The Wells Fargo Client Retention Strategy That Actually Works

Let's talk about the wine and dining game, right? So let's say, you know, Neil and I, we have people that invite us to these sports events, right? Come to this Laker game over here. Come to this Dodger game. We have the suites over here. We have the president's suite, all this stuff, right? So, and especially in the agency world, there's a wine and dining game. You have to meet the clients. You could go back and forth, especially LATAM as well, right? You got to wine and dine them even more, right? And so I want to talk about the wine and dining game and how to play it. To our preferences because some people, the way they like to play, it's like, it becomes like a whole like thing for multiple days.

Yeah. I've met a few of our competitors who are agencies and they found that pay-per-click ads produce good leads, but they're expensive and they can't make them profitable. Cold outreach hasn't worked out too well for them because most people don't want an email or a call. But when they do cold outreach to their ideal customer, and when I say ideal customer, it is the ideal company the ideal person within that company who's the decision maker, and they offer them tickets to like a Formula 1 event or whatever it may be with them. And they'll do like a box and they'll get like 20 of their ideal clients or 10 of their ideal clients and one person. They find that people are much more obliged to respond and accept it, and they close really good deals that way. I think that's really good. But the way I like the wining and dining is actually the way the banks do it. So We bank with Bank of America for our international accounts. So even though we're in the UK, Bank of America provides our UK bank account. Even though we're in Brazil, Bank of America, when I log into bankofamerica.com, I can see all our Brazil and reais, and we can do that for almost all the countries we're in. They sent our CFO because they knew he was a huge England fan to one of the World Cup games with Uh, Holland and, uh, not Holland, Netherlands. Uh, not Netherlands. Uh, Norway. Sorry. You know Holland.

Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, Netherlands versus England.

Yeah.

Right. Or Norway. Sorry. Norway and England. Right. The player was Haaland.

Yeah. Yeah. Haaland from Manchester City.

There you go. Yeah. So, and they also paid for the Marriott, uh, not Mandarin Oriental Hotel. And he just had to pay for flights for him and his wife. 2 tickets. He didn't have to interact with Bank of America or anything like that.

Yeah.

They were already a customer. We're a good customer of them. They just offered the tickets. We're about to sign a deal with Wells Fargo. We're in contract phase. Most of the contracts are already reviewed and done. So we have signing next week and they didn't try to offer us anything to try to close the deal. They already know we're closing it. We already spent a lot of money on it. They're just, dude, I just got the email the other day. Like, check this out. Dodgers. So check this out. I got an email, me and some other people on my team. They're like, hey, I want to get ahead of the next round of sports and entertainment tickets we have available here. Most are offered on first-come, first-served basis, although in some cases they request specific games or events. Okay. NHL Kings, glass seats. NFL Chargers and Rams, Wells Fargo Suite. NBA Lakers, Wells Fargo Suite and seats. MLB, you want the Dodgers and Padres, limited playoff tickets may be available. Concerts or events at Crypto.com Arena or Honda Center. They're just asking, do you want anything? Not because they're trying to get our business. They already know they have our business and they're just trying to maintain relationships. And what's cool about this, they would offer multiple tickets. It's not like I had to go and interact with some of them depending on what it is. If it's not a suite, it's not like I had to interact with people and get a sales pitch. They're like, we just want to say thank you. I like doing events that way. We've done events for some of our customers where we don't take them to games to try to win the contract, just show appreciation. And if they want to just go by themselves or whatever, no problem. Here's the tickets, go have fun.

So the way I see that is it's a retention mechanism, right? So people remember you. To me, it's like the amount of times that they see you, they remember you because it's like, oh, I actually need something. Oh, it was actually Neil that hooked me up with this thing. I should have a chat with Neil. He probably knows someone that I should talk to. Oh, we happen to know the right person. You should talk to this person on the team over here. So you— this is hard to measure. You don't know what you're going to get back from it, but you know you're going to get something back from it. 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 I got a text message the other day from one of the competing banks, and they knew we were going to move, and we showed them the offer that we got from Wells Fargo, and they weren't able to match it. But at the last minute, they messaged me saying, hey Neil, appreciate the other call earlier today. If their bank could get to X dollar amounts and Y global cash leverage covenant with addition to minimum US trailing 12-month EBITDA of Z dollars, would this impact the decision on the refinance? We're not approved on this, but we're thinking of ways that we can get to the X dollar level while still having a limit on how far US EBITDA would, or minimum on how the US EBITDA would need to be on downside scenario, right? And the difference between this current bank, which is Wells Fargo, is Wells Fargo will just operate us based on our global numbers while our current bank only operates us on the US numbers. So as we keep growing more globally, it makes it harder and harder to grow the leverage when we're having crazy growth overseas, slower growth in the United States. And I was just like, in my mind, I'm like, you had the opportunity to see this.

You

have to move, yeah. You're trying to match it now. You could have matched a month ago when we already had this conversation with you. It's at a point where it's just like, might as well just go with the person that's already adapted to me. Why would I

get

into my business with someone that I had to convince to adapt with us versus the one that's willing to adapt from day one?

This is no different than hiring. You are hiring another bank that's already willing to do so and someone else is now they're trying to do it when it's too little, too late.

Yes, and I've been having conversations with them for months about this and they weren't able to do it. And a month ago I told them, more than a month ago I told them that a competitor of theirs is, they're like, oh, we can't match it. Last minute, they're like, hey, what if we match it? And I'm like, dude, why?

This actually reminds me of when Steve Jobs handed over the reins to Tim Cook for Apple, right? He said, Tim, don't try to be like me. Don't think about what I would've done. Just do the right thing. And this is no different than how Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons operates. They want their staff to do the right thing. This person, whoever you interact with, didn't do the right thing. They tended to follow policy too much and they didn't stretch outside it. They weren't creative.

I even talked to the guy who headed up that whole division in the United States. They weren't able to do it, but now they're like, they think it's above 50% chance that they can do it. I'm like, I just think it's—

At this point, above 50% chance. Okay. I'd rather go for certainty. It doesn't make sense. So speaking of texts, Neil, so I got a text from one of our mutual friends yesterday. So we're in this chat group. Okay. So this is where I think Starting a chat group is is is cool, but we're both in this chat group, and then this person's like, "Hey, you know, by the way, this is Neil Patel. In case you don't have my number, say I'm just giving Neil's name in here." All right. I want to see if you'd be open to a catch-up call in the next few weeks. A few things I'd love to discuss. Number one, comparing notes on AI initiatives can share what we're seeing across all the enterprises we're working with. Number two, you know this AI community. I want to see what's working, what isn't working. I'm hiring someone that will help scale this this this community da da da. You know through AI transformation. Let me know if you're down to find time. You know why he sent me? this text? Why? There's no other context with the text. What, what, what is your best guess as to why he would just send me a screenshot of this text?

Who sent you the screenshot of the text?

Our mutual friend. I can't say, but yeah.

And this is just someone who just messaged him?

Yeah. We're, we're both in like this, this chat group.

I think he's just like, what the heck are people doing? Like just bored and just like talking about how terrible it is.

No, it's more so the reason why he got— so imagine he gets a text message from someone in the group. He runs the group. Okay.

Oh, it's someone from the group that's actually messaging you.

Yeah. So he takes a screenshot of the text.

It's not a random person.

No, he said, yeah, he takes a screenshot of the text and sends it over to me, right? Basically laughing at the text, right? He didn't say anything. There's no other context besides this. So what is your best guess as to why he's sending me this text screenshot?

Because he thinks the person's an idiot.

Because, I mean, partly yes, partly yes. But I'm like, dude, like, I think it's fine to start a community. I think it's fine to start a text group or whatever, but When you're trying to sell and you're acting like you're not trying to sell, people can see it. That's what I'm saying, right? It's like, don't try to say like, I'm going to try to compare notes or whatever, right? It's like, no, you're not.

Is it one of the communities that you're not allowed selling? Like kind of like a YPO?

No, it's not. It's like, imagine I started a group, right? And I have like, you know, like 10 people in it, right? Everyone does well. But when you start a group, one of the kind of unspoken words is like, don't try to start a group and then like, just try to— if you want to sell someone, like tell them on the side, like maybe you're trying to sell someone, but don't say I'm trying to compare notes or whatever. Because the moment you try to do that, like people aren't idiots. They see what you're trying to do and they don't appreciate the fact that you're beating around the bush. Just be upfront.

I think it's easier to sell if you're just direct and you say, I have something for you. It produces X. Let me show you. If it doesn't, don't waste your time with it. I think people appreciate that and they like it. When I get direct messages and someone's saying, I'm going to give you, I can do X for you and I can prove it. Here you go. It does well, but dude, you want to hear one of the worst sales pitches?

Was it when they call you brother first?

No.

Brother, brother, brother, brother. Hey bro. Hey brother.

No, but so my, one of my friends sold his house and he sold it for a pretty penny.

Is this in Las Vegas?

Yeah, it's in Las Vegas. You know who it is. Okay. So transaction happened. It was expensive home. I won't mention his name, but it was a $25 million event and he made really good profit on it.

He bought it for like $18,000?

No, way less. $15,000.

You helped too.

All right. So, so he profited a pretty sum. Let's call it 8 figures in profit. And I'm just rounding here, but so let's say 10 out of the 25 was profit. I'm making up the number. Right away someone comes to him and says, hey dude, We want to— I want to help you manage your money. Okay? And he knows this person. This person did something that was really unique or interesting in which he said, look at the people who have had the best returns, the 10 best investors. So he is like pointing out Bill Ackman and Warren Buffett and he's listing their returns and he's like, you want to know what's crazy? My returns are up there. Look at my returns. They're roughly 30%. And he's showing one client account, only one client account. He's like, I manage over $200 million, but look at this client account. I'm so good, dude, that I should be charging hedge fund fees. But because I know you, I won't even charge 2%. I'll do it for like maybe 1%. Right? And the first thing that I got from that, and he was telling me the pitch, I was like, if he's producing 30% returns, his business would naturally flourish.

Why isn't he managing more money?

Yes. A, he would manage way more money. 2, he wouldn't have to pitch that hard. And 3, you're not producing 30% returns. You just showed one account that was getting 30% returns because they owned Nvidia and some of these AI boomers. Actually show all your accounts. If you're just going to show one client account, people are going to assume you're full of crap. And you're actually not producing that. And then the big thing is they told him, dude, if you want to build another house, don't buy it with cash. You should just buy this stock over here. You can get 70% leverage and it barely moves down. So it's only moved down one time in the last 10 years. So it's very unlikely that you'd ever get a margin call. So I'm like, dude, this is so inaccurate. And I know that symbol. And I was like, this stock, you would've got a margin call this year alone if you bought the stock in January, because in March it went down more than 10% and it went up within a week later, not back to where it was, but close enough. But I'm like, when you get a margin call, you got a day or two or whatever it is. They don't give you a week or two to maybe the stock will go back because it could just keep going down. They'll just liquidate your, you know, liquidate you unless you come up with the money.

Yep.

And I was like, dude, this guy's just pitching you risk. And then he's just like, dude, I know. And he put it into ChatGPT or Claude actually of how often that stock went down more than 10%. It's a lot more than the financial advisor was saying. And I'm like, people don't understand that you can just check this stuff. This is a terrible sales pitch. I'm like, who would ever sign up for this?

Multiple things there. One, that guy's an idiot for the way he, like to expect that he can pitch someone else like that, right? He hasn't thought through his pitch, number one. So that's idiot move number one. But Idiot move number 2 is also not being direct again, right? Yes. It's trying to beat around the bush with someone that is clearly smart, that has done well for themselves. And, but this is how also how these people make money too. They will eventually find someone who's unsuspecting and, you know, be able to get their pitch through.

And idiot move number 3 that he did not disclose is people don't realize when Berkshire Hathaway buys stock in a company, a lot of times they have a different deal than a normal retail trader when they're buying large positions in corporations.

Yep.

Or maybe a Bill Ackman negotiates associated a unique deal. We as individuals do not get all the deals that they are able to get, maybe the certain class of stock or certain provisions or access to certain things.

And then you get better price too sometimes.

Correct. Because they know that if they go in and they buy 20% of your company, it's going to cause the stock price to go up. They work out unique deals. You are not getting that same deal. You can't compare, oh, look, look at my returns. We can, or we can just copy them and we'll get the same returns. It doesn't work that way.

Yep. So anyway, guys, that's it for today. And we will see you tomorrow.