How Ricardo Bueno Turns Customers Into Superfans Through Community and Events

Host 00:00

Young Ricardo was trying to build a name and a brand for himself. I didn't have a lot of experience. I was networking with agents. That was something that you put an enormous amount of detail in, was curating these experiences at events. So if you do a really good job, an epic job on the first one, people are gonna kick themselves over not being there. It really is a masterclass on how to build a culture in a community. Because if you create that moment of magic, you open up the parents' wallet. When you do that within your customer base, the sky's the limit for your business. The end feeling is holy shit, that was the best event I've ever been to.

Host1 00:33

What up, everybody? Grant Wise here. Welcome back to the Partner and Profit Podcast. Excited for my show today with the dear friend. I'm gonna try to teach you how to turn your relationships into revenue with Mr. Ricardo Bueno. What up, Ricardo?

Host 00:46

What's up? Awesome to be here, man.

Host1 00:48

I'm glad that you're here. I know this will be, if nothing else, like a comical discussion. So this is gonna be good. For the people that are listening to this and maybe don't know much about you, why don't you give just like a bit of the backstory about how you helped build a you know several hundred million dollar company that got a good exit and things?

Host 01:07

That's awesome. It's funny. The journey started, I want to say like 14 years ago. Got started in the real estate industry as a loan officer before the subprime market collapse, started building agent websites, is is how I got connected with people. Agents didn't uh wanted me to go get some experience. My pitch to them became I'll help you build a better website, but in exchange, I want your referral business. And so then I got into real estate tech, worked at Diverse Solutions, built our first community there, sold to Zillow, went to work for a company called Copy Blogger, built a product called Agent Press. And I've been with a lot of you know companies that most of us listening would recognize Cloud CMA, and then my latest one, Follow Bus, head of events and partnerships for for follow bus. And I think when people talk about you know platforms and and partnerships and things like that, uh, yeah, sure, you're you're building integrations and and that's what you're doing, but at a deeper level, it's kind of like how can we create a platform or an ecosystem and truly partner with people to to actually help them, the partners, grow their business alongside us. And one of the things I used to say to to agents is like, when you win, we win. Our success is your your success is our success. And so for us, at you know, a follow-up boss that meant building or producing, you know, things that would help the community grow. So we started by building by or by running partner webinars and educating the community. We started building co-marketing campaigns, which I'm sure we'll talk, we'll talk about here. And it was just connecting with software companies where with the audiences that they were trying to reach and and in turn helping us grow our own. But yeah, it's been an awesome decade in real estate being of service to the agent and just building relationships and helping companies build better relationships with their audience.

Host1 02:57

I want you to go a little bit deeper on the framework because when I met you, that's what you were doing. You were like you and we were doing a webinar together or a podcast together, and it seems like a model that you've kind of taken with company to company to company. Can you dive just a little bit deeper on that? Like, what do you what is your standard process whenever you walk into an organization?

Host 03:16

It's funny because I think I I interviewed Kenny Trong just before we hopped on this interview, and I told him, Tell me your genius behind building your brand. Did you know I want to say it was very intentional, but was it that you were just testing and failing and you would fail fast, fail forward, and just keep iterating? And and we want to say that it's a brilliance of ours, and this is the thing, and this is how we do it. For me, I've always had mentors, and I would ask my mentors, like, hey, I'm building this thing or I'm trying to create this community because the job has always been like diverse solutions, that first company I worked for. My job was literally to manage our social media. And at the time, we were gonna build the website development side of the business. We were building agent websites, but that was like a subcomponent or a small portion of what we did. What we primarily did was IDX, and the company decided not to build WordPress-powered websites, but we still very much like you and we want to keep you here. What do we build? And so, yeah, you can sell product to sell product, but the way I've always thought about it, even now when I teach like local classes, when I do webinars, when I pitch somebody on doing a webinar, for me it's always like, how can we lead with value, value, value and help the person understand the product beyond the features, if that makes sense? Like, how do you leverage the system and the tools beyond the features to build to add more value to your business? And so for me, whenever I've worked with any of these number of companies, I've kind of always thought about it the same way. It's what can we do to educate our market? What can we do to educate our customer base on the tools and the systems, but then also how those tools and systems integrate with other tools and systems? And so you're educating on the product, but you're educating around the product too, if that makes sense for complementary tools and systems. And you might say, Well, that's silly. I just want to do sales webinars and sell more product. But for me, I've always thought customer retention and customer adoption are just as important as making sales. Because if you're making sales and people aren't adopting the product or the product is too hard, it's too hard to get your first win within the product, you're gonna churn that customer, you're gonna lose that customer anyway. And it's easier to what's the other stat that agents use? Like it's easier to uh get more repeat and referral business, or it's easier to keep an existing customer than it is to go win or buy a new customer. Same same thought process there. Let me educate you on how to use the product beyond just these cool little features or beyond the feature set. Let me educate you how this product adds more business value to the business so that you can then grow the business. Man, if you do that, you're gonna not only increase the lifetime value of that customer, you're also probably gonna create a super fan out of that customer. And that super fan is then gonna generate, you know, more repeat and referral business because, oh hey, Grant, how are you getting so much success with that tool? Or how are you finding so much success with this? Dude, you should sign up. They have a great community, they have a great, you know, they have great resources, they're always blah, blah, blah, blah. That's kind of the environment we build at follow up us, and it's something that we kind of try and model and repeat, or it's something I I at least try to always model and repeat. Product is great, I want to believe in the product, but how do we build an ecosystem that allows us the opportunity to create super fans out of the people we're serving, if that makes sense?

Host1 06:37

What are the ways that you would do that? Because I get the concept, and I think it's brilliant. You know, it's like go beyond your business, like build an ecosystem around your product, and then interview all the people that are a part of it and let them go deep on how to how somebody can get the most out of the relationship. But what tactically, like would you do just walk us through like how would how would you educate people beyond that?

Host 06:59

Oh man, that's always like in the software space, and I forget who who does this. There's a there's a couple of folks, but like doing customer interviews. So I work for a company recently where we're transaction management software, and so with transaction management software, it's a little bit different. I'm not selling something directly to the consumer. I am and I'm not. And what I mean by that is with websites, for example, if I'm selling you a website, you grant I'm selling you a website, you're the end user of that website. You're gonna make the purchasing decision on the website, you're gonna make the design and aesthetic decisions on that website, you're gonna project manage it start to finish, and uh you're gonna end up being the the end user, the the person who uses the website. With transaction management, I learned that the end user isn't necessarily the agent, although they're the one they're the ones that approve the budget. And so a friend of mine described it very uniquely, and I'm gonna butcher this, but he goes, There's three types of buyers. There's the person that's approving the budget for the expense, but that's not your end user. There's the person that's actually the integrator, the person that's gonna implement the thing. And then I I forget what the third one is, but the challenge with selling that sort of software was that I was talking to the agent, but the agent isn't the integrator or the implementer of how the system works, it's the transaction manager, the coordinator, whoever. So I needed to understand, go and interview like all of the existing customers. Who are existing customers? How are they uniquely using the product? How are they championing the product to try to get embedded or immersed in the product, really understand it from their lens as opposed to from the customer experience lens where I'm just answering, you know, feature-related questions, or from the sales lens where I'm just pitching you on a bunch of different features and how this is gonna integrate with your tech stack. So I start there, and then I find that your bet like those same champions are your best advocates. So I try to create experiences. I guess my life is creating experiences, but I try to create experiences because they're gonna be able to tell the story of that product and how you find success with that product better than I ever will. And so I create those stories by doing podcasts the way you and I are doing now, or doing a partner webinar the way you and I are doing now. That's where I start, anyway. I want to get embedded. I get embedded by interviewing who your top customers are, and then just help them become the authority on or help them drive the narrative of how I'm bringing that conversation to the market, if that makes sense for the masses.

Host1 09:30

When it comes to creating experiences, this is something you're very good at. I think I can't remember if it was the first FUB party that I went to, but one of them there were like trolleys of tomahawk, trolleys of tomahawk steaks wrapped in gold being trucked into the party, uh everybody talking, and that's hilarious. Cocktail graffiti. I think it's really interesting. Like that was something that you put an enormous amount of detail in was curating these experiences at events that people, you know, fUB customers would interact with and engage with. You know, I I get that like you can do the first one, but these were not low budget events, these were experiences. And I I totally get how you probably got the first one, but it was like walk me through behind the scenes what's going on. If you throw this, you throw this crazy party. I'm sure it was way over budget. I didn't I've always understood you probably never had a budget, and it was just like do your thing, man, and then you do it, and then so like just like walk me through.

Host 10:36

We did that, we did that because I did have a minimum to hit, and I was like, Okay, well, I'm still not hitting the minimum. I'm still not hitting the minimum. Yes, okay, then just just give me 50 tomahawks. Yeah, pretty much. I did think in retrospect that I was pretty wild. I think one station was the tomahawk station and the other one was like salmon or something.

Host1 10:56

But it's unforgettable, like those were unforgettable experiences that people have. How does that drive like how did that feed everything?

Host 11:05

That's a very good question. The first event I ever did, I I'll I don't tell this story much, but it was awesome to have somebody, you know, fast forward to around that time with Fub. So I did this event once in 2008, and young Ricardo was trying to build a name and a brand for himself, and I didn't have a lot of experience. I was networking with agents. I was doing these like Saturday or Sunday coffee meetups or or attending like other networking events, but I was always doing these Saturday coffee meetups at some coffee shop in like Pasadena or something. And at first, six people showed up, and then nine people showed up, and then 16 people showed up, and then we took over the entire patio, and then we took over the entire like we needed bigger and bigger space. I didn't know at the time that I was building a community, but that's basically what I was doing. I was just networking and wanting to meet other realtors, and we would sit and talk tech, talk about cool events, things like that, whatever. Then fast forward to 2000, around 2008, 2009, everybody started or the industry started doing like these bar camps, and we called them real estate bar camps. Well, I took on putting on real estate bar camp Los Angeles. I got maybe like 25 sponsors to pitch in to help rent the space for the event. And so I threw this event, I think it was at the Hilton and Pasadena. I rented basically every ballroom in the space, put on this event. I somehow got 510 people to attend from Southern California, from the like the Texas Association of Realtors, from the Miami Association of Realtors, I got one of my sponsors to agree to live stream the event for free. So not only do we get 510 attendees, we live streamed the event. I did a pre-party at Yard House. And then because I didn't have a budget, this was not a by any means big budget production. I did the after party at like Barney's Beanery. If you've ever been to Barney's Beanery, it's just a total dive bar. I told them, look, I don't have the budget to do a buyout, but what I do have is I have 510 attendees across the street at the Hilton in Pasadena. I will literally bring everybody to the bar if you can help give me space. And they were like, if you bring 510 people, we'll give you the entire upstairs and uh put you guys on happy hour for the first hour and totally did it, totally pulled it off. That was the most disorganized event you will have ever been to. But the win is that young Ricardo somehow pulled off 510 butts and seats and live streamed it to a captive audience. And you know, I had somebody come up to me fast forward to the follow-up boss days and say, Hey, I don't know if you remember me, and my face started beaming because I did. He's like, I just want to say you've come a really long way from from after parties at Barney's Beanery. Congratulations, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so for me, it's there's times where like I don't give credit. People tell me that was amazing, blah, blah, blah. How did you do it? And to me, there was a period where I didn't give myself credit because I didn't think that was amazing. I just thought that I was doing the thing, and I was thinking too fast. I was on to the next, on to the next, on to the next, on to the next. Because when we started doing those events at FUB, what we needed to do is we knew that we wanted to do a big event, but you can't just show up one day and announce that you're doing a big event. So, what me and my videographer what we decided was we need to build a mini event and create so much hype and FOMO for the next one, and then the next one, and then the next one, and the next one, and the next one. So, if you do a really good job, an epic job on the first one, people are gonna kick themselves over not being there, and then we can really deliver on the second one and the third one and fourth, so on and so forth. And that's what we were doing. For me, the attention to detail and all of that stuff, oh man. My resume won't say that I do events, but I've been doing events since 2008 as a sponsor, as a speaker, as a vendor, as an organizer, as in just in different roles with different responsibilities. I've had to do events on an extremely tight budget because I'm Ricardo the freelancer and working for himself, or on a budget because it's a startup company that's only doing like three or five million in revenue and trying to grow to six, nine, ten. At follow up boss, I had already joined at a unique time where I think the product was sort of hockey sticking, and we had a lot of different things. We had a huge budget, we had an already sort of the community was already there. What we did is added rocket fuel to to what was happening within that community, if that makes sense. And then the experiences. I am I am emphatic about creating and putting attention to detail in every single little bit of the experience because I think Ralph, Ralph is my show producer for FubCon. He was an Imagineer at Disney for like 12 years. And what Ralph says when they're designing experiences, they're designing experiences in such a way that it it's every element is designed to put a smile on your face or a smile on the kid's face. Because if you create that moment of magic, you open up the parents' wallets. For me, it's like, yeah, every detail matters from when we serve the cocktails, from when we from the lighting, from just everything, because each of those things impacts the end user experience, is kind of how I'm thinking about it. And the end user experience is the agent. I want their energy high, I want their attention high, and I want them to say, like, the end goal, the end feeling is holy shit, that was the best event I've ever been to. Is it that's like that's the emotion that we're trying to capture at the end of the day, and so we start building the experience backwards from that. I don't know if that helps or answers or gives any insight, but it really is.

Host1 16:53

It's amazing. I think my brain goes, like, what's the byproduct of doing that? Like, how you know I joke about building a you know several hundred million dollar business. At the end of the day, like, that's what happened. Follow-up boss sold design for five billion or million dollars. I say, what's the byproduct of that? It's easy to look at that and like, well, here, look, it's like, yeah, but like what happened to the customers because you guys were doing you because you guys were creating so many unique experiences with them.

Host 17:24

We had a like a catchphrase for not a catchphrase, I don't want to say catchphrase, but there was a certain thing that we said with how we were building the experience or what we were building towards. We want follow-up us, like we're creating an experience, but we wanted to be taken as a serious uh CRM. We're a serious CRM, or we're the CRM for serious operators, we're the operating system that's more than a CRM, or like we're more than a CRM, we're the operating system for serious operators and high-achieving real estate agents. Like that was part of our our thesis and our event brief. We're not just doing a feature announcement event, like a user conference, and we announce a bunch of features. I feel like that kind of sucks. But we wanted to put stake in the ground. This is going to be, or we want this to be the must-attend real estate event for anybody who's serious about building their business. And we want people to treat us not just as another CRM, but as the leader in where you go. Like that was the center of gravity. We're the leader in where you go for somebody who's serious about building their business. Does that sort of make sense? I think that set the tone or defined our standards. And so it made it easier to say no to a lot of different things. Like once it just makes it easier. Once you have those standards or those, like those are your guide rails, it makes it easier to say no to a lot of different things. It makes it easier to say no to a speaker. Like that speaker may have a ton of followers, they may be amazing because they have so many followers, but how do they fit the program? How do they fit the culture of what we're building? If they don't, then they're a mismatch for the content. It makes it easier to say no to a sponsor. Like, yeah, they made up that sponsor might have revenue to us, but how do they fit inside the ecosystem? And is it something that you can already like? Do they already have an integration with follow up us? If they don't, let's help them build it and get there for maybe next year, but we should only be partnering with tools that you can build between both platforms, if that makes sense.

Host1 19:26

I forget what the original question was, but well, I think the the original question was like, what was the byproduct of creating those types of experiences for the customer? And what what what I observed was that the customers became raving fans of follow-up bosses.

Host 19:41

Yeah, that's that's exactly it right there. Yeah, the by the byproduct is, and that's the stuff that's like hard to quantify. How do you quantify how many referrals you're getting?

Host1 19:52

Because a lot of people just look at numbers, and it's like you nobody looks at what is the impact of a hundred thousand people in the database that are super engaged with what we're saying in the market. It's priceless. I built an email list in 2015 and 16 and 17, and I am still making money on that email list. Like certainly it's dwindled down, but yeah, because I wasn't just like can't constantly adding to it. Now it's kind of going back through the way it's growing again. But like I am still making money on that email list. Yeah. And so to have what you guys had was just hundreds of thousands of people in a database that are super engaged and buying stuff, like it's you can't put a price tag on it. It's so unbelievably valuable.

Host 20:35

It's like it was a purpose statement. The purpose statement was to prove that follow boss is not just a CRM, but the operating system for modern real estate teams. And then that drives literally every decision you make. Again, it would it was it wasn't let's just run into the user conference and pitch feature updates, but let's prove something. And what we got out of it was we got super fans out of it. That sounds super cheesy to say, but a super fan is somebody who is going to refer you, who's gonna wear. I'm trying to find something branded in here. Like I made these follow-up boss uh coasters, but it's somebody who's gonna wear your brand, it's somebody who's gonna tout your brand from the or shout your brand from the rooftops, like shout your praises, and who's gonna without a shadow of a doubt refer you. When you're getting like referrals are so amazing because there's an automatic transfer of trust. You don't have to work so hard to sell that person anymore because they were referred by somebody whose opinion you highly value. So you're really just answering a couple of technical questions. Here's how you get started, and then we accept Visa, MasterCard American Express, and here press hard. But then they become bought into like they become a super fan of what you're building. That's exactly what it is.

Host1 21:54

This is so good. I hope everybody was paying attention to like it really is a masterclass and how to build. Build a culture in a community, and when you do that within your customer base, the sky's the limit for your business. Not and it goes way beyond your product, it goes way beyond what like you actually sell. You can just do so much.

Host 22:15

I think when we when that was our thesis going in, so then it becomes so when I say okay, this is the thesis, or this is the emotion we want to invoke, and then you work backwards. So for us, we started like with the website copy. First, the idea was the joke is uh I told Dan, buy this domain, give me a million dollars, don't ask any questions. And and that's literally kind of how it happened. But we like we started building backwards from it, right? So once we had our mission statement, then the programming, all of the content, all of the website copy had to show or had to describe who it is we're trying to attract. Well, we're trying to attract real operators with who are running real systems, who have real culture within their business, who live and breathe that culture all day, every day. They have standards in place to police that culture. And then the event, like the end experience of the event, it's not just logistics, you're not just doing this thing, people are showing up and and hurrah. Yes, events happen that way, but that's not how you get an event or an outcome that's like, holy shit, that's the best event I've ever been to in 10 years. Um the event has to embody the message, it has to validate the it has to validate the the agent, right? We're saying this is who it's built for. Then when you get there and you experience the energy, you experience the programming, you experience the networking, you find other people that are just like you who are building towards the same goal, all of that stuff like it validates them. It validates that they're doing the right thing. They're not just agents that are chasing shiny and and hacks and systems, but it sort of validates that what they're building, whether they're building it slow or fast, it validates that they're on the right path and they're doing it the right way. And what it does for the brand is like you've just championed the brand because you were the one who created that environment for that to happen, if that makes sense.

Host1 24:16

Right. So good. I uh we're running out of time, so I'm gonna have to find that I'm gonna have to find another opportunity for us to get back on here and continue the conversation. But I really appreciate you giving everybody a masterclass and creating experiences that can really accelerate the growth of a company in an extreme way. I think it's something that not a lot of people take seriously because everybody's just like, I need more sales, I need more sales, I need more sales. And you are right, the compounded benefit of reducing churn, increasing LTV is just unbelievable what can happen in a company when you have a sticky product and a stickier community behind that product.

Host 24:56

It's the culmination of those three, like that is just gonna exponentially it's better than hiring another salesperson.

Host1 25:05

Oh, yeah, like it's not even comparable. It's not you just need to do more events, so you have to create more experiences. That's the thing that you do need to do, is you need to keep the momentum going for sure. I always like to ask this question at the end, man. What's what's the number one way that we as the listeners of the podcast can partner with you right now? How can we support you?

Host 25:21

Oh, just go to my website, subscribe to the email list, and join me on this crazy journey, ricardobueno.com.

Host1 25:27

All right, we'll make sure that we link that up in the show notes. I appreciate you a ton for spending some time with us today, man. This is awesome.

Host 25:32

Heck yeah. Thank you guys.

Host1 25:33

Yeah, yeah. And thank you all for continuing to listen to the Partner Profit Podcast. This has been another epic conversation. I'll see you on the next one. Peace.