Have you ever wished for a more natural, fun way to connect with your audience.

In an era where the webinar is slowly dying and “discovery calls” have much to be desired, the paradigm will shift again.

Enter Greig Wells.

Greig is the best selling author of "Dare to Succeed" which he co-wrote with Jack Canfield of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. He is a seasoned marketer with an impressive track record, having collaborated with high-profile figures such as Ryan Levesque, Dan Henry, Anik Singal, and Russell Brunson.

And during the pandemic noticed that he was getting crazy traction by simply hosting online forums where people could form an actual connection with one another and the host.

I was so inspired by talking to Greig that I’ve started doing virtual happy hours with my audience and already see how much fun this can be for all that participate.

Links

Discover Virtual Dinner Parties: virtualdinnerparty.com

Register for my Virtual Happy Hour: https://www.adamliette.com/virtual-happy-hour

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Activate The Warrior Within https://www.adamliette.com/awaken-the-warrior

Transcript

Adam Liette
What's going on smooth operators, welcome to another show hope you're having an absolutely amazing week, killing it and whatever you're doing, you know, I know we often enter into our week with this laundry list. If you're anything like me, like you have this laundry list of stuff you want to do. And by the end of the week, you either crush it all or you still got a whole list remaining for next week. Nothing wrong with that, except, you know, it kind of leads to that feeling of did I accomplish, dude, you did accomplish something. And here at the end of the week, you're listening to this show, take that moment to celebrate the fact that you did accomplish what you were after, even if it's not everything. We're very famous US entrepreneurs for putting too much on our plate. I think that's there's something to be said for that. That's probably a whole nother aside is recorded an episode of that. But often what I found is, by the end of the week, you saw that list of things that you're doing, you saw that list of things that you want to accomplish. And sometimes that can lead to feelings of did I get there? Did I get enough done. And we coupled that with the fact that so many of us spend our time in complete isolation from everyone we work alone, we just bunker down you might be in you know, just grin and bear it mode. I get it. I'm not gonna say like, Don't hustle, don't work 18 hour days or longer when you need to win the hustle is needed. By all means I wouldn't. I'm the worst person to lecture anyone on hustle because I've done a three day hustle before, literally three straight days when my time was required to do that. But at the end of it, getting out seeing people being involved in some kind of either a friend, group and mastermind group or just spending time with your family. Spending time with people is really good for our souls. It's really good for our drive and keeping us moving forward. And it's gonna be really good for your business too. And so with that I have a super awesome debt guest with me today. I have Greg wells, Greg is the best selling author of dare to succeed, which he co wrote with Jack Canfield. If you don't know that name, you remember those Chicken Soup for the Soul books, right? He was, you know, one of those guys actually got a Chicken Soup for the musician, which is kind of based off that I got that when I was working for a music company. So in addition to being the best selling author, this best selling author, Greg is a seasoned marketer and impressive track record. He's collaborated with, like some of my personal heroes like Ryan Lobeck, Dan Henry, onyx and gall and my man Russell B. Russell Brunson. And I know right, as we're recording this, we're on the eve of FHL Funnel Hacking live happening next week in Florida. I totally hear this. It'll be all set and gone. And we'll be watching the replays and implementing what we learned. Unfortunately, I won't be there this year, family took precedence. But that's exactly what I'm talking about. Sometimes life takes precedence of our business. But with that, Greg, how are you doing? Thank you so much for joining us.

Greig Wells
Awesome. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to connect and kind of come together to to share our wisdom.

Adam Liette
And I found out you're going to FHL next week, and I won't be there. And I'm just bummed, but it's kind of a big room. So we've had to coordinate anyway.

Greig Wells
Yeah, yeah, it's more about the people than the event. I don't spend half time in the room. You know, and that's kind of how I found everything in business and life, it's more about the people than, than the knowledge,

Adam Liette
which is kind of like counterintuitive to how people like us are often portrayed, or often as we see ourselves as like, just head down, working on it when you're in this type of environment. Like I had to do some like extroverted, like, practice, like preparation for it, like how do you prepare for an event like this to be in that kind of public arena for so much, so much the time?

Greig Wells
Yeah. Yeah, I'm not a natural extrovert myself at all. And so, a lot of times I go to events, if I see someone I know I talked to them, maybe I'll meet someone from them. But that's about it. And, you know, it's it's, it's one of the principles we've tried to build into our virtual dinner parties is this facilitation of a Have conversations forcing everyone to talk and share and be, you know, have an have an equal voice. And, sure, we'll get into it. But in a way it makes for an even more meaningful connection than at an in person event. You know, at an in person event, I'm not going to walk up to a stranger and introduce myself. That's way out of my comfort zone. You know, if that's how the events being facilitated, if I put you into a breakout room with two other people and say, Hey, talk about this, okay, now, you know, thanks to the facilitation of the events, you know, I'm able to easily talk to people.

Adam Liette
It's interesting, because I feel that with the event, too, it's like, everyone's doing their 32nd elevator pitch. And I think we like practice, I know, I did, like, practice my 32nd Elevator Pitch till I was blue in the face. And I delivered it like 3000 times over that week. And it feels like every conversation is like this deep audio show, but I'm gonna lick my fingers. Like it's like really thin. And it's. And that's such a difference from having an actual deep, meaningful conversation that we can have when we're in a more intimate environment. And I'm just found guilty again. But I found a lot of us tend to be a bit more isolated, we tend to like feel the pressures of isolation, it tends to impact us in various ways. What has been your experience with that? And we've worked with other entrepreneurs, but that feeling of isolation?

Greig Wells
Yeah. Well, first of all, I hate networking events. I like you said, it's everyone doing their one minute commercial, no one's listening. Everyone's pitching. Everyone even attracts the kind of person that like likes to come in and dominate. And so I hate networking events. And and so when people ask me, what is the virtual dinner party? That's my first answer. Let me tell you what it's not it's not a networking event. It's not a teaching event. Nobody has the attention span for lectures anymore. And there's nothing for sale. But to your question, How did I start this? It was during COVID, my daughter had gone off to college that year. So I was empty nest, we were on lockdown. And I was literally going out of my mind, like, in depression, just not having anyone to talk to about my business about my webinars, someone who could get my world. I actually I had my church group, a men's group, you know, we met on Zoom still, but like, I can't talk to those guys about, you know, my webinar only did 40 grand this week, I'm not, you know, I'm disappointed. They'll, they'll be like, what's wrong with you. And so I was craving just having people in my world. And so I put out this invitation to people to get together for a casual meetup. And my network is mostly online entrepreneurs and coaches, of course creators. And I invited you know, a handful of people and they all love the idea to write just the middle of the lockdown. So they're like, that sounds amazing. So we started getting together on just every week, it was never meant to be, you know, a business model. In fact, it wasn't for the first seven months I ran a virtual dinner party every week just bringing together you know, my friends, my connections, they would invite their friends and they people were meeting doing deals joint ventures making friendships and was bringing all these new people into my world and I you know, about a few months in realized like, this is the easiest most one lead generation in the world I've ever done. I have this tribe that loves me I'm running these events and not selling anything like this is a trust funnel. If I was to put a funnel name on it everyone here loves me for because I'm not selling and really what hit me was what am I going to sell it? Yeah, let's figure out what they what they want. And so we can get into that next year. I can jump right into it. But the real breakthrough for me it actually came at Funnel Hacking live that year Kaelin Poulin, who was the founder of Lady boss was presenting. And basically she said, the number one mistake that coaches make is guessing what your people want. You want to listen to what your people want you want to survey was what she was saying what your people want, which, you know, like she has 1000s of people. So you can just roll out a survey and get data, right? The average person can't do that. But we started doing that in the virtual dinner party. So when people RSVP and sign up for the virtual dinner party, we have them start to fill out data survey and then when I were it really went to the next level is we started basically doing the Ask method if you're familiar with Brian love X ask method, which is it's the world's best way to survey your people to find out what they want what we did. Live, those were the breakout room sessions, we're doing the Ask method live. And then as people tell you exactly what they need help with. So you know, where you help people to scale through, you know, through teams and hiring you in your virtual dinner party. For example, one of the topics and breakout room topics would be, you know, with regards to scaling your business and hiring, where are you the most stuck right now. And so imagine every person is there telling you exactly what they need help with related to what you do. That's kind of how this started to turn into something that's now like magic, where people just tell you what they want, and you give it to them.

Adam Liette
I can see like team member horror stories, too, it's a great way of bringing people in just so they can talk about the crazy stuff that you've seen from team members. Because

Greig Wells
without would be a fun one. Yeah,

Adam Liette
that'd be a fun one. A probably attract a certain kind of person. And the I think the key there is like finding a way to pivot it into Okay, now tell me good things you've done for them. That might be the trick there. But I think that's interesting. So it started quite by accident in a time period where we're all kind of little, like just looking at the wall. I was really grateful I didn't live in a city because out here in rural America, we we didn't really pay much attention after a couple of months, kind of went back on our way. But with so many people in cities, it had to be a certain kind of person, and a certain relief to show up in that kind of environment where it's a non pitching environment, right?

Greig Wells
Yeah, having an invitation to a safe event is a big part of what makes the virtual dinner party so successful. Because most online events, you know, a webinar or a challenge, like in the entrepreneur market, we know how this works. Now, right? These things have been around for 10 or 15 years and like I get it, a higher end buyer rarely goes to a webinar anymore. And the even the everyday person just knows like, Okay, this, you're probably gonna teach me a few things, and then try to sell me something right. And so they'll sign up for webinars, but show rates are really plummeting people won't go to webinars anymore. Now, that doesn't mean webinars aren't profitable. The Economics of one to many business models still makes webinars work with often one or 2% conversion, right, but 98% of people are not buying and not coming. So you're not really serving the market. That's a clear inefficiency. And that's what the virtual dinner party is, is filling that void. Right. So let's say you're your coach to help someone with podcasting, you would invite people that want to grow their podcast to come to your virtual dinner party on the topic of podcasting. And so anyone that comes to that, is very interested in growing their podcasts and they want to meet other people on the journey. They want to be in community, they want to make friends, and they want a safe place where they're not going to be sold to. And when you lead them through this event and introduce them to each other, they you just become this beloved leader like nobody does all this work to invite us and not pitch us anything like That's amazing. It's just a little bit of delayed gratification. And in the meanwhile, you're also creating a safe space for people to talk about what their problems are. Because there's no it's not a buyer seller relationship, right? So as an example, if if you and I met at Funnel Hacking live, and you told me Hey, you help people scale the systems and operations, then you then proceeded to ask me, So what's your biggest challenge in hiring Greg? I'm like, I could see that coming. Right? As soon as I am. You're gonna, you know, pitch me on how you can help me solve that challenge, right? That doesn't work, work in the DM, it doesn't work in real life doesn't work anywhere in marketing, but it works in the virtual dinner party, because that will literally be one of our questions. But here's the key. We it's not you asking the person, you present the question and put people into groups of three, and they talk about it with each other in a private breakout room where there's no recording, you create the safe space where people can really open up and talk to each other about where they're stuck, which helps them gain clarity in what they need of your help. And then when you bring people out of the breakout room back to the main room, you ask people to share what came up for you in the breakout room and before you know what they're they're happy they've already talked about once their problem now it's no big deal to talk about it in this community. So as they're bonding you're listening and discovering what exactly does this person need help with? They're telling you, you things they would normally never tell you.

Adam Liette
Right so it's like the pain points of because you're you know your target audience you Now your consumer. So we've done our persona research or whatever you want to call it. And so you already know their pain points. And so the pain points are the facilitation. Like, right,

Greig Wells
well, the the, the pain points would be the questions, but then you want, you want them to put it into their own words, right. And you want to you want to use that data at a micro level to enroll someone. So for example, a lot of people that come coaches I work with come to my virtual dinner parties, they'll talk about how they're struggling with lead generation. But Person A might say, I'm struggling with getting fresh leads, I feel like everywhere I go, it's the same people, and they're all trying to sell me their stuff, right. But I do have a snapshot when I go talk to that person about my virtual dinner party system. I now talk specifically about how my system is going to bring you fresh leads, like I have heard in a micro level how that person describes the problem, right? And someone else might describe the problem of lead gen completely different, right? They might say, well, I don't have any time, like I have no time to train someone to help me no time to do anything. You know, I have no time for anything at all. And then when I sit down after the virtual dinner party with that person, because after you left the trust, syncing up with him afterwards and said, Remember when you said he had no time my systems built for people that have no time, right? And I'm giving them back what specifically they want. And what happens is they feel so heard, they feel understood like you, you get me you listen to what I said in the virtual dinner party, you get me. And that makes it really easy to enroll clients without having to manipulate them or pressure that I'm not a good at sales. And that's kind of I built this out of my own necessity to I never felt good about closing people, I'd rather people like me.

Adam Liette
I'm there with the sales. I like presenting. I like laying it out. But yeah, all those really hardcore 10x are methods of closing the deal. I just it, it never felt natural for me, it never felt like part of something that was in line with my values. So I've never gotten good at it to the chagrin of my business growth. But But I think it means it. On the other hand, now that I'm saying it out loud, I think you and I, we have a lot of very similar character characteristics in our in our personalities of the fact that we we might not call ourselves extroverts, but we do have the gift of gab and the gift of being able to speak with people and listen, people understand people empathize at a really deep level. And so maybe it's less of, well, this didn't work for me. So maybe I should go for this. Instead saying, well, here's where I'm naturally strong anyway. So why am I not leaning into it? And like to manage?

Greig Wells
What I see you and me having in common is we care about people. And when you care about people, you know, you're willing to listen to them you're willing to you serve them through your business and you don't want to persuade someone that you care about. So that's I see it less about to me introverted extrovert, I look at churches and example, the extrovert will just walk up to someone and introduce themselves and shake hands. I would never do that. And I love it my church, only once a month, do they ever say the pastor say, introduce yourself to the person next to you? I tell them why don't you guys do that every week I will I want to make friends here. But unless you facilitate it, it's never gonna happen for people like me that are too too shy to do it. Right. But I care about people. And once we get into a real conversation with people, now the problem with with caring about people being your superpower, which I think it is for you and me, and for a lot of the people that succeed in our system, they this is their authentic way of getting clients. The problem is everybody online says they care. Right? It's

Adam Liette
not enough

Greig Wells
anymore. You know, and I don't think people you know, don't care. I like to think there's no bad people out there just ripping people off. But they don't all care like we care. And so what you need, you need a vehicle for your marketing to showcase how you care. And that's what the virtual dinner party is for the heart centered coach. This is a way for you to show how much you care about people. Because it's not an event where you're teaching where you're at the center, you're letting everyone share the spotlight, everyone shares and contributes everyone gets to speak and be heard. And you really listen and care for people and show people how you care when you lead them through a virtual dinner party event.

Adam Liette
Wow. So I bet like the most common question you get though on the registration page is okay, what's the pitch though? Or something like that, like how do you get over For that moment of hesitation that I mean, it's one thing to say I promise I won't pitch to you. I think we've all seen that a million times and not believed it, and been pitched to. So how do you get over that? That barrier? That some other? Yeah, wonderful marketers have put in front of us?

Greig Wells
Yeah, it's, it's funny people, probably 50% of people that come to our virtual dinner parties still are expecting the pitch. At the end, they're like, this has got to be some play on words. You know, the webinar, people have taken it to a new level where they say it's not pitch, but then they just say book a call at the end of the webinar. And you, technically we didn't pitch on the webinar, right. And so that's kind of a you know, how you people are going around it. And so we don't pitch, right. We don't Pitch Anything. But it becomes very clear what I do and how I help people. And you we talked about how I can help you becomes just evident, become self evident, without me needing to pitch. And what happens is at the end of the event, again, I'll keep using because we're on a podcast, I'll keep using the podcasting as an example that people can understand. So imagine, the my client is a coach who helps people with podcasts, his whole virtual dinner party is on the topic of podcasting. Everyone's been sharing where they're stuck with their problems and podcasts, right? Person A says I can't figure out the tech, person B says I can't get any listeners. And the event ends and he has no pitch. And you just asked people to fill out a feedback form where we again, collect some more data. And then they love you, this is on Thursday, and you let the goodwill sink in. And then on Monday, you simply reach back out by email or the DM. And you say, hey, remember when you said you struggle with the tech, that's the kind of thing I help people with? Would you like to set up a call about how I can help you with the tech and launch your podcast, right. And now that's how you're into a call enrolling this person. People like to spend money to make their problems go away, it's smart to spend money to hire someone to get results faster, but they need to trust you first. And they need to feel listened to. And all of that is happens in the virtual dinner party, it's all baked into this. Another part of our secret sauce, there's a lot of layers to this, when I help you run these, we unpack them all. But what I do as we set it up so that your current clientele will want to come to your virtual dinner party every month as well. So imagine now you go into a breakout room, there's two new people on one client there and the two people are like, I can't get any leads. And the second one says yeah, my I can't get any leads either. And then the third one is my client that says I used to have that problem. And then I talked to Greg, right, it's like magic, it's way better than a testimonial video is you just got to meet and interact with a with one of my clients. And then what we do is when you become a client, these are the people you're going to be in community with, I've just showcased who's in my community who's in my mastermind, by having you meet them. So the community building is a big part of this too. Which is something that I'd love to get your take on in the podcast world. I'm seeing kind of this, you know, as a theme among podcasters is is, you know, how can I build a community? How can I, you know, connect more with my listeners. And that's, that's one of the reasons I've just started going out into podcasts is kind of exploring, how can the virtual dinner party help the podcasting industry? So I'd love to get your take on that. Because I'll tell you the number one reason I've never done podcast interviews before this year, is I just feel like it's the direct response marketer, and he says, What's my ROI? On my time doing this? How many leads am I gonna get next week by giving you an hour of my time? And it's kind of unknown? And not likely, I'm really going to get at, you know, what am I going to do? Give out my website and get a few opt ins at the end of the podcast interview that I'm not that good at email marketing. That's not that valuable for me, right. But if instead if you said to me, if you said to me, Greg, after you go on my show, I'm going to give you a chance to I'm going to invite all my listeners back to an event called a virtual dinner party, whatever you want, in any of my listeners that heard you on the show and liked you, they can come meet me and you in this event. I'm like that that's a homerun for me, right? I only need to meet two or three people that like what I'm talking about. And one out of three of them almost always buys my program. Now it becomes super valuable for me to be a guest. So kind of my vision for podcasting that I'd love to get your feedback on is if at the end of the conversation you said to your listeners Hey, clearly you guys like what we're talking about because you're here at the end of this episode. If you want continue this conversation and meet Greg, my guest and meet me. I'd love to meet you, Mr. listener, why don't you come to my next virtual dinner party, right? And you invite kind of on a monthly basis, your listeners back to a virtual dinner party. And now you're in community with them. You're also discovering what what do they want to buy from you? Right? They start telling you, you know how they can help you. And it just opens up more opportunities for everyone. What do you know? So

Adam Liette
you're also like discovering what what is working on the show? Like, what episodes are getting the most traction? What episode really liked whether or not you're asking the right questions. Because I yeah,

Greig Wells
you could ask people, What do you guys want to hear more about my show, right, you could find, you could kind of crowdsource the direction of where your show is going based on what your listeners are telling you. I think that would be an amazing experience to be a part of, and you're most of your listeners look up to you. They really, you know, they'd love to get to meet you in person via zoom right via virtual their party type event.

Adam Liette
Right? I just had an idea that I think it's so crazy, it just might work. And it's pretty presupposing the episode with a survey email, saying, Hey, I get to interview this guy. Here's who he is. What's one question you'd like for me to ask? Me, and then they get to put in their questions, then when the episode comes out, now they're full to listen to is much, much higher, because they had an input into the creation process. And so it becomes like that cyclical thing, I am going to have to do that next time. I did not do that this time. But I'm gonna have to turn to my email list for my next my next interview, because I think that's the biggest thing I've found with podcasting is yes, it doesn't lead to a whole lot of traffic. But maybe that's we're not doing enough on the front end, to build up to that episode being released. I mean, if there's more we can do with that. Yeah,

Greig Wells
yeah, I think there's potential there to bring your community and, you know, ask them what kind of topics and speakers would you like to have, if somebody reached out to me and said, Hey, five of my listeners have requested you to be on my podcast, nobody's going to turn that down. That's not a lot of people. But I only get, I only need a few good people to make it more, so much worth my time. So I think if you start to do some of these creative things, you can tap into a whole new segment of guests that normally don't do podcast, because they don't get that immediate ROI. It's such an intimate conversation that you're in, in a podcast, you really, I mean, we're getting to know each other, it's great, and the listeners are in on that intimate conversation. But then you just don't really have anywhere to go after or try after they're done. What do they do scroll on the next podcast or listening to right, if you if you can give them away to continue the conversation with you continue being in community with you, you'll build a real tribe,

Adam Liette
building community, and not just a Facebook group. I think that's like, that's one of the key distinctions in my head right now is like, oh, build community, not just a Facebook group. I mean, there's got to be more to it than that. Because I think we're very much in the same boat where, like five or six clients for me is full. Like, that's about is all I can take on at one time. Because the time I spend with my clients, it's very intimate relationship. Where I don't need the 1000s right now. But um, it's interesting, though, as as that grows, because obviously, our goals always grow. Or not always, many of our goals is to grow. There's a you're not running this all by yourself, or do you have a team that's helping you do you have, like, a group of people that's helping you facilitate all of these?

Greig Wells
Yeah, well, my clients, right, I coach them and train them on how to run their own virtual dinner parties. We have a lot of systems and SOPs about, you know, what are you going to do before your virtual dinner party? How are you going to fill your virtual dinner party? What are you going to do in it? What are you going to do after and how are you going to use the content in it? So all of that is very team driven, and, and systematic. So in my own business for our virtual dinner parties, I have an operations manager and she you know, she really kind of runs all the details of everything. And I think that's that's one of the you know, that's one of the key people you need to have in place. In fact, one of my one of my favorite Breakout Room topics and you'll love this if we were to do a virtual dinner party for you, this will be perfect. Is we ask people to but we're so we imagine they've been they've been this has been too As the answer they've been there, they've got a lot of report. And we tell them, Look, the two, the key to succeeding is for you to identify which one of these three avatars you are, are you an artist, a manager or a marketer, those are the three avatars in business. And you need to own which one you are, so that you create space for that person to come into your life to fulfill the other role. If you're trying to wear more than one of these hats, you will struggle and because you're not being your authentic self, and so what happens is you give people that exercise, right, and they go into breakout rooms and talk about it. And most entrepreneurs, especially coaches, and online entrepreneurs, they gravitate towards being the artists, they really, if they're an artist means if I'm true to myself, I just want to show up and share my gifts, I want to help people lose weight, I want to help people grow their business, I really don't want to have to worry about the details, the emails, you know, all that all that type of stuff, right? So but you need them to come to that realization on their own. And in this breakout room we've designed this is one I use a lot for people to come, they come back out and share which one is their avatar. And these are the artists have this breakthrough, like I'm an artist, like I, I need to be looking for a manager, right, which is exactly what you do. So you can see this, this, this would be an exercise we would do that would be designed to lead them to come to that realization on their own. Because if you just tell people, oh, you know, you you, you need to hire a manager to get to the next level anything you tell people, right, they resist, but if they come to that on their own, through the breakout rooms, through conversations with their peers, it's their idea that they own. So I use that breakout room, because I want the artists to realize they shouldn't be doing their own marketing. I know you work for a marketing agency, too, it'd be the same thing, right? I want them to come to the realization that if I really want to get to the next level, I need to have a manager in the marketer in my life in my business, right. And then I'm just sitting there as a marketer that they trust and lead. So that that's an idea and an example of how I would put each client we custom design, the breakout rooms that have people it's almost like Inception, we have them incept the ideas that you want them to come to, right now a person who is a natural manager, their natural manager, they they you know, they may not need your services, and that's okay, we don't pitch that person. But the person who is the artist, that's they've just had this realization they need your help.

Adam Liette
Right? So interesting that you said that, because next week, actually, I'm giving a presentation for a client. Because they asked me it's like, my background is all you listeners notice I was a special operator for like 12 years and multiple deployments. I've done the warrior stuff. And like, how do you become a warrior? It's like a wash. It's not, it's not just push ups. I mean, there's more to it than that. There's a lot of mental work that goes into it. And one of the prompts in the training is, what do you stand for? Like and knowing what you stand for. And I think those archetypes kind of fall into that. Because if we're trying to stand for too many things, you stand for nothing. You can't really put your full weight behind any of those one things if you're trying to do them all. And I think that's, that's the trap that we put ourselves into, especially early on and entrepreneurial life is to do it all. And it's, it's horrible. You're trying to

Greig Wells
Yeah, and you feel like you have to sometimes we you know, you're in startup mode. But that's really just a limiting belief. There's always, you know, resources there. And even if you're just aware of self aware of what your core strength is, at least you are creating the space to manifest that person to come into your business into your life.

Adam Liette
I one thing I had on my desk for about a year was if I could offload this I would and it was this list of all the stuff I didn't want to do anymore. Within I kept that list on my desk for months and months and months and months like wishing it were to come through until I had a artists tell me get that crap off your desk now, like someone had to push us into it. I mean, it's really interesting how we'll come up with these ideations on our own, but it's through relationships, that we finally get the strength to do it. So it's, it's almost permission to actually care about ourselves.

Greig Wells
Yeah, I love that, you know, and but you're right, like, knowing what you stand for and who you want to be in your business. It creates so many opportunities for you one of my favorite quotes that I say in all my events is we're not defined by what we do that changes many times over your lifetime. But we are defined by How we do it? And so how do you want to do your marketing? How do you want to run your business really defines who you are as a person and goes with you throughout all your businesses? Are you going to be a person who, you know, uses false scarcity and says there's three of these course left, you know, and use this every tactic in the book, because the sales, the sales gurus will try to tell you that, right? They say you believe in what you're selling, you're justified to use every trick in the book to get that person to buy. And I look at that, and I'm like, No, that's, that's what Hitler said, like, that's, the end does not justify the means. And, and so why is that? Okay? In business, you know, there's, so many of us go into business mode, and then into life mode, when it's really just should be your way of being, and it flows so much easier and more fun when you're just being yourself.

Adam Liette
I love that advice. It's really, that the the industry has gotten really diverse in the number of people, it's attracting now. I say it now, it's probably been that way for forever. It's it was always, it always felt it felt more under the surface a couple of years ago. And then it's become these past couple of years where, I mean, they've been created a term for it now, bro, marketers, like, disparaged? And if that's not you, I mean, it's permission to not be that just be Yeah,

Greig Wells
you know, it's funny that you say I had someone say that I kind of come off a little bit, bro in my language. And they asked me, they said this, this virtual dinner party thing, you know, abroad marketing thing, like, you know, obviously, you're gonna take this and put it into your own vibe, your own style, you know, it's a framework that's adaptable to anything. But you must have it, you know, one of the hardest with what you do helping people scale. Because, I mean, all of us get messages from people overseas every day now, right? Hey, when you want to scale scale is become like the word of the spammers. And then for someone real, who really does help people skate a scale? Like, I mean, it's gotta be if you're able to deal with that, there's the rest of us have to have a way to separate ourselves from from that?

Adam Liette
Well, I will, the clients, as I'm reflecting on it, as you said that, like, the client base I've gotten has been through relationships. First, it's been through getting to know them, either through groups or in person events, or masterminds, or whatever. It's been through that relationship that's turns into a business transaction, which turns into coaching, which turns into really intense work together. And but it's always started at relationship. Yeah. So it's interesting a paradigm to scale your relationship, in many ways, or expand your relationship in a really predictable way that I have to imagine, like the first time you ran one of these, I mean, any guy that anyone out there who's run a webinar, you know, I'm talking about like that bubble guts, you feel right, before a webinar goes off, you know, I'm talking about like, the first time you ran this, or, it's, that probably doesn't happen anymore. When you're on a virtual dinner party. It's like, Hey, I'm just hanging out, I'm just doing this. And obviously, you're working, you have intention, but it's like a different, even framing. And I'm sure if we did like an A B, comparison of a video watching sales mode versus dinner party mode, it's night and day, it has to be.

Greig Wells
Yeah, to just be able to talk with people casually builds relationships, you know, and so, if you think about how you build a relationship, you know, I was taught, you know, back at the university level, that it's like this, this pyramid, right. And when you when you first meet someone, you're at the bottom of this from each other, right? So Person A is here, person B is here, like you and I just met, right? So we're the furthest part away from each other, and we're gonna have this conversation. And then you know, we're gonna, we'll have another conversation that you kind of gradually go up this ladder, together with people, right, I'm not gonna start telling you my most intimate personal stuff. Yeah, we're not up the ladder to where we would be doing that yet. Right. And so and so the, the webinar people, the the internet, people will always, you know, their, their critique of this would be, well, it takes time to go up the ladder with people, I don't have time for that. It's inefficient. And so what the what what the virtual dinner party does is it jumps the conversation all the way up to here, because I've created this safe space where I'm not selling, it's not just me not selling it to the people you're interacting with. They're not selling. So why create this facilitate this safe space, which moves everyone's 10 levels up the ladder together. And so they're bonding with me at that level, and they're bonding with each other at that level, whereas otherwise that would take us, you know, a bunch of DMS and then and then what then we do? You know, I used to do these get to know your zoom calls, right? That's 20 or 30 minutes with someone. And now in, you know, in one vertical dinner party, I'll meet, say, 20 people, if I did 30 minute get to know your calls with those people, it would be 10 hours, and we wouldn't we'd still be having surface level conversations, right. So the virtual dinner party, it's accelerating the relationships between everyone in the community. And it really attracts people that want to be in relationship, which are your ideal clients there. These are people that like people, you want to screen in the people, people, the actual, right when you don't, because a lot of my friends in marketing will say, Greg, I'd love to check out this virtual dinner party thing, but I don't have two hours, what do you do a shorter one, and I'll pop in and check it out. You know, I tell him I'm trying to screen out people like, you know, if you don't want to come help someone and be around someone for, you know, a two hours, that's how long our events are, you're not somebody that you know, is going to fit in, in my community. And when you attract all the givers like that into one room, it makes for a really special event. And that's the experience that people are having in these virtual dinner parties.

Adam Liette
Man, it's even it's even come into like the name of your company love my neighbor marketing, right? It's, it's like, if you're not attracted by that kind of language, you're not gonna like this anyway. It's like, it's just being blatant. And on your sleeves, like, This is who I am. This is what this is. And like trusting that people know enough, or they they've seen enough at this point to know when something's different, I think.

Greig Wells
Yeah, yeah. And then people are craving something different. You know, the last event, I spoke at onyx and galls experts on it, I'm like, every single person here is like teaching you how to get better at something, there was a leadership speaker and guys teaching you how to do better your challenge, there isn't often that something a new way of looking at something comes along. And then that's what we're trying to bring to the market. That's what I stand for is a transformation in online marketing, where if enough people start running events where we're not pitching, nobody will go to those other people's events anymore. And the influencer who you know, is running paid ads to his webinars selling a course doesn't give a crap about as people doesn't want to be with them. We're gonna displace that person, eventually, we're coming for you, with our virtual dinner party events. And there's a huge first mover's advantage, you know, to be a part of this transformation now. And I feel like it's very aligned with everything that that you're about with relationships.

Adam Liette
It's, and the beauty of it is, if the, the forum has to change, the principles still move with, like you said, we're coming after you. The phrase that was in my mind was like, I'm coming after you with my heart. Yeah, I mean, after you have my spirit, like, this is the real me. And it's like, it's permission to be who you are. And to lead with that heart centered leadership that so many of us do have. And, gosh, I feel better about I'm a marketer, and I feel better about marketing. Just hearing this and exploring it in my mind and the possibilities.

Greig Wells
Yeah, well, you give me goosebumps, the way you're describing this, as you know, seeing even more than I see. And, and, and that's the thing, it's, it's, it's cuz it just makes sense. So many people hear this, and they're like, why didn't I think of that, you know, like, it's, it just makes sense, to do things this way to care about people, and to really want to serve people through your business.

Adam Liette
Just what at the end of the day, I tell everyone that comes to work with me, is like, I don't care what business you're in, I don't care what you're selling, you're in the people business first. And if you treat your team members and you treat your team in a transactional way, that's just what you're gonna get. You're going to get transactions. But transformational leadership is an entirely different thing. And it requires a bit more of your soul. But the gifts that you get back from that unsurmountable amount of gifts that you receive back just by giving that little bit of yourself and exposing yourself and being vulnerable and actually caring. I want to I'm a professionally trained educator before all this. So I'm like on my fifth career. I trained in music education first. And one of my most influential teachers said well, no one cares how much you know until they know you care. and 19 year old Adam really took to that. Wow, it's it's made the difference, man.

Greig Wells
Yeah, it's so true. You don't know how many people nowadays hear that quote. And they're like, it's the first time they've heard it. And they're like, that makes sense. That That's why no one's responded to my content or I'm just teaching sell is the model that's out there that I stand against. That's not people will say that serving your customers that's not serve if your aim goal is to get something that's manipulation, right and teach and sell is not truly serving. In fact, the more you teach people things I find the less they buy things. But if you can help people transform if you can help people become the kind of person who's ready to go to the next level, and then you're just there to help them along that that's that's the magic. I love here in the urine musician. My first career I was a headhunter a recruiter, and one of my biggest clients in the.com. Boom, I lived in Boston in the.com, boom and worked for IBM, recruiting their salespeople. And I remember telling the VP of IBM sales was very successful. I'm like, all these resumes look the same. How do I know which sales guy you want to interview? They all talk with you again. And you know what he said, he said, call them and find out if they play a musical instrument. Or if they speak a foreign language, he said, if they can do one of those, I want to interview him if they can do both. They can learn anything, they're gonna learn by system, and they're gonna succeed. That was his secret sauce to hiring world class salespeople. And I was like,

Adam Liette
I do I do both.

Greig Wells
I don't do either. But yeah, I mean, people that people that can can master music or language can can really learn anything and really excel at anything. And they're, they're the people you want to surround yourself with.

Adam Liette
Dude, I've spent a lot of fun man, the hour flew by and I know you have a commitment. So do want to honor your your schedule. Greg, I've had an absolute ball getting NLU getting to explore this data. Yeah, good feelings, man. That's why I love this media more than anything, because it lets you just really dive five layers deeper, and you can get on most other forums. But where can where can listeners find out more about you getting invited to their own virtual dinner party?

Greig Wells
Yeah, virtual dinner party.com. I just got the domain name, I had to go through a whole process of buying that that's a whole nother story. That's kind of fun. But yeah, virtual dinner party.com. We, I list all my clients virtual dinner parties on there. So if people want to go to one in the health and fitness niche, or the relationship niche, you know, and part of this is, you know, we all kind of promote each other as a community because no one's selling anything at their events. So we've got a bunch of choices of types of virtual dinner parties, of course, you can come to ours and learn how to run your virtual dinner parties yourself. We pretty much give away all the training for free. So yeah, it's been awesome coming here. You know, I'm just your listeners are kind of some of the first people to hear this right. I've been kind of a secret weapon of a lot of marketers over the last two years, I really wanted to have this proof of concept behind what we're doing. And now with 200 success stories, we're just starting to go out and really spread the word and it's based on your response. It seems like a message that people are craving. So thanks so much for having me.

Adam Liette
Man. Thank you, Greg. Have a good one. Hey, operators. I believe that within each and every one of us lies a warrior in waiting, this warrior is able to conquer any obstacle that comes their way to discover how to awaken your warrior spirit and conquer what's holding you back. Go to Adam liette.com and join awaken the Warrior Within