In the age of email, smart phones, and social media, it’s easy to forget the power that comes from directly connecting with people. While marketing gurus will promote the idea of prospecting events, the thought of putting one together can seem almost as paralyzing as the fear that your efforts will end in failure—will anyone actually come?
On this Elementality, Carl explains why breakfast meetings make the ideal prospecting event and reveals numerous reasons for their appeal. But even better than explaining the benefits, Carl and Abby share the logistics of how to put an event together. Want to hold a breakfast meeting that really works? Start here with Carl Richards’ recipe for breakfast meeting success.
Podcast Transcript
Carl Richards:
First of all, I found and I think this is generally true, and most people listening, I think will relate. Everybody seems to love breakfast, but nobody ever has time for it. Right?
Abby Morton:
I gotta say it’s my favorite meal ever.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. I think everybody loves it. And you’re like, “Oh, but I just grab smoke oatmeal on the way out”. Like, you never have time, you’re running out the way, whatever. So I found that people love the idea of like, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna go have breakfast”. Like people love that. The second thing I found with breakfast is it was way less hectic than, as your day goes on, you, you seem to lose more and more control. Like, lunch was like, oh, a little better. Dinner was like, “Oh my, the day got away from me”.
Jordan Haines:
Welcome to Elementally. Each episode we will explore the challenges and the opportunities faced by financial advisors and how advisors can use elements to grow their business and serve their clients better. We hope you enjoy this episode.
Abby Morton:
Welcome to Elementality Today. I’m your host, Abby Morton here with Carl Richards. Welcome Carl to the show.
Carl Richards:
Abby. So great to be here in the new Elementality studio.
Abby Morton:
We’ve done a big redesign.
Carl Richards:
It’s been, those of you that are just listening, it’s beautiful…
Abby Morton:
A big project. I have to say, this was not intentional for those that are, you are watching online, but one of my coworkers the other day said, we brought in a mini Carl couch.
Carl Richards:
Oh, look at that.
Abby Morton:
And now you’re here Sitting in it…
Carl Richards:
Oh, this is, this is the, like the blue chair.
Abby Morton:
I didn’t even think about that.
Carl Richards:
It’s perfect.
Abby Morton:
It works great. So today we’re talking about how can we power up our marketing efforts to make and use assessments that we provide with elements to make those marketing efforts better. Right? How do we help advisors demonstrate their value? And there’s so many different marketing tactics that advisors do day-to-day, right?
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
And so this specific one I wanted to talk to you about is this idea of breakfast meetings. You mentioned this like, “Hey, Abby I could really talk a lot about breakfast meetings, and I’m thinking, what’s breakfast meetings?” So let’s start high level, like when you say, I’ve used breakfast meetings in your past, like, what does that even mean?
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Super fun conversation because this idea, like many of the ideas for that I’ve used for marketing was not my idea. Like, I started this habit probably 20 years ago where I started thinking about if I had a problem I needed to solve, I would think about like, well, I don’t need to come up with a solution who has this solution? So I started asking clients. Like, hey, if you were me I would like more clients just like you. If you were me, how would you go about it? And that’s a conversation I think we’ll have for another episode. But one of the ideas that a client came up to, and I remember who it was, it was Jerry. Jerry was like, gosh, that’s such a good question. If I was you and Jerry was of Tom Brokers, like sort of greatest generation.
Carl Richards:
So he, you know, just he, and he said, I remember my grandpa, my dad, no, my dad, I remember my dad used to go to these breakfast meetings and there was like 8 to 12 people, and they met in like the, like the local cafe. And they, every month, and they exchanged business ideas. He’s like, “I used to love that” if you would hold a breakfast meeting, I think I could invite six to eight people myself. And you just come and talk. And I was like, “Well, that seems like a good idea”.
Abby Morton:
Yeah. Let him do all the work. Yeah. Of, of getting the people there for you.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. So that’s where the idea came from and, we’ll, I’m sure we’ll talk deeper tactically about it, but what it ended up being was once a month, and I, I think there’s some tactics we need to talk about around the idea of once a month and how do you do it. But once a month, I went and booked and I, I did the same place, actually. I went there and booked it for six months. Like, committed for six months so that I knew I would do it again. It was a place that it had a private room that would seat 8 to 12 people. And every month I would invite clients using my, the way that you communicate with people, it’s called email. I would send an email to my email list and say, “Hey, I’m having this breakfast meeting”.
Carl Richards:
And we would pick a topic and either I would address the, I would, I would speak to the topic or I would invite somebody else. So if it was like tax time, I could invite a CPA to come talk. Or if it was something about you know, something specific to a niche, I could invite somebody who had specific ideas for a niche. So it was, the whole goal of it though, was just to provide value. Like, I just wanted everybody in the room to feel smarter, more prepared to make good decisions with their money when they left than when they came in. So that’s the idea behind a breakfast meeting.
Abby Morton:
So when you talk about this breakfast meeting, I like, it seems very similar to like doing a workshop or a webinar, which you would think is more like during the day or like the evening, you know, you hosted dinner. Do you feel like there’s some appeal to the fact that it’s a quote unquote breakfast meeting? First thing in the morning. Did you feel like it performed better than maybe like hosting a dinner in the evening would’ve done?
Carl Richards:
It’s Such a great question. Yes.
Abby Morton:
But why.
Carl Richards:
Super intentional. First of all, I found, and I think this is generally true, and most people listening, I think will relate. Everybody seems to love breakfast, but nobody ever has time for it.
0Abby Morton:
I gotta say it’s my favorite meal ever.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. I think everybody loves it. And you’re like, “Oh, but I just grabbed some oatmeal on the way out”. Yeah. Like, you never have time. You’re running outta the way, like, whatever. So I found that people love the idea of like, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna go have breakfast”. Like people love that. The second thing I found with breakfast is it was way less hectic than, as your day goes on, you, you seem to lose more and more control. Like lunch was like, oh, a little better. Dinner was like, “Oh my, the day got away from me” Like, “Oh, I gotta run home”. Plus most of my clients and most of the people listening, your clients, unless you work solely with retirees, people are busy and even retirees are busy. But it’s like if you have kids at home and soccer and the dance recital and the whatever, like an evening just doesn’t work. And I was also trying to put a little distance between me and the steak dinner. You know?
Abby Morton:
But why?
Carl Richards:
Well, because the retirement plan, steak dinner seminar scene was just not, that used to be a thing that was heavily used by the annuity sales.
Abby Morton:
Maybe it’s overdone, right?
Carl Richards:
Annuity sales folks. Yeah.
Abby Morton:
You’re trying to be different, right?
Carl Richards:
Yeah. And so I really, but the biggest thing for me was people had time. So we would do it at, like, as I recall, we met at 8:00 and you were out by 9:30.
Abby Morton:
Okay.
Carl Richards:
And you had breakfast, so you still were like a little late to work. But it wasn’t like, it didn’t really infringe on anything. For many people it was like that 9:30 was still a fine time to arrive at work.
Abby Morton:
Totally.
Carl Richards:
And nothing got in your way yet you weren’t overwhelmed by emails. And I found there was a little bit of a joy in the idea of see, oh, oh, there was one last thing. Breakfast is way cheaper. Way cheaper than lunch and dinner.
Abby Morton:
The budget’s like that. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Way cheaper. So you could even do the first couple, I remember we just did continental breakfast. Like it was, it wasn’t even like a, you know, big thing. But a buffet style breakfast is way cheaper than lunch or dinner.
Abby Morton:
Okay.
Carl Richards:
So that’s why breakfast.
Abby Morton:
You know what, you brought up some great points that I didn’t think about and maybe the biggest reason to try it is like the day hasn’t gotten away. I know at Elements, we’ve tried a number of dinners, right? We’re at conferences and events and we’re like, Hey, let’s host this dinner in conjunction with the Riskalyze conference that we were at. And everyone come to dinner and…
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
When you get people at a conference, they’re like there to socialize and do the thing, right?
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
But when you’re getting people just in their day to day lives, like you’re totally right. You know, Kids have baseball games and soccer games and things happen and emails come in throughout the day and you just get busy. So.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
Like that sounds like a very intentional decision and talking through that, I think that makes a lot of sense.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. There was an element too of like, imagine you’re busy and you committed to going to something at 6:30 and your day gets a little and you’re like, oh jeez. Like I gotta go to the, it becomes like, oh no, I gotta go to the thing.
Abby Morton:
And you’re kind of bugged, right? Like, you’re like.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
You’re bugged that the thing’s happening because you don’t wanna go.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Like you wanna go, like you might see value in it and all that stuff, but you’re still, even if you’re like, that’s gonna be really valuable, like, I just wanna go home and put on the sweatpants and watch little basketball or something, or hanging out with the kids. So you’re just like, ah. Whereas I actually feel, and I actually can feel it now, like a little joyful about like, Hey, I’m gonna go grab breakfast. Like, that’s a completely different feeling to me. So even if the day doesn’t get away from you, you’re always So that’s why I found that to be.
Abby Morton:
I like that.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. I liked it. It was cheaper. More people came. I did notice we had more people come, like as a percentage of people who said they would come.
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
The percentage showing up was higher at breakfast than at lunch or dinner.
Abby Morton:
That’s very interesting.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
So something else you said has kind of made me think, you talked about, you know, if it’s tax season you’ll invite a CPA or you wanted to always provide value. You know?
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
But what I’m thinking about as an advisor is, but the point of this is to like get clients, right?
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Yeah.
Abby Morton:
So how do you manage, like providing value, giving good content, but also being able to have your plug of like, I can help change your life and come work with me as your advisor. How did you balance that?
Carl Richards:
I just really… That’s a fantastic question. ‘Cause the tension’s super real.
Abby Morton:
Right.
Carl Richards:
And I think it’s especially real when you’re relatively new and you’re kind of thinking that way. And it took me a long time to detox and decide what if I just showed them like, what if we just provided value? And I should mention one other thing. I remember when I first, when Jerry first gave me this idea, I had attended a breakfast meeting and it was a friend of mine named Spencer who did a breakfast meeting. He did it every month for like, it was probably over a decade. He charged $25 to come. It was just a business. He would bring in a business, somebody who had something interesting to say. I remember like somebody who climbed Everest came and spoke.
Abby Morton:
Oh, cool.
Carl Richards:
So it was just like this, it was a much broader idea.
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
But he ended up with 50 seats and it was full and waitlisted every month and people like lots of business. So it was more like a networking event, but it was just one more idea. I was like, look, that’s really interesting. That really works well. So that was one more reason I started the breakfast meeting, but the idea of how do I… I always think of like Zig Ziglar at the back of the room, like, we gotta have somebody at the back of the room, like with a count, like book your appointment now.
Abby Morton:
Right.
Carl Richards:
I just decided to take the opposite approach, which was can I, and I think this is true for financial planners and advisors, you can’t tell people what you do. Most of the words you would use are meaningless if not offensive.
Abby Morton:
Right.
Carl Richards:
Like, you can trust me like I’m a real planner.
Abby Morton:
Yeah. You said the other day, like the benefits that someone gets out of financial planning are like these emotional and mental things.
Carl Richards:
It’s intangible.
Abby Morton:
Right yes. That’s the word used.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
Intangible. So it’s hard to even describe that, right?
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
And you would describe it different from someone down the street and from…
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
Your client that you had next door, right? Like everyone would say financial planning brings them a different value.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
And it probably changes as the years go on too.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. So it’s really hard to say, like.
Abby Morton:
Right.
Carl Richards:
This is what I do for you. So how could we do this in a breakfast meeting? Right? So let’s just pick up on the tax thing. We can also talk, I mean, assessments just like turbochargers, because you can show, literally show people.
Abby Morton:
So that’s what you said is like, well, I would just show them when I did, but when you did this, what, 10, 15?
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Yeah.
Abby Morton:
I don’t wanna…
Carl Richards:
A long time ago.
Abby Morton:
Give me that [laughter]
Carl Richards:
Back in the last century.
Carl Richards:
[laughter] You said you just showed your value, but how did you do it then? And then how would you do it today? Let’s talk about.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. So I love, so let’s just pick up on tax. ‘Cause I don’t think like, I think you can pick a topic for each month and I like it to be topical. Like, I mean, in October, November’s a great tax time because you can say, look, we’re actually having this before the end of the year so you can still do things. So let’s say it’s tax, well it’s really easy for you to bring in a CPA who you’ve seen do CPAs are really, really good at what they do and they’re terrible at letting anybody know what they do, you know what I mean? Nobody’s excited about their, do you know anybody who’s like, oh, let me, why CPAs great.
Abby Morton:
No. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
I mean, nobody gets excited, but if you can, so this serves two purposes. Number one, you put a CPA in front of a group of eight to 12 people. They feel really good. And I remember having to clear with the allied professionals that I would invite, like, you do not get to pitch anything. And so what you do is you’re asking them questions that demonstrates like, hey, give me some ideas of what you’ve done with clients in October and November. And they would say something like, oh, well we’ve looked at appreciated stock and topped off their donations using appreciated stock instead of cash.
Abby Morton:
Right?
Carl Richards:
Right. And then you save on the capital gains tax and, and we can talk, say, then well tell me about the impact that had on the clients. Well, jeez, in one case, this saved X, and we could do that with somebody who is a time management expert for dentists. Right? Well, in one case, this freed up a whole day for one of my clients. So we’re actually sort of talking, giving a mini case study of the actual benefit that that professional had. You are just there as the person showing it. And people, it’s not hard, like if you had that experience where you’re like, oh, Carl exposed me to something that just made a big difference in my life. What I always wanted people doing was almost confused by the grace. Or like walking out, like there was no pitch. I wasn’t trying to get, ’cause you’ll notice people will walk into these breakfast meetings, particularly prospective clients with their hands on their wallet.
Carl Richards:
Right? Like, you’re not gonna get this from me. There’s no way you’re gonna get this from me. And if, they leave thinking, they just made me smarter, and I would actually use that as the invite. Hey, my goal of this breakfast meeting is I have one goal, super simple. I want you to leave more prepared to make good decisions with money than when you came in. That’s my only goal. And so this month we’re gonna talk about this.
Abby Morton:
I like that.
Carl Richards:
Right. So that’s how I would think about topically. Do you wanna talk a bit about how we do it now?
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
That’s such a good question. [laughter]
Abby Morton:
Let’s do that. Thank you for… You led right into it.
Carl Richards:
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think, look, the reality is one of the things I’m so excited about in terms of the work we do at Elements is the ability to quickly, in a way that I did not have orient a human client, a prospective client really quickly around where they are today using a simple set of objective measures. Right? And so I could see you doing a breakfast meeting now you could do 12 a year, one on each element.
Abby Morton:
Right. There you go. There’s your topics.
Carl Richards:
Right? And then…
Abby Morton:
Who’s gonna run with that first? .
Carl Richards:
Yeah. It’s not like zero, zero problem doing that. Now you could still bring in an allied professional.
Abby Morton:
Totally.
Carl Richards:
About that specific thing. Like I could bring in a mortgage banker. Right? To talk about debt ratio and how could you do better? In fact, we brought John in today, he’s gonna talk a little bit about some work he did for one of my clients. Like, John’s not pitching, John’s just talking about the thing around how could we improve your debt situation. Right? So, and the whole time you’ve got a visual to orient them around real quickly and you are simply saying, Hey, by the way, if you’d like an assessment, I’m totally happy to do one for you. There’s no pitch anywhere in here. And it’s really easy once somebody does an assessment to say, Hey, I noticed some things we, we, jeez, people have been through that training. Right in growth camp or however we’ve exposed them to it. Right? To say, I noticed these things, this thing, this thing, this thing. I’m happy to help more. Right?
Abby Morton:
Right. And I think after several meetings of seeing you like demonstrate your value, show them what you can do, asking good questions, not being this like salesman that’s going after their wallets.
Carl Richards:
Yep.
Abby Morton:
They’re gonna come around and say, “Hey, maybe I do wanna talk to you, Carl.”
Carl Richards:
Totally.
Abby Morton:
Right? Like, it might take a little bit of time.
Carl Richards:
I’m okay With that. And by the way, I have nothing wrong with sales. Like I, my version of sales is if you’ve got something that you think will change somebody’s life, you have a sacred obligation to sell the crap out of it. Like, you… Like I’m totally okay with that, but I think the best way to do that is show them over and over and over and somebody’s like, why don’t I have one of those yet? Like, what do you mean? Oh wow. I can, it’s like being exposed to vital signs the first time. Like, how do I not know that? So that’s how I think the breakfast meetings and just, I have other tactical ideas that we have to get out. So I’ll end there and see what questions you have.
Abby Morton:
[laughter] You keep leading in my questions.
Carl Richards:
Sorry keep going.
Abby Morton:
That I’m going right into. So that’s No, but really, that’s really where I was gonna go next is like, let’s get tactical. Let’s talk about the logistics. Starting at the beginning you said you kind of just picked one spot. I like that you said you, said, I’m just gonna go to this one spot and book six months out. So then I commit to doing this for six months. You might not even have to do that. Maybe you could do three months. Right? It sounded like maybe initially this one friend said, I will bring six people. You probably also then emailed it out to see how many more you could get. But I assume it starts small and it grows. So talk about that. Like, what do you initially do? Like what did you do? This friend, he brought his friends. Did you do anything else to him by extra People?
Carl Richards:
Yeah. No. So this, I look again so often we have marketing thing, activities that work so well that we stop doing them because we just sort of forget. And breakfast meetings are one of those things. Like, I’m 100% positive that if you did this for 12 months, it would, you would be happy you did it. I don’t know exactly why you would be happy, but I know you would be happy. And so the way I think about it is I didn’t wanna give myself an out. If you do it for one month and it doesn’t quite work, you can either decide to quit or you can learn. And the way, the reason why I went to the restaurant and committed. So pick a place, local place, small room. I think you’re gonna want to keep it small for a long time. Frankly, I actually like the eight to 12 number.
Abby Morton:
Yeah. I think you’re gonna have more chance to interact with the people. And really provide value and them to feel like they’re there and an important person. Right?
Carl Richards:
Yeah. I’d much rather do two a month at 12 than one a month at 24. And so pick a place, commit to a couple of months. I think six months is the right number. The invites the way. I love to like the invites because it’s small. Right? So you’ve got, for me, I had Jerry who said I’d bring six people and I, six to eight people. And I think he did, but the next month he didn’t. So we had to invite people. Well, where do we invite people? Well, we hopefully have an email list. We pull up the email list and the invite is simple, right? Hey, I’m holding this monthly, I hold this breakfast meeting. I do one every month. This month the topic is X. I’ve only got eight to 12, seats. We like to keep these smallest. So we can have good discussion. If you would like to come and… If you would like to come I’ll save a seat for you. And then as the PS, I always did. So one thing I wouldn’t do is like, your ticket for entry is to bring a friend. Right? Like, I’ve seen that. Like.
Abby Morton:
Yeah. Okay…
Carl Richards:
Whatever. Like, I don’t, like I don’t…
Abby Morton:
I might put too much pressure.
Carl Richards:
It feels like a burden. It feels like a burden.
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Carl Richards:
But there’s a beautiful PS that says, by the way, as I mentioned, I like to keep these small, but if you have a friend or family member that you’d like to invite, I’ll always save room for them. That’s completely different feeling. One of them you say thank you to, and the other, you’re like, yeah, that feels like a burden on my shoulders.
Abby Morton:
Definitely.
Carl Richards:
So, yeah. It takes… The other big risk is, you like don’t do the work to get the right people there. And then it ends up being your mom and your sister every single time and you’re like, this is kinda dumb to do Breakfast Meetings. But if you do, if you take the right work. And then the last thing I’ll mention is, thinking about the people in the room.
Carl Richards:
This is another super cool tactic is to think like, oh, John is a dentist, and I know Sally is a consultant to dentist and I’ve always thought they should meet. Maybe I could get, and I can call Sally and go, Hey Sally, John, there’s a dentist I’ve wanted to introduce you to. He’ll be at the Breakfast Meeting. I think you’d like it too. Why don’t you come? So you’re thinking strategically about, that’s why that small group is important is like, what connections can I make that are gonna be…
Abby Morton:
I like that.
Carl Richards:
Compound way beyond the meeting.
Abby Morton:
I like that.
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
Alright. Well, any final thoughts on the Breakfast Meeting? Any like last tips that you would give or something that would just make it you feel like go above and beyond?
Carl Richards:
Yeah, I don’t… Look, I don’t know if it’s the right thing for anybody listening ’cause I don’t know the business, but I do know if you do it and commit to it. It will make an impact for sure. So it was one of my favorite things, but I had a lot of favorite things, which we’ll talk more about some of the other ones, but I love the idea of Breakfast Meeting. So thanks for asking.
Abby Morton:
Well, and I think the other thing to keep in mind is that, the point of these next several episodes is to give ideas of what you could even potentially do. And every episode is not gonna resonate with every advisor. Right?
Carl Richards:
For sure.
Abby Morton:
There’s a reason that we are different as human beings, right?
Carl Richards:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
We have different personalities and different skill sets and traits. So pick the things that are unique to you. Maybe try to go a little bit outta your comfort zone and try something that’s a little challenging. I think we’re all a little bit surprised at what we’re able to do when we’re challenged. But here’s just another idea to give it a shot. I think Carl’s giving you some great even scripts that you could use in an email and find that friend who can help you get it started. And there you go.
Carl Richards:
Amen. Abby. Thanks.
Abby Morton:
Thanks.
Abby Morton:
Next time on Elementality.
Ben Stewart:
There’s a lot of success stories where people that were probably updating their net worth on an annual basis and weren’t super detail oriented with it. Really like having that updated sheet. And I think it’s really it when a couple of good examples would be we had people doing refinances and anytime you can get a personal financial statement for your client with everything on it and they can hand that to their mortgage broker or financial institution where they’re doing the refinance. It’s just very helpful.
Abby Morton:
To find out more about Elements, go to getelements.com/demo. Elementality’s executive producers are Reese Harper and Carl Richards. Elementality is produced by Tad Henderson and directed by Abby Morton. Have a good one.