Ep. 2997: How to Grow Your Revenue With Dinners & Live Events
Eric Siu and Neil Patel break down how to use dinners and live events to close deals. They cover guest curation, invitation wording, agenda design, and follow-up tactics, plus share stories of clients they've landed from events and how to handle sponsorships and promotion.
Chapters
So I'm going to talk about how to grow your revenues by throwing dinners, because again, webinars, conferences, dinners, they go a long way, especially if you're in B2B. It crushes for closing because you're actually building relationships and relationships go a long way. People remember how you made them feel. That is the saying. And so I've been doing dinners for a very long time. Neil comes to a lot of these dinners and I think I've got it pretty down pat now.
Yeah.
I've been doing them probably start of 26 years old or so, and now I'm 39. I've been doing it 13, 14 years or so. And I'll give you a couple of things that work for me when I throw these dinners to have a good one. One, the very first dinner that I threw was directors of marketing and CMOs, because I wasn't like an entrepreneur yet. I was still like 26 years old. And so my thing is, if you're going to throw a dinner, always make sure that the people are around the same level, because you can't invite like an intern and then invite like an entrepreneur and then invite like a director. It just You're not gonna talk about the same things and people are gonna hate you for that. So you gotta curate a really good group of people.
Okay.
Ideally you feed them. Ideally you're the one paying for it. The first time I was broke, so we only had a half-eaten bag of chips. And so we're just sharing my, my, I think it was like a, you know, Lay's potato chips.
That's cool though. Something's better than nothing.
Well, they loved it. They loved it. The key thing is the content. Going back to the content again, right? You talk about make sure the topics are good. So let's say, Neil, you came to the dinner, you had to bring the Who you are, what you do, and then one thing you're— what are you struggling with right now? And also like the best marketing hack that you have right now, right? Everyone likes hacks.
Wait, can we, can we go back a little bit?
Yeah.
You decide if you want to do a group, the group could be like CMOs or directors or VPs or even just entrepreneurs, because I'm assuming you've done entrepreneur ones too.
All the time. Yeah.
And some of them are related to a specific category like D2C or some of them are just broad.
Yeah.
How do you Okay, you got the list. Let's say you're going after VPs. How do you know who to invite? Because there's so many people in companies. And how do you get at those people if someone's not well networked like you are? Because when you first started off, you weren't well networked. No offense.
No network.
Yeah. And you got access to these people and you got them to come to dinner. So what's the process for that?
Yeah, great question. So I'll give you an example. This was maybe 1 or 2 years after I did the first one, right? But there's this one dinner where I remember I got 3 customers from it and I did this in SF, right? So we had, This always works, especially if you're— you have agency clients or software clients. So you invite 3 or 4 or 5 customers. So half the group is your customers. The other half is people that you'd like to, that you're targeting, right? And then what you do is you say, hey, this is going to be a CMO dinner. It's going to be, it's a private dinner. Always say private. People, for whatever reason, private gets them, right? So it's a private dinner. It's going to be CMOs. It's invite only. It's amazing people. Here's who's coming so far. Are you in, right? I got one spot for you. Are you in? So it makes it seem super exclusive and they feel really special, right?
And you do this over email?
I do this over email. Yeah. And it always, I always, so I might overextend a little bit and invite like maybe 15 or 20 people, but I'm aiming for 10 really at the end of the day. I always end up filling it. Does that make sense?
I'm a little bit confused. Maybe I misunderstood you. You're saying these are the people who are attending or invited?
These are, so I will have like 5 guaranteed that are in already. Right. And I'll say these people are in.
So how'd you get the 5 in at the beginning?
Yeah, so I, in the beginning, I started doing the podcast, right?
And then, or let me rephrase, how does someone else go get the 5 people in when they don't have a podcast and an audience?
Well, I didn't have an audience yet. I was still starting out, right? So I got the first initial 5. I said, hey, it's going to be great food. It's going to be CMOs. I didn't name who was coming yet, right? I said, this is who's— I said, it's good. This is— we're going to be at this restaurant. It's going to be these types of people that will be there. I'm handling the bill. And are you in? And then once I got 5 like bigger names to agree, then at the same time I was reaching out to other people, I'll just start to include them. And then without fail, I would be able to get 10, even though I only reached out to 15, 20 people.
Oh, so it wasn't that hard?
No.
So you, you reach out to initial group, call it like 5, 10 people. Some of them are naturally going to say yes, because you're saying these are the type of people. Once you have enough key people that said yes, you then when you're sending the remaining emails, you're starting to list the people out instead of saying these are the type of people.
Exactly. And then I say, I say, look, it's easy for you. It's a great restaurant. great people just show up and then we'll, we're going to talk about marketing, right? Or I'm starting to do these AI founder dinners in LA, which, you know, obviously you're invited, but the criteria for this one is everyone has to be good at AI and everyone has to give me their tactics, right? And I have to approve. And so that's a little different, but let me rewind. So I started doing this bag of chips and the whole agenda was basically, hey, what's your biggest marketing challenge? What's your biggest marketing hack? Who are you? What do you do type of thing, right? And then we kind of went around the table, everyone shared for like 10, 15 minutes a pop, right? And we basically gave them advice or we like ripped them apart or we shared our experiences, right? And then sometimes I'll just have like general entrepreneur dinners where it's just entrepreneurs and who you are. You've seen these, who you are, what you do, one thing you need and one thing you can offer. And then I just connect everyone afterwards. But if you start doing enough of these, people start to see you as the connector. And I just, in the beginning I used to split the bill. I just found it way easier to just pay for it. But you also, if you're starting out, maybe you can't afford to pay for it and that's okay. half-eaten bag of chips, right? So the second time we did it was I ordered Mediterranean food for everyone, right? Didn't break the bank, but at least it was a nice move from my end. But you gotta start somewhere is my main point.
How do you control the bill to make sure that it doesn't go crazy? Because people start ordering tons of drinks and all this kind of stuff.
It's a good question, Adam. Yeah. So you say, what I do is usually it's like drinks are either ordered by you, you'll take care of it. All the food ordering is I take care of it too, right?
And then you're not saying, not only do you pay for it, but you're saying you order the food yourself for everyone. Like you do family style.
I do family style.
Yeah.
But you have to build experience to get there. Like we have a mutual friend who loves ordering for everyone. I think I've just gotten used to doing that.
We have a mutual friend that loves ordering for everyone?
Yeah. Oh, maybe you're not there. Longer hair.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, yeah. He loves ordering. He always over-orders too.
I know that Always overorders. I've been to a restaurant with him in, was it Miami?
Yeah, maybe.
I think it was Miami. It was this place where it was exclusive. I could be wrong.
Zizi's.
Was it Zizi's?
No, I brought you there and I ordered.
Oh, that was you.
I ordered for everyone, yeah. Yeah, so I've gotten good at ordering for everyone.
Oh yeah, the other person is how you got the membership.
Oh yeah, yeah, we signed up together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll leave that story at that. But my point, so even there we did a dinner too, right? When you do these things eventually, like, because everyone asks me, oh, how do you build a network? That's how you build a network. And then going back to the SF dinner just to wrap this up and then we can move on to live events. I think we got 2 publicly traded companies and 1 analytics company that ended up selling to Google, I think. And that was because of that one dinner.
So that's probably Google Urchin.
No.
There's a different analytics company that sold to them as well, I believe. Looker? Looker sold to them as well, I believe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's talk about you getting clients. So you got 3 clients and how many people were roughly there?
10.
10. I'm assuming this was a high conversion rate because you remember it.
Yeah.
Higher than your normal or average.
Yeah.
What did you do to transition them from, you know, if I recall correctly, who you are, what do you do, are the questions you're asking, plus what is your biggest marketing challenge?
Biggest marketing challenge and also biggest marketing hack because it's information sharing.
Okay. Yeah. And then people are helping each other.
Yeah.
How did you transition that being at a dinner and it being casual, I'm assuming it would've been really awkward right there to be like, hey, we should work together. Let, let me get your phone number and let's pitch you. Like, I'm assuming you weren't that direct because that's not your personality.
No, no, you, you don't do that. It's, uh, so they hit you up afterwards because you remember that book Influence, the Robert Cialdini book, right?
Yeah.
So if I do you a favor, inherently you feel like you owe me something already, which is why Neil doesn't really let you buy him food often. And I don't like people buying me or doing me favors either, because then immediately I feel like I owe you, right? So the whole idea here is like, you, I just seek to give and you're the same way too. I seek to give without getting anything back and it keeps compounding because it's like, oh, what else do you need? Because I actually do follow up on the things that they're challenged with and I do try to help them. I make introductions. Eventually it's like, oh, by the way, we actually need marketing help. You know, are you the one, right? Or who can I talk to? And, you know, sometimes we can take it on, sometimes we refer it out, but it's fine. I don't have any expectations. I think you actually do a better job of this where it's like, When you did webinars, oh, scan for this one over here. If you need to talk to whatever, scan over here. I think we needed, we should in the future do a better job of just probably calling out, hey, this is Single Grain that actually sponsored this. Yeah. Yeah. Right?
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah.
And then when you got those 3 businesses to pay you, did it take a long time to close them?
Those actually all happened in less than a year.
That's pretty quick because it's outbound, or I look at it as outbound. You're building relationships and networking.
And then I will say one of those that closed, that person went to another publicly traded company and followed us, and then went to another company that raised a bunch of money and followed us. So she followed us 2 more times after that.
A large chunk of our clients are from employees who change jobs, and they were, we were working with them at the previous company. That is actually how we have gotten a lot of our clients. Another interesting point of view is we have a, We're a small company. I consider it small. You know, people consider 9 figures depending on what country you're in, a large corporation. I consider that small.
In America.
Yeah, because you look at like Nvidia and just, it's like, okay, even if I got to a billion in revenue, which I'm not at, I would start becoming a small large company in my eyes, right? Because you look like Nvidia or Google. I was looking at Google's earnings. They do over $300 billion a year in revenue. If I got to a billion and I don't know if I'll get there, One, yeah, one 300th of a percent. It's just like, and by the time I get there, what are they going to do? $700 billion, you know, maybe even more. One of the ways we get it, because we have 1,000+ people, that's small in comparison to Google, NVIDIA, you know, the list goes on and on.
Microsoft has 250K and they've cut some, but yeah, 250K. Yeah.
We're so tiny compared to them. And when you look at it, some of our employees, leave to work at other clients and corporations, and then it actually solidifies our relationship with that company that is paying us, and then we make more money over time, or they hop around to another company, or they left and like, hey, I want to go corporate instead of agency side, and then they hire us.
Yeah. Let me ask you this. This is a side question. How often do people boomerang back to MV Digital? Like they leave and they come back. You see it happen decent amount?
No, the really good people, we try not to let go.
Of course not.
Yeah. The average people, let's not even talk about the bottom performers. Every organization, I don't care what size you are, there's always people who are your A players, B players, C players, and then you shouldn't have anything under C, but people tend to, especially when you get large. We try to keep our A players forever. When you want to talk about like C players specifically, some of them go other places or even some of the B players or B- players more specifically, and not a big portion, but a good chunk, call it like 15, 20%, try to come back after a few years. And we tend not to rehire B players and C players.
Yeah.
If an A player leaves and wants to come back, we will rehire an A player.
That's what I'm asking. How often do A players leave and then come back?
I don't, I can't recall when we've had an A-player leave. Okay.
Well, that's great. Then you do a great— that's another thing we should talk about, how you retain these A-players.
It's actually a cheat code and I don't know how to retain them. The cheat code is, is I hire really good executives, like a good CEO who runs the organization. I let them run it their way. I stay in my lane. Like I work more on the software side than the agencies that I work with.
I'm not talking about— On your side?
And M&A, but when I say like M&A, there's not that much time I can spend on M&A on a daily basis.
You're saying you don't really get involved on the people side?
I don't get really involved in people side, but on the agency side, I do get involved with clients and work, but I don't get involved in like day-to-day operations being like, this is how you should do your job better, or this is what you could be doing. Like I try not to meddle too much because what I've learned is I have my way of doing things. And I may believe that my way's right. Other people have their way of doing things and they may think their way's better than my way, but if they get the job done just as efficient as me, produce the same amount of results, who the heck cares? Why should I meddle in the first place? All that's going to do is just create friction. And because I stay out and the CEO tends to work with people he's worked with in past organizations that have been top performers.
There's a relationship there.
Yes. And he takes care of them. So they'll come and it's very unlikely that they leave.
That's good. All right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or a global organization. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more, and we'll see you on the other side. So live events, I just did a live event. Okay, so here's how to grow your revenue using live events. So just did a live event.
Wait, do you want to clarify live event being a conference?
Conference, yes, like a user conference. And you got these 2, I want to hear from you.
Not a live webinar.
Yeah, not a live webinar. Okay, so here's how you grow your revenue using live conferences or live even user conferences. So we both have experience shares here. So the recent one I did was more of me assisting YPO. And that one was 100, call it 185 people that showed up and then we did it in Miami. So I will just say that of that one, we probably I think we added 4 deals from that one, maybe, and maybe 6 in the pipeline or something like that. And that wasn't the intention, but that's just, it happens like that. You know what I mean? Or there's a bunch of agencies that want to partner up. There's this guy that does direct mail. He wants to do something. I'm sure we're going to do something. So there's a lot of angles here.
By the way, Eric's not dumb. He knows that even though that wasn't his intention, one of the reasons he partnered up is because he knew that it would also generate business.
Yeah. Which is why I was okay not getting paid for it. And I'm okay with all the profits going to YPO and I was okay even sponsoring my own event and, you know, paying partially for my own ticket and that type of thing. And because I knew the long-term benefits would accrue, right? And so the way to look at webinars or live events or dinners is that sometimes it might not happen immediately. It's going to— sometimes it's going to be delayed. But everything we've done, like the relationship Neil and I have, it's been 14 years or so. We've learned over the years, even though we might not be the best with people management, both of us, is that everything comes down to people at the end of the day. And if you can control the event, the agenda You can control the activities and all those things. You become the node and everyone looks to you, just like when you're hosting your own dinners and your own webinars. But I want to know from your side too, you do these events internationally, right? These live events.
Yeah, we call them conferences, but yes, we do conferences globally. And I actually understand what you mean by live events because conferences is a bad term, not a bad term, but not an accurate term because a version we do, 2 types of live events. One is a conference like you and I speaking at HubSpot's conference. The second is we'll invite our clients and potential clients and we'll give a presentation, a network, maybe provide some drinks or pastries depending on the time of the day. I just did one in France. It was morning, so it was pastries and like juice and stuff like that. But when I do it in Brazil, it tends to be more in the evening. So it'll be like alcohol and appetizers.
Okay. Great. So look, and we'll just give you a couple of tips because we did for webinars and dinners, and we can finally move on here. So when I do my conferences, one, we try to do it at a nice spot. So that was on the St. Regis on the beach in Belle Harbor in Miami. It was a nice spot, right? We tend to just try to make the food buffet style, but more importantly, it's the quality of the conversation. So we try to leave a lot of room for networking. So we had this speed networking thing in the very beginning where everyone was networking for like 5 minutes a pop. And then we do leave a lot of room for breaks for people to talk to each other. And then more importantly, If you're going to try to draw people to your events, usually you want to have a really good topic. And what is a good topic usually is if you can get the latest marketing speakers, because this is a marketing conference and they'll talk about the latest things such as AI. That is how this event ended up breaking records from all the previous events that happened. I think it was a big part was one, it was Miami, but 2, the speakers were really good and that's related to topical relevance.
Yep.
Yeah.
What do you end up doing with The contact records after, because I've seen your emails.
Yeah.
So when you're doing a co-event with people, you negotiate, or when someone's doing an event and you're speaking, you try to negotiate where you can get access to the email list or they send a blast depending on the privacy laws and the locations of the individual. But what do you typically do in that email blast? Because I've seen you generate revenue from that.
We couldn't do much with this one. We did send an email and I even got in trouble for this one still, but we did send an email saying, hey, here are the slides. If you want to catch up at any time, just let me know type of thing. It wasn't saying book a call with my agency. or whatever, right? And even in our goodie bag, we had this little thing. It's like, because we didn't have like any physical thing to give away, but I'm like, okay, well, we can put something in there. It was just a card to say, okay, here's like a free trial or something like that. But that was basically it. And that actually did generate calls. So, but I, someone complained to me that I was soliciting for business and I'm like, but I just shared my slides and I said, thank you for coming to the event. Here's the slides. And then like, you know, feel free to reach out if you need anything. My co-champion Jesse did the same thing as well, but I got in trouble for it.
So, ah, yeah. And Tim also got in trouble too. That one was funny.
Did he?
Tim Soulo, remember?
What did he do?
For Ahrefs? Because he was, they said he was too promotional.
Oh yeah, dude. That, that, I don't know, man. It's like, it's like, where do you draw the line then?
Like, and he also paid to sponsor.
Yeah. Like, and he flew all the way from Ukraine. Or not, sorry, not Ukraine. Singapore.
Singapore. Singapore.
Singapore. Singapore. Yeah.
I'm with you. I'm like, Tim, you paid for it. Who cares what they say? You promote as much as you want because at the next white people marketing event, they'll want you to sponsor.
Like also don't treat a member like this that did this for free and put in all this heart and soul, like effort while like, you know, he was going through family stuff too. And so he just left me with a really bad taste.
By the way, he has a really cool kids' book. If you have kids, check out Ahrefs' kid book. I don't know if you can buy it or where to get it. Hit up Tim Soulo if you want it. Tim, I'm sorry for all the mentions or people hitting you up from this, but it is a cool kids' book. I don't know if they'll send you one. I thought it was really cool. They're competitors, so for me to say that, I do genuinely like Tim. I don't know the founder, but I love Tim, and I thought the book was really—
Hit Tim Soulo up on Twitter or X. He's very responsive, and I had Brazilian food with him afterwards, after we did a podcast. It was funny. We debated about AI, and then we went to eat Brazilian food, so yeah. Okay, all right, you pick the next one. That was almost a 50-minute topic.
The next one's pretty quick. Did you see the stats on Google AI overviews on Search Engine Land? No. There was a case study that they had. Did you know that AI overviews, because typically they're always at the top, right? And I think it was only 2% of the time they weren't at the top. It's now shifted to 12.4% of the time AI overviews are not position 1.
They're trying to shift it below the sponsored ads?
Not necessarily sponsored ads. They're trying to shift it to what they think is going to benefit people the most.
Okay.
It's like showing people also ask at the top or where are they putting it? Sometimes depending on the query type, an overview may be helpful. Maybe they're not sure. So then they may— I bet you they're trying to figure out, should we show AI overviews even if it may not be the exact thing, but just put it somewhere in the middle?
Yeah.
Versus always showcasing it at the top.
Dude, it's fascinating. Yesterday, because I opened my mom's phone, right? There's some stuff I need to take care of. And I opened these AI overviews. It was in Chinese. I was like, whoa, like they're getting ahead of it. They're pretty all over. I'm like, the fact The fact that they have it for Chinese already means that it's, it's, they're very serious about it.
Yes.
Yeah. Well, okay. I mean, I don't really have much to say besides like, yeah, that makes sense because Google tests a lot, but other than that, I don't have a reaction. No.
But going back to Google, I was talking with Steve, you know, from My Wife Quit Her Job. Is it My Wife Quit Her Job?
MyWifeQuitHerJob.com. Yeah. Yeah.
So he has a podcast. I was on his podcast earlier.
Steve Chu. Yeah.
Good guy. And we were talking about Google AI Overviews and AI mode and how Google is going to adapt. And, you know, I know you and I are on the same page. We don't think ChatGPT is going to kill Google, but we also don't think Google is going to kill ChatGPT. We think it's going to coexist just like, you know, YouTube, Instagram, Snap, TikTok, etc. But we were talking about AI mode and Google AI Overviews, and a lot of people have been discussing this and they're just like, what do you think the platform is going to be for search? And I was like, well, if you really look at it, There's an app. You can have the ChatGPT app or a Google app. It really is just a box or a bar, and you're just typing in your search query or prompt. And it doesn't matter what you want to call it, a prompt and a search query or a keyword that you're typing in, it's the same thing. The only thing that's different is it's evolved in which a keyword could be more descriptive or a sentence, and the platform is now able to answer it thoroughly and accurately, or much more accurately than they could before. And I was like, I don't think it's going to— and I'm curious in your take. I don't think it's going to be AI mode, right? Which was a version of ChatGPT or a traditional search result with 10 blue links or a part blue links with AI overviews. I believe Google with the technology they have and even ChatGPT, they're sophisticated enough to figure out what you're typing in, what you're looking for to be satisfied, and they'll adjust the type of view and the screen and how they display everything. whether it's like an AI mode or traditional result or a hybrid with AI overviews versus this is going to be the default view. Because if you're just looking for the weather in Los Angeles, California, or 2 2, do you really care for the 10 blue links?
No, right? Yeah. And to that point, they've been doing that. They've been going in that direction already. And now when you search emojis, you can actually— it'll show it in like the top, right? And so I think where you're going with this is every experience is going to be customized just with how all this technology is going. And that's how B2B marketing has been going too. Like people talk about ABM, like that's just personalization, but everybody wants personalization. And the technology has gotten there now where everyone has a high-speed connection. And, you know, everyone's using tokens now to generate all these different results. And it's the costs are getting cheaper too. So why would you not just have a personalized result for everyone, which then— Also will continue to decrease website traffic.
Yes, but the conversion data that everyone's showcasing, whether it's Ahrefs or some of the graphs that I put out on my X profile, the conversion data to visitor ratio is through the roof. Like the conversions are not as much as organic search, but it's getting up there like half to more than half. And the visitor count is, call it like 1/20th. So it's showing that The conversions is through the roof. So even if your traffic goes down, you need to optimize to be included in these LLMs because it's driving a lot of revenue.
You know, that I think last week we talked about this $30 billion a year revenue company that reached out and they were like, yeah, well, we saw this article that was listed in Perplexity and it was tied to one of our blog posts about agentic workflows or whatever. And I don't know, it just goes to show you that Behavior is changing. And because again, it came through Perplexity, which cited one of the blog posts.
So, and to clarify, Eric's at $30 billion. It's a massive-sized corporation and they're hitting him up trying to work with him all because of an article found on an LLM platform.
Yeah. All right, guys. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.
