Part one of this blog was about moving to a new city and
building a business from scratch quickly, using the methods learned from the movie Fight Club by joining groups. Part 2 focuses on
creating groups to build your data base.
Continued from Part 1………..Fast forward, the
year is now 2003 and
The Fight Club has come out on DVD. 
Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) demands
"I want you to hit me as hard as you can." The resulting fight in a bar's
parking lot attracts more disenchanted men, and a new form of support group, the
first "Fight Club," is born. The fight club becomes a new type of therapy
through bare-knuckle fighting, controlled by a set of rules, the first being
“You don’t talk about the fight club”.
Hmmm, now instead of joining support
groups, Tyler has started his own. Another light goes on in my head. This would
be a great way to meet new people, network and build my data base. So I dig
deep into the annals of my soul looking for a group of my own to start. Since I
love to cook and was a chef instructor for many years, I decided to hold some
cooking classes. It seemed like a pretty good idea, and it is certainly
something that I love to do, so I started planning my first class. Pizza came
to mind; it’s easy to make, people love it and not many know how to make it at
home from scratch. So I decided to teach people how to make homemade pizza.
But now the big problem, how do I get
people to sign up? I didn’t really want to invite people that I already knew
since my motivation was to add to my data base. Being the geek that I am, I
went online and found
LA LinkUp, and
meetup.com. Both of these websites offer activities run by it’s members, so
I signed up and posted my first event. I also invited a few friends, but in
order to participate they had to bring someone that I had never met
before.
We had about 30 people at our first pizza
making class and everyone had a good time. I collected names and numbers and
added them to Top Producer all the time thinking to myself this was way too
easy. I then decided to have a sushi making class. I used the same method to
attract “potential clients” and added another 20 to my data base.
With my fresh new 50 potential clients, I
started my drip marketing, newsletter, phone call and personal note campaign.
Several months later I realized that these “potential clients” were more
interested in cooking than real estate.
In the meantime I had read the
Rich Dad series of books by Robert Kiyosaki and was really impressed. I
purchased Kiyosaki’s Cash Flow 101 game and found a few friends to play with. I
loved the game from the first few rolls of the dice and could see how the game
could really change a person’s thinking. The game so clearly taught a
great concept, instead of
just making money, make your money work for you. Now THIS was the perfect group to
host in order to gain clients! I was off and running. I bought several more
games and posted my Cash Flow event online I couldn’t believe how many people
signed up to play. We started playing every Friday night and the quality of
players was exactly what I wanted. They were all interested in buying real
estate and investing in their future. Our group of players grew until we had
six games going on at the same time. I was able to network with these people
and since the focus was on building cash flow, the conversation was about real
estate. It was a natural fit. You
can watch the game video here.
Needless to say, I made friends, built my
data base and have sold many houses from hosting this game, plus had a great
time. I stopped hosting the game two years ago when the SoCal market was really
hot and I was just too busy. I have continued to get emails asking when we’re
going to start playing again, so I started the group up again last Wednesday.
Wow, after playing only one night, I realized that this is something that
should be in my monthly business building plan.
There is so much information to share
regarding playing this game with potential clients that I have started a
group here on Activerain that focuses on using the Cashflow game to build
your data base. There is also a Cashflow game for kids and a Cashflow 202 for
advanced players. I highly recommend that you try playing this game and then
use it as another method to build your database.
In the end, I’m not sure if joining groups
and hosting groups worked for Tyler Durden but it does work for me.
