Matt Fagioli on Why Events Still Drive Business Growth

Host 00:00

The best conversations I've had in the last thirty days are how much we're all going to hunger for humanity.

Host1 00:07

I went from pretty much zero to seven million dollars in cash collected in just over two years.

Host 00:13

The key to that is your subject matter expertise in whatever the thing is.

Host1 00:17

You can have the right ten people in a room and it can be a five to fifty thousand dollar day.

Host 00:22

Like it takes fifty thousand contacts to get five hundred people in a room.

Host1 00:27

It's a money machine because it just something that just works and it works and it works. What's up, everybody? Grant Wise here. Welcome back to the Partner Profit Podcast. Excited for my conversation today with an old friend. We got Matt Faggioli on. Matt, what's up, dude? Thanks for being with me today.

Host 00:41

Yeah, man. I'm excited to be here, man. It's great to see your face.

Host1 00:44

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Likewise, it's great to see you too. For the people that are listening to this and maybe don't know much about you, give us a bit of the backstory. How do you get to where you are today?

Host 00:52

So I've been in uh had been in real estate and uh been around the real estate industry for 25 years or something like that. And you know, started out as an agent like so many people, built a team, super successful team, top 10 in my state, and sold that team, which is something that not a lot of people accomplish. And uh and then I've just worked in the more in the tech side and the industry side uh behind the scenes uh of the industry uh for many years, which is how you and I know each other. And so yeah, I think I've I think I've stepped on every landmine there is in terms of selling houses, so I can I can speak to that, but uh you know, also you know, deeply understand the way the industry works, which is such a weird, confusing labyrinth, as you know.

Host1 01:36

Oh my goodness, yeah. It's very interesting, and it's getting more so with all of the innovations that are coming and all of the wars, not not literal wars. That's probably not the right thing for me to say, but the tech wars, the MLS wars, the the compass wars, all the stuff that's going on in the industry. It's uh it's a fascinating time to be alive in the real estate space, that's for sure.

Host 01:56

Yeah, it really isn't. You know, the I've I mean everybody has is shifting their attention to uh to AI, but I think that the the work that we're doing is gonna be leading the way in terms of helping people adapt, people who are willing. You know, it's really a matter of willingness and you know openness to it to adaptation. And uh it cracks me up. I'm old enough to remember when Facebook launched and we were saying the same thing about social, and it was true. Yeah, and uh, but this is even more true, right?

Host1 02:26

Now, when I met you, you were doing events all over the place, masterminds events, smaller events, bigger events. And um, I'm I'm sure there there was a strategy behind that, right? When we talk about building relationships and turning relationships into revenue, you know, what is it for you about events, you know, live and in person and virtual, that is just the thing to do when it comes to building relationships and building businesses?

Host 02:52

You know, I built uh the Explode Conference is what you're referring to, and we did that for 10 years, face to face in ballrooms, 500 people at a time, city to city. We had all these big partners like realtor.com and later on, not Zillow. I remember when there was not a Zillow. Um, and uh, you know, we had all these big partners, and so we would go and and teach and build relationships and teach people stuff, but also our partners were able to, you know, find lots of new customers through those relationships. And so I believed then and believe now that uh building in events, no matter what business you're in, is the most powerful thing that you can do. And as a real estate agent or team, the agents who build great customer events and all of that stuff are the best of the best. And there's a little bit of a chicken in the egg there. People are like, well, they run events because they're the best, or like, which is it? But uh, I have a good friend that I helped get in the business some years ago who's now a top agent near near my home, and uh and they run amazing client events, and I would argue that the events are now driving their business because there's just no better way to build relationship. And so so a lot of the work that we're doing now is in the in the virtual event space. And it's funny, you know, we all got worn out on virtual events during COVID. And one of the things that happened though was that it took a little while to evolve, but now uh virtual event done really well and done following the correct playbook is the most powerful sales tool in the world, in my opinion.

Host1 04:29

Why do you think that that is, you know, when you talk about live events and you talk about really well done virtual events, what is it about that that creates so much trust in the person that you know you you maybe ended up doing business with?

Host 04:41

Well, the I I think uh to elaborate a little bit on the the reason I said it was the that virtual was so critically valuable is that, hey, it the obvious first answer is scale, right? We follow this playbook that Tony Robbins and others have perfected. Uh, so it's not my it's not my playbook. But you know, I watched uh three or four months ago, I watched Tony Robbins sell $19 million in one day in a virtual event because I did the math. And you know, it's just astounding, right? There's just not possible to do that in a ballroom. Um, and then I think the other piece of it is it allows you to attract to attract exactly the right customers out of the 8 billion people or whatever the number is on the planet, and and it also it doesn't have to be 19 million people, you know, you can run an event. I've I've actually watched this happen now. You can you can run an event for like Oriental basket weaving or whatever, right? Right. And if you have the right hundred people, that could be a fifty thousand dollar day or a hundred thousand dollar day or whatever, because those are the hundred people that really want to learn oriental basket weaving.

Host1 05:49

I think what's cool about events is you can have the right ten people in a room and it can be a five to fifty thousand dollar day. Like it, you know, a lot of people think events and they're like, well, these numbers sound insane, but I there's a lot of people out there that I know that do events with that whole mindset of um what is it, small events, big profits? Like that's their whole business model is getting 10 people in a room and selling a high-ticket thing that makes them, like I said, five to fifty grand in a day. And so I've done a lot of events, been to a lot of events of you know, from 2016, I think it was 2017 to 2020 up until COVID. I was gone two weeks of the month every year at the events, getting face to face with people. How do you think that that equation changes or gets amplified in the rise of AI and just everything going on in the internet today?

Host 06:32

You know, uh most of the best conversations I've had in the last 30 days are how much we're all going to hunger for humanity uh in the new season. I also think that uh, well, you know, that I'm I'm a bit of a Jesus freak. I just wrote a Jesus book. I think that the heart of our humanity and the heart of what makes us different than every other kind of being is our intuition and our connection to something that's unseen. Let's we'll leave it at that. And so I think we're moving into a moment where that's gonna become our our superpower, right? Because the machines are the machines aren't doing that. Yeah. Um, and so if if if in a moment where every physical thing is going to be done for us and and almost every thinking thing can be done for us, but the what the machine can't do is tell us from the unseen side of things what's the next right move.

Host1 07:29

We were all just meant to connect with each other, you know. We were meant to to talk to each other and share with each other and be vulnerable with each other and and and share our wins and share our losses and to go to battle with each other and to you know, all these other things. And I think the the beautiful thing about AI is it gives us more time. The way that we use AI as a company as an example is like we use it operationally. I think it's brilliant for like what we're doing today as a company. You know, five years ago would have taken me a staff of 10, uh, a month and a half, and and now I can do that with staff of one in an hour. And like to me, it's just like praise the Lord that we have these amazing tools that can help fast track the work that needs to be done in order to ship products and ship features and ship whatever so that we can we can serve our clients at the highest level. But it gives us more time to connect and to be people and to talk to each other, and I think that's what uh I think that's the point.

Host 08:21

Well, and more time, more time for more connections. We we just had a conversation on my my little team, which is like two full times and a whole bunch of virtuals about the fact that the shift from well, can we it would be hard to onboard 50 new clients, and now we're like, well, we could onboard 300 clients. So just that amplification of now I can make 300 new relationships because the process can move so quickly, right? Yeah, whoo and uh well, and and I love the the idea too of going, you know, there's always been this conversation in terms of people's finances of going like the gap between the rich and the poor. And now we have this gap between guys like Grant who are like executing at a maximum pace, and that gap between everybody else who's executing at the old pace and your pace is just going to become exponential, right? Really fast.

Host1 09:15

100%. I want to go back to what you said a second ago. You said, you know, these types of things can be an amazing for a business, essentially, if you're running the right playbook. So as much as you can divulge, give us the playbook. You know, when we're if we're thinking about doing an event or put on a virtual experience, what what are some of the things that we need to do?

Host 09:30

For before I say that, let me answer the when we were talking about rooms full of 10 people and being able to convert that at a high level, the key to that is your subject matter expertise in whatever the thing is, right? If if you spend time with 10 people and they're convinced that you're the expert at basket weaving, like it's right, yeah. So you can't fake it, right? So as long as you're a subject matter expert and you're passionate about your thing, uh, it's a question of two things. How how much time do you spend with those people building trust and relationship and knowledge base and all that stuff, and then how good's your offer for, you know. I'm a groupie of uh Russell Brunson who built ClickFunnels, and he says that and and well, actually, uh um Alex Ramosi says a lot of things that he learned from Russell Brunson, but um Russell Alex also says this it's like the offer has to be so good that I feel like an idiot not doing it. And so if you have subject matter expertise, you spend time building relationships and your offer feels compelling, it's gonna convert.

Host1 10:34

I think people listen to this and they say, hear what you said, at least I do, because I've lived it. So it's like you said, you know, we get 500 people in a room, event to event to event, you do that for 10 years straight, and you know, you go, How in the world do you do that? Because I think that in and of itself is it's impressive. It's not an easy thing to do to put 50 people in a room consistently, let alone 500 for physical events. And so what's the the secret there? What's the recipe to success in consistently being able to do stuff like that?

Host 11:02

Uh yeah, I mean, well, partners, for one thing, you know, we built all those events based on these big partner uh lists and stuff like that. And I think people just underestimate, you know, it like it takes 50,000 contacts to get 500 people in a room, right? You know, you you mentioned, I think before we stopped recording uh started, I think you said you mentioned uh my man Tom Ferry, who I love, and you know, he puts thousands of people in a room, right? But that means that's three months of a massive team making the calls and doing all things. So I think when people start to build events, they just underestimate the uh the lift. And I love the way Alex Remozzi talks about that. Like it's like you need to do a hundred times more than what you what you're currently doing, and you just you gotta get get comfortable with that hard truth, right?

Host1 11:48

Yeah, yeah. How do you develop the relationships with the right people to be able to do that? Because you said partnerships was a big part of it, and it's not easy to get in relationships sometimes with the people that can help open those types of doors. So what what were some of the things that you would do, or how would you identify the right people to partner with so that you could pull stuff like that off?

Host 12:08

You know, it is hard. I mean, for sure, but but I honestly think that it's that most people are just don't, you know, if I was going to uh build an event in uh Arkansas where you live, and I've called, you know, hundreds of people who had some kind of uh authority and some kind of influence and some kind of list, and you know, you're gonna get a lot of no's and but you know, you get four or five that are that are yeses, and uh and then of course, you know, now we live in a world too where Facebook ads are getting just like stupid easy, which you would know better than me. You know, uh so it's it's literally just like a cash register of like, okay, you know, can I can I build that math equation where a dollar in gives me two dollars out, and then at that point you just hit you can hit the gas. And it's funny, I'm building that right now for my book, and I'm like giddy excited about like dialing that in to go, like once we hit that math and we know it's profitable, then like the sky's the limit.

Host1 13:07

It's one of the funnest things in the world to do. It's one of the harder things to do for sure, because it's harder than it sounds to build an offer socially that goes out there and just crushes because you've got to get the funnel right, you've got to get the offer right, you've got to get the messaging right, and it just takes work. But once you get it, it's like the most exciting thing in the world because you basically have just built an ATM machine that it's like the dollar in, three dollars out. That was how I first got started. I I literally had 20 bucks my name, put out some Facebook ads, sold a client a thousand dollar product, and I made a 20 plus X return, and I was just like Like, this is good, I like this. Like, how can I and we went from we were I went from pretty much zero to seven million dollars in cash collected in just over two years, and it was all Facebook ads, but that led to these amazing partnerships that have taken me infinitely farther than the Facebook ads themselves could do. Today I'm alone, I've been on the phone with just unbelievable people that I've you know always dreamed about being in a relationship with, talking about putting deals together and those types of things.

Host 14:11

Yeah, well, it's I think it what you just described is the equivalent of digital door knocking, right? Like my my friend who's built a great team here near me that I mentioned, you know, he built his business by knocking on doors, but he doesn't knock on doors anymore. Like, you know, he he uh he's already got all the relationships, right? All that stuff. Yeah. So but but if you're listening to this and you want to build an event or a real estate business or anything, it's just like you know, hit the the other thing, you know, interestingly, talking about events and and even webinars, uh, which you know, I think webinars a little bit of a four-letter word, but you know, I think it blows my mind how few real estate people run webinars, you know, for everything from you know, first-time homebuyer to like seller, like it's it still feels like a blue ocean. And I'm like, how can that be?

Host1 14:57

It it really is. I'm glad you said it. It really is. Everybody I talk to, I only know a few people that will do events in real estate for the purposes of bringing in buyers and sellers. Dan Beer comes to mine, runs an amazing seller event, does like basically a group listing presentation to 20 people at a time. And I'm like, why aren't more people doing this? And I think it's because what I've observed of people that have tried it is they just they can't wrap their mind around the math and the time because it takes a lot of money. Not it doesn't take a lot, it takes money to get it going. You got to get the lift, but then it takes a lot of time. Real estate is cyclical, it happens in 90-day phases. So I ran a study on a big team that I was working with, and we looked at all of their lead sources and all of their transactions in 2023 when we first started, and every single lead source, the average time to close was approximately 11 and a half months to just over a year. This was referrals, Facebook, PPC, SEO, all of the lead sources are within a three-week timestamp of each other as far as their average time to transact. And so when I looked at people that have tried to pull off the event strategy, it's not patient enough. Like they're not willing to wait the amount of time it takes. But if you do, man, it's a money machine because it just something that just works and it works and it works and it works. You gotta put a lot into it. That's how the real estate industry is set up. That's why I do what I do to help offset that, right? But uh man, it's it's insane when it gets going.

Host 16:22

Well, and I'm and I'm saying even just just just webinars, you're talking, it seems like you're talking about physical events, which is great. But uh, I'm like, if I was selling houses again, I'd run a webinar every day, you know, uh targeting whatever I wanted to target. Right. And you know, and it takes a little a minute to build that muscle, but you know, there's just nothing more efficient than that.

Host1 16:43

The only person I know that got close uh was my very dear friend Kerry Scholl. She's been on the show, she's in the DMV area. And Carrie got on with a listing webinar that worked. And uh she worked with Jason Fladlin, which has consulted Russell Brunson, likes all these crazy people to make it work, but still a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of patience. I know we're running out of time, speaking of which, and so I uh just want to tell you, man, how much I appreciate you spending some time with me today and diving in and adding some value uh around the expertise that I know you have. What's the number one way that the listeners of the podcast can partner with you? How can we work with you and help support you grow?

Host 17:17

Yeah, well, uh two things. One, um, you know, we're uh recently launched uh a virtual event for Cotality, which a lot of people know by the old name Core Logic. But if you if you're an agent, when you log into your MLS, you know, probably 75% of the market runs on Matrix or another Core Logic product. And uh, and so we're launching these massive virtual events, bringing in some of the most amazing speakers in the world, both in the industry and out. All of them are focused on AI, some aspect of AI. Uh, the next one's on May 12th, and it's uh talking about AI clones. Uh, I learned clones from the master, and uh, so we're teaching people about you know how to do that at a high level. Like, for example, I mean, everybody's playing with AI. You can get on Sora and like, you know, make something cute, but can you develop an AI clone that actually can talk to clients and and potential clients and really pull it off? And like they're not sure if it's you or not, because I we can do that. So we're you know, we're teaching some really high-level AI events there. It's called growth it's called growth agents. You'll you probably see it in your MLS, but if not, you can reach out to me. And and then I um I love talking about my book. I just I just uh wrote my first book. It's called Dirty Disciple. And um it's a uh it's a Jesus book for for us normal humans, is the way I like to describe it. It's something that you know I rip ripped my soul out for three years developing. And uh you can definitely buy it on Amazon, but I'm also uh just love to give it away. So, you know, anybody that's uh if you don't feel like buying it on Amazon, you want me to ship me one, just reach out and I'll send you one.

Host1 18:48

That's awesome. That's awesome, man. We'll make sure that we link up the ways that people can follow you, can connect with the two things that you mentioned. I uh really appreciate you spending some time today. It was so good to see you again, and uh, I'm looking forward to the next time for sure. Yeah, man. Great to see you. Awesome, awesome. And thank you all for continuing to listen to the Partner Profit podcast. This is another epic conversation. I'll see you on the next one. Peace.