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Building your Data Base Tyler Durden Style (Diary of a RE Agent Starting Over in a New City - Part 2)

By
Real Estate Agent with BrokerInTrust Real Estate Cal BRE #01345507

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.

 

Comments (7)

Melissa Nottingham
Coldwell Banker Advantage - Winfield, WV
WV Real Estate Agent
Tracey, I read your first post on this and I have to tell you....I love the way you think. You have some very creative ideas and I look forward to hearing more of them. Thank you for sharing.
Jul 20, 2007 06:10 AM
Eric Olson
Sky Realty - Austin, TX
Great ideas keep it up!
Jul 20, 2007 06:36 AM
John Hurlbut
Keller Williams - Puyallup - Puyallup, WA
I love the Cashflow game!  It rocks!
Jul 20, 2007 06:44 AM
Tina Howell
RE/MAX DFW Associates VI - Little Elm, TX
Little Elm & Frisco Area Real Estate
Wow!  You are an out of the box thinker.  I love it.  Good to hear it is working out well.  I've never heard of that game so I'll check it out.
Jul 20, 2007 08:00 AM
Bob Sloop, Consultant, Indianapolis, IN
RS Mortgage Consulting - Indianapolis, IN
Hey there, more please....!  Great post.
Jul 20, 2007 01:36 PM
Christina Ethridge
The North Idaho Dream Team powered by SKE Realty Group - Coeur d'Alene, ID
This is an absolutely GREAT idea!  I'll be joining the AR group in a sec.
Jul 26, 2007 12:45 PM
Olena Osipov
Maple Ridge, BC

Tracey, aren't you a one smart woman! My brain is thinking so hard right now!

Feb 23, 2009 03:24 PM