re putting the newbies actually up on stage on a panel okay

Adam: Here’s the thing that okay. So I was just at, Joe Farrell’s conference and the main thing that he focused on teaching people is how to engage your audience okay. So with that said what are we talking about here? We’re talking about these newbies that are excited to grow and they’re proud to be on stage and now they’re completely loyal to your brand

Rod: Sure. So you find a newbie that maybe took down their first property and you them some bragging rights, public bragging rights and they’re gonna tell everybody they know to come see me

Adam: Yep and now not only are you hacking into their network but you’re also making them completely loyal to you. Once they’ve once they’ve had that bragging rights that how good does it feel to be put on stage for the first time? You tell everybody. You remember the person who did that for the first time so I have noticed that helping the meet up more than almost anything is by creating panels of two or three people that have, I would say three people four it starts to get too long and too is maybe too little but with three people, there’s one thing that if you’re a really actually an organizer, you got to know this, when you do a question to a panelist and Rod knows this he has some of the most amazing boot camps around the country and he has a lot of panelists and so it’s very good that you got to learn this. When you ask a question to your panelists, you don’t go down the line ever. You direct it to one person. If you go down the line one person’s gonna take five minutes the next person’s gonna take five minutes the next person’s gonna take five minutes all of a sudden your 30 minute panel is completely over and how many questions did you ask? Just two. So you want to be very careful as the organizer to create the questions and direct it toward one person and prep your panelists ahead of time by just letting them know you don’t have to answer all the questions I’m going to direct a question to you

Rod: Yeah. No that’s great great great feedback. So you know I know you’re great with Facebook hacks as well as if you don’t mind, you shared this with me privately share some of the strategies to get you know to trigger Facebook’s algorithms so that you know when you make a post about your Meetup you get it seen by more eyes. You might just

Adam: I’d be happy to I’d be happy to because this can really play into having a meetup group. So let’s the image that we already described having their headshot and having your catchy title

Rod: Let me, you know what before you finish let me say one thing. Guys, Adams gonna be at my Denver event if you’re not signed up for my Denver bootcamp then shame on you. I mean it’s May 17th, 18th, and 19th you know go to rodinDenver.com. It’s still early bird pricing. It is definitely going to sell out and it’s going to be epic and an incredible place to network just me on stage for three days. But Adam will be on one of the panels and they’ll probably be at least two billion dollars in assets on the panels that we have like he’s describing here. So you know and Denver’s United hubs so you can fly there non-stop cheap from just about anywhere in the country. So no excuses you know come see me in Denver for sure. So we’re back to Facebook. So Facebook hacks to trigger Facebook’s algorithms

Adam: Perfect all right. So let’s just say you’ve created that. Here’s what most people do. They post the picture, which is already great, it’s great that you posted a picture. Why Facebook’s algorithms prefer a picture over just text and actually prefer a video over a picture. But here you are you’ve posted that picture how do you post it? Is this what you do? Do you just say, we’re gonna be meeting here at this time in this place? No. And I’ll tell you exactly why because if somebody’s looking at it they’re going to scroll past it they’re gonna read it and they’re gonna retain some information they might have even written it down. They didn’t engage that’s the most important part is they did not engage. So they scrolled past it. Now guess what Facebook thinks about your post because somebody scrolled past it even if they got the information, even if they loved the information, and even wrote down the information it took notes to the side. Facebook’s gonna say, oh nobody’s interested in their post. So I’m not going to put it in front of more people. Facebook has a responsibility to their investors. Facebook is a business. It’s not just a social network. They actually make billions of dollars from their advertisers. So their investors want you to stay engaged. So instead of telling, you ask. That’s the most important part. So you might make a post that says, let’s just say you have a free Meetup okay. You create a ticket price 20 bucks, create a ticket prices 20 bucks and then make a question to people so they have to take action in order to save 20 bucks. So you’ll tell them these are the reasons why you need to go here. If you’re interested I can actually give you a promo code to take the $20 away. If you’re interested just comment below I’ll give you a promo code. If you don’t, it’s 20 bucks you know you snooze you lose. There’s a lot of psychology based through this but these are tips that I think anyone can really pick up is “Ask, Don’t Tell”. Give them a little bit of information but then you’ll say, comment below if you want to go, comment below or tag somebody if you want a free ticket or whatever you know. And so what that’s gonna do is they’re gonna start commenting. Now Facebook says, oh well here’s a post that’s engaging if. We want to keep people on Facebook we need to put this person’s post in front of more people. So there’s the first part. Now how to really hack it is for you to make more comments in that thread. So some people might say, if you’re interested send me a DM okay. All of a sudden what do they do? They go off a Facebook. They go onto Facebook Messenger, by the way they’re different and they send you a DM and now you’re on DM and your Facebook post won’t get pushed in front of people. Now if you have them comment below instead. Now you start asking questions and I get a little bit crazy. So here’s the interesting thing

Rod: You guys are gonna love this. This’ll go awesome

Adam: I get a little bit crazy. Somebody might go, yeah I’d be interested. You’re interested in the one that’s on May 5th? Yeah that one. Okay perfect. Would you like me to

Rod: So that was one response right there okay. So he just, just so you guys get this. He just said, so are you interested in the one on May 5th? They’ll have to say yes so there’s two engagements right there keep going

Adam: Yes actually three. So I’m interested, oh is it the one that’s on May 5th that you’re interested in? Yes it is. Now the fourth one okay great I’d be happy to send you a promo would you like that? Then they’d say yes of course. Now the sixth one you say, the six comment so far just with one person you say. Where would you like me to send it to you? I can DM you or I can do the email and they’re like yeah you’ve got my email and then please send it there. And then you say, then you’ll say to them, hey can you double check I have the updated email? So like it’s like which email is it like because a lot of times I know you’re this way. If you’re listening you have friends who have two or three different email addresses that they email you from. So even if they don’t you still want to say, hey can you DM me the right email to make sure that I have it correct and even if they just said, yeah you’ve got my email say, ah just double-check could you DM me that email. And then what you’ll do is if they ever DM you their email address, you can go back to the Facebook comments and say, hey man, I got your email address that’s the one that I had perfect I’ll send it over now. Let me know when you get it and then you send them an email and then like every couple days, this is what I do Rod, every couple of days I’ll scroll through all, because I get hundreds of comments basically cuz I’m half of them. And so I’ll scroll through and I’ll get to anyone who didn’t reply. And I’ll just say, hey just want to let you know I’m still waiting for your email or hey I just want to let you know I’m still doing this or hey did you send me that or hey did you get my email, can you confirm that you got my email, and stuff like that. I mean you can be creative

Rod: What’s incredible about that guys is that’s going to trigger their algorithms and you just created that. Now is this going to take time? Yes. And if you come to my events you’ll hear me say this, and that is if you’re willing to do what other people aren’t doing, you’ll be a success every time. This is an example of doing what other people aren’t willing to do and this is one way to ramp anything on Facebook for sure. If you’re doing a meet-up, if you’ve got maybe a group that you want to promote or whatever, this is a way to get engagement and trigger those algorithms. I’ve absolutely loved it. Fantastic. So any other you know last-minute thoughts about really maximizing. We don’t need to talk about profit because you know certainly you know most of the people that are gonna do this or doing it to build relationships, build investor networks, and build all of that. So they’re not doing it to bring in speakers to sell stuff and split profits

Adam: oh yeah

Rod: That is something you could do

Adam: Yeah so two things. Almost every meetup sells from the stage you know this is true

Rod: Yeah

Adam: And that’s why it my meetup we just don’t do that

Rod: Right

Adam: So another thing that how to differentiate ourselves is by being the only meetup that has no agenda. We’re here for you. And here’s another good trick that because you asked. I went to a lot of different meetups in the beginning when I was trying to decide how to do mine and one of the things that I noticed that if two meetups had the exact same people unless you say there was thirty here and there was thirty here and neither of them sold and they both had networking in the beginning and networking at the end, there’s one thing that was different. If group A allowed me to introduce myself to the whole room, all at once and everybody knew who Adam Adams was and everyone knew who some other person that was also in that group was. How we feel inside is that we were heard. And when you feel like you’re heard you keep coming. I felt like if I could share like, hey I’m doing multifamily if you want to do multifamily reach out to me I’d let a partner. If I could say something like that in our event at somebody else’s event, I felt like people knew who I was and some of them would come up to me and if I heard somebody who was a private money lender, I could go up to them and that helped a lot. So if you could do that one thing in your group, just allow everybody to just introduce themselves and here’s the second part of that that I do intentionally is if you’re going to give somebody a time limit. Let’s just say you gave them you said you have everybody has 30 seconds or 10 or a minute. If you give them a time limit here’s what you personally need to do as the organizer if you go over that time limit, they feel taken advantage of they feel like you’re a just a terrible human being like, ugh this guy is self promoting or this girl is self promoting themselves like why did they give us 10 seconds, they’re taking two minutes to talk about themselves. So it’s very very important maybe to give everybody 30 seconds and then you yourself. I’m Adam Adams. I do multifamily. If you want to learn about that come to me. All right now we’re done with the introductions let’s do announcements and then we’ll get into the event. So something like that

Rod: No no that’s really good that’s really good but you know I sit here thinking about it. So you let everybody stand up you got 50 people and you give them 30 seconds, that’s 25 minutes right there. Yeah here’s something interesting if in my group I don’t have all that many people like pushing through it but yeah 15 minutes yeah it can happen. my groups we have anywhere from 45 to 65 on average sometimes we have a hundred or 200 but so when it’s over 65 I don’t do it. When it is 65, I say I basically instead of doing that I might do something else like tell us where you’re going to be in five years. Hey everybody just say your name and where you are you going to be in five years and that way and you’ll might say something like we’re not talking about our companies or anything just say your name and where you’re gonna be in five years. We’ll wrap it up because we’re limited on space or we’re limited on time or let’s get to that or tell us where you were five years ago or hey tell us tell us your most embarrassing moment that’s all fine but your name and then something memorable right. If I have 40 or 45 or 50 people, I still think that it’s more valuable to say, oh here’s like a really weird subconscious trick I don’t know how it works but Rod it works 100% of the time. You tell everybody they have five or ten minutes all right, we’re going to go through every individual has five or ten minutes to introduce themselves I don’t know why but it’s like everybody takes six seconds and they’re done but if you tell everybody they have 30 seconds, everybody takes two minutes. So I don’t know why that works but it is done it like that for me every single time and I’ll kid around sometimes I’ll say hey we have a ton of people you have three and a half seconds all you got time for is your name in your business and what we got to move on, people often will do that but and then the last thing finally I’m sorry there’s so much

Rod: No this is great

Adam: Very intuitive one. One of the things that I have toyed with or actually it’s like you have a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other and it’s like, how honest and direct can I be versus how nice can I be and let people walk all over me versus how rude can I be and embarrass people directly? Right. It’s like really hard to figure that out and as an organizer that’s one of the biggest struggles in any part of it is like if you know somebody in that group is not a good person and some of them like aren’t, it’s like how do you do that right. And so what I found to work the best for me and it might just be my personality. So it might not work for you you’ll have to play with how rude you can be, how nice you can be, how whatever. But what I’ve noticed is you I just be honest and direct with a smile and that helps me the most. If I can if I can say something like you’re way over on the 30 seconds. We got to move on and with a with a big smile on my face I feel like that gives me the best result where we’re able to move. Somebody might finish and I’ll say I timed it that was nine and a half seconds. So you all know we’re doing six if we’re gonna do six that’s how we’re gonna keep the time and so just kind of move on but in a playful way that seemed to give me the best result to be able to feel comfortable to actually be direct and cut people off but to not feel like it was going to damage our relationship

Rod: Gotcha. No that’s smart. Okay. Yes so logistically what are the best places to have a meet-up? and how do you structure them like, I know you’re doing at a restaurant and everybody has to buy a meal or you know I suppose if you have on a lunch meeting that would be the best way, do you do buffet? do you, I mean there any tricks there?

Adam: Yeah there’s a lot so if I have a sponsor coming. I’ll do a buffet okay every time. Here’s where I always keep, not always, I usually do my meetups at a restaurant and I usually do it in a private dining room that can fit us and there, yeah the truth is there is private dining rooms that can fit a hundred so we’ve actually been able to all be in there and that was at a place called since Cinzzetti’s restaurant. They have, they can fit just about a hundred and they have, it’s a buffet, it’s an Italian buffet and so it’s much it’s very very easy. And so as far as logistics here’s some of the things that help me. I like the restaurants first off because it’s free for me and here’s what I usually do for my group is I used to have a lot of people that just came but they didn’t want to pay for food. They might have said something like, oh I just ate or oh I’m a vegetarian or oh I can’t eat at a buffet or whatever like they’ll have their reasons. So this is exactly what I started doing and I’m getting success with it so it might be valuable, when I get there I just say how grateful I am that that we could use this room for free. I just tell my whole room I say, hey all I’m just really grateful that we were able to use this restaurant. They’re letting us use this space for free now here’s the thing there is a ten dollar per person minimum and if you don’t want to eat. It’s cool. You’re welcome to buy some food and take it with you or if you want coffee that’s cool it’s just gonna be a ten dollar coffee or I know if you just want water, I’m sorry they’re they’re still gonna give you a ticket for ten dollars for your water just because that’s how they say in business. And I do that every single event, every single week, and the people that wanted to not pay either slowly don’t come or slowly come onto my side but I speak of it in a way like let’s understand how awesome this restaurant is and let’s not take advantage of them and I’m not gonna pay for everybody’s meal but you need to know there’s a $10 minimum. If you can’t if you don’t want to be it’s cool you want water it’s gonna be ten dollar water no biggie. It’s not going to me. It’s going to the restaurant and make sure you tip on that. So I do that every single time. There has been a couple times where I’ve rented out an Event Center or a room at a hotel. Now those can range from $300 all the way up to $2,000 for one room at one time. So here is a wonderful hack if you’re actually going to do that. Most hotels have a food and beverage minimum and the best way to talk them out of making you pay for the room is you might just pay for drinks. Like hey I’m just gonna pay for, let’s say they have a three hundred dollar minimum instead just have a $300 bar tab just say hey if we spend $300 here at your bar or by having small bites for my group could we get over that? And now you’re not wasting just money on nothing you’re actually providing for your group. And I found hard money lenders to be the best easiest sponsors. And I don’t mean easy in a bad way I mean like they have bigger budgets. So if you don’t want to pay for it yourself you could just get one hard money lender and you just say hey the rooms gonna be 400 bucks or the beers are gonna be 400 bucks but the food appetizers gonna be 400 bucks, would you like to be in front of my group and I’ll let you have 30 seconds to just tell them what you do and you can be in the back you know and I’ll let them know that you know beers were on you or appetizers were on you know this hard money lending company. That’s the easiest way to get it for free and then you actually have it more quiet and more personal and the people that come will actually feel like hey I got value because they gave me you know every time I go there I don’t have to eat dinner before you know they save 20 bucks on dinner or whatever

Rod: Nice. Wow tremendous value today brother. And I know guys that this is off topic but I’m here to tell you, you want to be a success in this business you better find a platform to build that network. and meetup is a great way to do that. Adam I’m super excited to see you at my boardroom here meeting coming up in March in San Diego and then I’ll see you in Denver at my bootcamp May 17th, 18th, 19th

Adam: Yeah

Rod: So listen my friend thank you for adding so much tremendous value today and just very very grateful for you

Adam: Thank you so much.

Rod: All right buddy take care

Adam: You too

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