Using Events to Drive Member Experience and Attracting New Members with Steve Ramerini

Hello and welcome to Mastermind Mastery, the podcast for professionals who want to create and run successful peer advisory councils, or as we call them, PACs for short, or they're also known as peer groups or business mastermind groups. I'm your host, Tina Corner Stolz, founder of Elix Council, where I've been in the industry running groups since 2005 and now help those like you with education, certification, and support wanting to do the same. At one time, I ran 10 groups, nearly 100 members, and sold my groups for a good multiple and recently released my second book, Your Seat at the Table: How to Create and Run Your Own Peer Advisory Councils, published by Forbes, and grateful to you that it's an Amazon bestseller. I invite you to join each week where we share strategies and techniques to successfully launch and become a master of running your PACTs. You'll hear insights, perspectives, do's and don'ts, learn from my and my guests' mistakes, successes, and get the inside track to key takeaways. Each time we have a guest, we'll be having a bit of fun.

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Let's get going and dive into today's episode. Hello and welcome to Mastermind Mastery, the podcast for professionals who want to create and run—

Welcome everyone to another episode of Mastermind Mastery. I'm your host Tina Corner Stolz, and today we have a very good topic that can really help you grow your memberships and increase your member experience. And we're going to talk about this with my guest today Steve Remerini, and Steve is the founder of Compel CEOs out of Long Island. And so, Steve, welcome to the show today.

Thank you, Tina. It's good to see you again.

Yeah, you too. And Steve and I have known each other for years. I very much respect what he has built, and he has a great deal of experience. And I would like for him, Steve, for you to share a little bit about tell the audience today, our listeners, a little bit about how did you get into this business and also a little bit about kind of the type of groups that you do. And then we're going to dive into the topic about events. But first, tell about a little bit about your background.

So I was first introduced to peer groups when I was a corporate and commercial lender, and one of my clients invited me to a meeting And there was a fantastic speaker. And then his fellow members of his board or his group started getting up and describing their experiences and how they've helped each other and how others have helped them to improve their business. And, and I was sort of hooked at that point, but because I didn't technically own a business, I couldn't become a member of those groups, but I could be an associate member. So I did that and about, 7 years later, when I had left banking, I was getting like emails about if I was interested in starting a group or running a group. And I, I replied and they actually had a group that someone was retiring from. So I took that over and probably 13 years later I find myself with 5 groups and, you know, like 67 members or so, but they didn't all sort of fit into this square, you know, hole that was made by this other company.

Right.

Um, so I've, I've been doing this since 1999 and the last 10 years I've been doing it as Compel CEOs. Uh, and I sort of customized the experience, uh, and gave the members the opportunity to decide how frequently they wanted consulting coaching sessions and the number of speakers that they wanted to see in a given year. And, you know, start and finish times and stuff like that. I gave them a lot of flexibility. And so what has happened is that, that business has grown now into 6 groups. I run 3 of them for business owners. We have someone that runs what we call our Next Gen Group, which is targeting sons and daughters of business owners. And then we, we have geographic groups in different parts of the country. One, well, not really parts of the country. New York City is one. And down in like the Miami to Fort Lauderdale area is another area that we're, we've, we've gone into with a couple of former members who've retired to do that. So it's, it's been an interesting ride. And the groups that I run, as I said, they're, they're CEO business owners And they range in size from $1 million to $500 million in annual revenue. So we have different types of boards depending upon where the, uh, business owner is in their development.

Mm-hmm.

Not so much based upon revenues, but more or less based upon what their focus is on a daily basis. Is it more geared towards strategies or more still involved with tactics?

Right.

And, uh, so that's That's kind of an overview of Commpel.

Great. And that's a very important distinction, even though that's not our topic today, but how groups are put together really more based on the sophistication, their experience, kind of what they're focused on, if they can be— how much percentage is tactical versus strategic and vice versa, because it matters. That's what really matters, right? When they're— when you're putting the right fit peers so they feel like peers together.

And so far, yeah, what's the focus and what are they concentrating on so that they can help each other? Um, and, and you're not constantly always talking about, well, we have to gain customers, we have to gain customers, we have to gain customers, you know.

Exactly. And so tell the audience today, how did you start with events? And so how did that start and what has been like the evolution now? What does it look like today?

Sure. So you, you might say that we run several events on a monthly basis because we bring speakers in about 10 months a year. So every month we have multiple speaker presentations. But in terms of bigger events that are designed for marketing, we do one major event a year, which we call our Economic and Business Summit. And then throughout the year, utilizing the speakers that we brought in to present and do workshops with our existing groups, we will do cocktail receptions. The one major event, the summit, prior to COVID, we had 200 people show up and we only had about 60 members at that point in time in our groups. Since that, we've added groups and whatnot. But after COVID, you know, it's been, you know, getting back to that number. And what we found is a lot depends upon the speaker you bring in.

Mm-hmm.

And so every other year we tend to bring in the same organization. More recently, it's been different speakers from that organization. It's, it's a, it's a research house that specializes in trends and economics. Mm-hmm. And my groups have been seeing these presentations from this company since August of 2001. And so we, as I said, we bring 'em in every other year. Now the, the founders of the company are aging out, and so they have younger economists that come in. But that is both from a member standpoint, from our group members, also to potential members, and especially to our sponsors. They look forward to, to that event because The, the conversation is never just straightforward that this is where the economy is and this is why the economy is. They actually compare and contrast multiple measures and multiple economic and socioeconomic, you know, trends to come up with where they're at. And so that's why, you know, it's a, it's a great topic. It's interesting to the members. And so we, we get a good turnout for those type of events. Basically, what are the members of our groups? What are they interested in? You know, and that's, that's number one for me. Then I look at what might drive potential members to these groups. And then finally, is this something that a sponsor can get on board with? Because these, these speakers do tend to be expensive. Sure. And you know, you, so we, we supplement the cost with these sponsors. And we're also looking for the sponsors to bring potential members with them to these events. So it has to be somewhat attractive. But what drives it is first our members, what our members are looking for. And then, you know, business owners are not that different. If it appeals to our members and our business owners, it should appear to prospective members who are business owners, of course.

And so with the The sponsorship piece, let's just briefly talk about that, which is, um, you know, you kind of emphasize that sponsors, you would want them to bring guests with them, you know, because that just, right, contributes to your prospect funnel for Right Fit members. Um, but can you talk a little bit about, like, do you— how do you manage the sponsorship? And they pay, and do they get some airtime at the event? Or, you know, so how do you construct that sponsorship package?

So yes, we have different levels of sponsorship, and what we do is we attach certain, uh, privileges, if you will.

Mm-hmm.

Um, you know, for you to get up and have an infomercial before you introduce the speaker, or possibly you will sit and participate on a panel where you'll be able to show your own wares, but also, you know, discuss what it is that you're firm does. Sometimes it's sponsoring a dinner with the speaker either the night of or the night before the event so that it's more of a, a private event. Sometimes it's, it's a book signing exclusively only for their clients. Sometimes it's a workshop that they would like to put on. So we've, we've, we try to mix it up so that it's not the same old, same old. All the time. And we, we've had one particular law firm that's been with us now. This was our 11th summit that we've done. He's been a sponsor every year, and he's done, um, solo presentations of workshops. He's done joint presentations of workshops with the CPA firm. He's sat on a number of panels. Uh, he's been a part of a marketing piece that we did where he was interviewed along with The Economist in the same sort of space and same timeframe. So he's done a lot and he's gotten a lot of recognition. So, you know, that's sort of the things that appeal. Sometimes the speakers have books and we will, you know, put, depending upon the level of sponsorship, we'll say that this book is a gift from this sponsor or that sponsor as part of our our summit. So we try to come up with things that are appealing to them. And then of course, depending upon what level they're going to come in at, we've customized packages in the past for our sponsors. Whether it be, you know, I want to come in and present to the group on a specific topic, whether it be a tax law change or maybe it's trust and estate planning, it could be any number of things. But, you know, we, we work with the sponsors to try and give them as much benefit out of it as possible. And also it encourages them to bring more guests. And we, we have to sometimes give them a lot of guidance as to the type of guests we would like them to bring. But it, in the end, we feel it's worth it. And everybody walks away feeling that they got something out of it. You know, the true test is will they come back and sponsor again? And we've had, we've had pretty good success with that. Okay. Yeah.

And how many sponsors would you typically kind of manage to, and did you find like there's, there is a limit of too many sponsors?

Well, we always say that, you know, we're only gonna have a certain number of this sponsorship level, a certain number of at this sponsorship level. And of course we say if you wanna be exclusive, meaning you wanna be the only bank, Well, you know, we'll talk to you about that because we've had in the past as many as 4 banks and 2 law firms and a couple of accounting firms, and we managed to make it work. So, you know, in terms of how do we keep them happy, we, we go out of our way to keep them happy and keep on, keep them coming back. But we do tend to, you know, limit Like we'll have one platinum sponsor, we might have two gold sponsors. We limit the, the number of sponsors in a particular category so that we never have more than, let's say, five or six. And maybe only three or four, probably no more than three most of the time will actually get up in front of the audience and be able to, you know, have an infomercial because they've spent a little bit more. And we also offer you know, display tables or expo tables.

Okay.

So that if you want, they can, you know, man the tables. But typically there's time, you know, before the event formally starts to do networking. They seem to enjoy that. And, there's always a meal or a break or something where they can network even a little bit more.

So, well, that brings me to like the other question I was gonna ask is, can you talk a little bit about when do you typically have it? Everything from time of year to time of day to day of week, and how long does it go? So what have you found?

So, so we, we do our annual summit in the fall, sometime between, uh, the second week in October to the first week in November. And we started that because we bring this economist in on even years, which tend to be election years.

Mm-hmm.

So we like to have it before election day because everybody wants to know, well, who's gonna win the election and what's the impact gonna be to my particular business? And is, yes, you know, am I gonna be happy or I'm not gonna be happy? So we keep it within that timeframe. We usually start registration very early in the morning, like quarter to 8, because we want them to have a good hour of networking and, and breakfast. And then we start the formal program around 9:15. And nowadays, you know, 90 minutes for a speaker presentation or a keynote. And sometimes we have 2 keynotes and then we'll do lunch. So formally we're done by 2 o'clock. We did something very interesting though this year, and it went a little bit longer, and that was we had a deal tank. Where we had, and it happened to have been one of our member companies was starting a new venture and they presented their business plan and what the, you know, the amount that they were trying to raise. And we set up judges and one of the judges and the moderator actually was someone who was a sponsor, a corporate securities attorney who actually founded an entity that has been doing, it's called the Capital Alliance. They've been doing biz tanks or deal tanks or shark tanks, whatever you'd like to call them for probably 20 years. So we had an expert as the moderator and this particular company walked away with tremendous, uh, input and evaluation. Um, and I heard that not only from the company that presented, I heard it from the judges and I heard it from the people who attended. So, you know, This past year, the, well, a couple weeks ago actually, the summit went till about 2:30, 3 o'clock.

Mm.

Okay. Which is one of the longer ones we've ever had. You know, we try to, you know, end it before 2, including lunch. And sometimes it, we've ended by 1 because what we found is that people wanna get back to the office or their plant or whatever. And so you can't keep them for, you know, the whole day.

Too long, right? So do you charge your members or not? And then do you charge guests like prospects or not?

So there's no charge to members. There's no charge if you are a valid prospect. The only time we'll charge anyone is if they're in conflict with our sponsors. And the sponsors understand we're trying to protect them. So like, if we might have 2 banks sponsor, if a banker from another bank decides that they would like to attend the event because they wanna network and, and so on and so forth, we will charge them several hundred dollars to attend just as if they were going to a presentation by the keynote speaker. And so that's a way of, you know, deflecting, you know, people who are just coming in to network. So basically, it's included in our member dues. And prospects are prospects. It's a way of getting them in the room.

So I would love, as we're kind of entering into sort of the last part of the topic, which is, you know, what have you seen as the benefit? There's obvious benefits, but kind of some of the benefits or some of the stories you've seen by you doing this event where you're bringing all your members together, right, in one place to collaborate, etc., and learn. So what have you seen and about how it impacts like your member experience? And then I would love to transition to thoughts about how has it helped you like gain new members as well? Because to me, it obviously will do that as, you know, as a no-brainer, right?

Well, the idea is normally the members are meeting with the same group every month. So this is an opportunity to meet other members who've been with us longer or shorter periods of time. So they get to, they get to meet the other members and see who else we have. Maybe they can make a connection to do business with one another, but also to share experiences and so forth. The other, you know, benefit to the members is they are getting, even though they, they might get a speaker, a keynote speaker doing a workshop 10 times a year, this is a higher level keynote speaker.

Mm-hmm.

You know, and they could charge as much as twice what a normal speaker would charge for 4 or 5 presentations. Mm-hmm. So they're getting a better, you know, a better level of presentation, if you will. And the speakers usually are— what I'm finding usually are published authors. So they're getting a handbook on the presentation as well.

Nice.

In terms of how it, how it's helped us, like through the year I mentioned, we, we will do cocktail receptions. And if we have a sponsor of the cocktail reception, they're not charged to be a sponsor. Their only requirement is to bring potential members to the, to the meeting. And in those instances, the speakers that are doing the 3-hour workshops are now doing like a half an hour to 45 minutes. And what, what happens is one thing is obviously gets more brand awareness. It gets more, you know, our name out there in the marketplace more. We were only able to do one this past year and it resulted in 3 new members.

Hmm.

That's excellent.

Right. And typically what we find is from the, you know, summit, you know, one year we had about 45 potential targets come in. All right. Now, you know, you have to weed through them and you have to go through them. And we learned from that that we have to be much more specific with, with the sponsors. So like the next year dropped in half, but it was a better quality. Candidate. So we're getting our name out there. That's one way it helps, whether it be the summit or these cocktail receptions. And, you know, it does lead to membership. We find with the summit, it's probably in some regards easier because they're mixing with existing members and those members become your ambassadors and they help, you know, they help persuade others. And we've had instances where members have gotten up in the middle of a presentation and called a friend of theirs, and the friend shows up at the meeting. So it, you know, it also raises the awareness of your members that this is a good offering and why not share it. So that's the third way it kind of helps out with the recruit side.

Well, and so in thinking about this, the other thing I think that the listeners would sort of want to know is when do you start planning for this? So as we kind of start to wrap up here, that would kind of be a good thing of like, how far out do you plan? How much kind of work does it sort of entail? So any do's and don'ts and suggestions that if anyone that's listening is thinking, I really have been thinking about doing this and I wanna do this. And what would you, what would you say?

I'll, I'll try and keep it brief. When we, when we first started doing summits, we would take like a month or 2 or 3 off. Now we start planning for the next summit the day of this summit, like at registration, like, what could we do better? How could we make it smoother? What sort of technology do we employ next year? And the speaker, like, we already lined up our speaker for next year. And we have candidates for the year after that because these speakers, you know, you, you have to get them on your calendar at least a year in advance. So that kind of drives it. And the other thing that's helped is I, I, I have two daughters and I have a son. Both of my daughters work with me in the business, one more so than the other, cuz the other is just doing this part-time. She has a full-time job. But my youngest daughter Jamie works with me all the time. And she screens the speakers and she helps put together the, you know, sponsorship packages and she works with the sponsors. But we've learned that nowadays after, after COVID, budgets are tighter. And so we have to get those sponsorship packages out probably within 3 months of the end of our existing summit. So like 9 months before the summit, we've gotta start building up those sponsors. And a year at least, we've gotta lock in the speakers. Finding a venue really hasn't been that much of an issue because there's always a country club or some other catering facility that could accommodate us, a large ballroom at a hotel.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, but it, what, what is important is that you get to the sponsors before they're out of money and budget, and you lock in the speakers early and the rest will follow. What we found is after someone's been a sponsor for a few years, they'll come to us with ideas as to what they would like to do as a sponsor. For the cocktail events, you know, we have the speakers in any way. It, it's just really a matter of how much we can handle. And so you need really dedicated support staff for this, because if you're gonna do it all on your own, you're not gonna be able to do as much.

No. That's exactly right.

And, you know, line up good quality vendors, whether it be the AV vendor or the location that you're gonna have this at. You know, because that, you know, the more professional they are, the, the more professional you're gonna look.

Mm-hmm.

Right? Mm-hmm. And I, I think just be genuine and don't try to oversell. Let the product, let the speaker, the event, sell you. And that's what we've done for the most part.

Yeah, because it should. So when you've taken that time to plan and you're professional about it and your members are there, it's automatically going to come together. You know, people will want to be part of that community because they see how special it is, right? When everybody comes together.

And the members— it's amazing. The members get very juiced with that.

They—

it's like they're part— now they are really part of Compel or whatever organization.

Well, they think of it as now this is like my group. They take a personal, right, interest and ownership to it. And so the very last thing that I want to ask you is what advice— and this could be any advice in general, because you've run groups for so long, or it could be advice about you're thinking about doing this event, a large event. Would you give our listening audience?

I think as far as events go, if you're just doing it for the first time, reach out to your constituency. And when I say constituency, I'm not just talking about your, your current members, your current clients, but also, you know, your, your contacts within the greater community and bounce it off of them. You know, because they've probably gone to many, many more of these and, you know, can help you in terms of what they've seen work and what they've seen that has not worked. Be open to that suggestion. You don't have to take it all, you know, but be open to those suggestions because that's how we've been able to, to grow our events is by listening to our, our greater constituency and not trying to, you know, work under the belief that we know it all and, you know, we are the experts. So learn from others. And I, I think if you ask for their help, people are more than willing to help you out. And as you said, take ownership.

Great advice. Don't try and do it on your own. And as well. And so we could have dived even deeper into a lot of the nuances of an event. I trust that this gives everybody that's listening today enough to get going. But if somebody did want to contact you, Steve, how should they be able— how should they reach you? What would they do?

Sure, I'll give you my email address because I'm always on the computer anyway. It doesn't matter what time, day or night. It's stever@compelceos.com.

Excellent.

I try to make it as easy as possible.

Right.

And so again, thank you for sharing your time and your wisdom. Today about events. And, you know, takeaways are just, first of all, the benefits to your members of gaining new members, of just additional value for your member experience, and a way to do it where, you know, the burden expense-wise is not on you, and how you can get the system down, and even just the length of your event and once a year, etc. All of that very helpful information. So Again, today, um, to all of you out there, thanks for joining another episode of Mastermind Mastery, and we look forward to connecting with you next week. And until then, go make it happen.

Hey, moderators of groups, thank you so much for listening to today's podcast. To get access to today's show notes and exclusive content and resources, visit TinaCornerStolz.com/podcast. Or lxcounsel.com, where you can also become part of an exclusive online community, attend our academy, or get free resources, templates, checklists, and more. And you can even contact me there as well. So if this episode resonated with you and you know someone who can also benefit from listening, please share with them by taking a screenshot and even posting on your social media. I also love reviews and appreciate I appreciate hearing from each of you, those actually doing this wonderful work. Please tune in next week for another episode of Mastermind Mastery. And I'll close by sharing something my mentor did after every learning moment. He shared a shiny pebble from his pocket with anyone he passed knowledge to and asked them to forward that pebble knowledge on. So now I encourage you to go pass on a pebble, the takeaways what you learned today to either your existing groups or fellow peers. Now, go make it a great one.