SPEAKER_00 0:00

My only fear was really that people wouldn't show up.

SPEAKER_01 0:02

You have an event strategy that seems to be working phenomenally.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

It was difficult at first to make that jump.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Why are events such an impactful way to connect with people?

SPEAKER_00 0:11

As you go up the ladder, the way to reach people on more of an emotional level becomes very difficult on a mass scale.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Some people are like afraid to network, right? They don't like getting faced.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

It's been an extension of who I am.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

It seems like an irrational fear, so you just gotta do it scared. What's up, everybody, Grant Wise? Welcome back to the Partner in Profit Podcast, a show where we teach you how to turn your relationships into revenue. Today I've got a very old friend in with me that has done some very impressive work. I'm excited to unpack, Mr. Patrick Pullium. What up, Pat? Thanks for being here today, man.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Going on, Grant. Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Yeah, yeah, man. I'm happy to have you. Appreciate you spending some time. For those of us that are, or for those that are listening to the show that maybe don't know much about you, give a little bit of the backstory. How'd you get to where you are today?

SPEAKER_00 0:54

But long story short, born in this area, Rogers, Arkansas, raised in Texas, a town called Tyler, been back in Arkansas for 10 years. Um we've been connected really since childhood. Yeah. Um, but cool to be reconnected over those 10 years. But uh beautiful wife, four kids in the real estate world for eight years, and had my trials and tribulations, and reached a huge milestone September of 2025 when we started Front Porch Real Estate, myself and two partners, and I've just been rocking it since. So a lot of experience in the world, residential sales, keen on networking, relationship growing, and so really excited to know that you're in this this industry and this kind of world of connection. And so, yeah, um, there's more to it, but that's the roundabout uh uh story right there.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah, yeah. Pat also sold me my house, uh the house I currently live in. He was he was my agent, so much appreciated, much appreciated, and can attest, uh, very good at real estate. We got a partner and we got a profit. So, one of the things that I've observed that you've done really successfully over the last several years is you have an event strategy that seems to be working phenomenally. So, can you kind of unpack that for us? What what is it? What do you do? Just kind of walk us through that.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Five years ago, I was in the core training, real estate coaching, and really going hard at that. Being held accountable to you know the tenth degree to build relationships and grow my referral opportunities in this world, in this real estate world. COVID hit, a lot of things shut down. The opportunity to get in front of people changed quite a bit. Thus was born the event strategy in 2021 when we hosted our first patio celebration event. And uh I've been doing that ever since. In a condensed version, the patio social, as we call it now, was the my strategy to getting people together in one room where we could celebrate, have fun together, invite our client, current clients, past clients, referral partners, and their friends and family to come out and gather for a happy hour time. And really just, you know, selfishly get a lot of people in the room for me to build my business, build my brand, and start to build relationships on a deeper level. I'm a uh student of the seven levels book, uh, seven levels of communication, and uh one-to-one connection and event connection is top of the list as far as how to uh connect and emotionally kind of get tickets and points with people and deposit relationship tokens, if you will. So we started doing that. That was a quarterly event, then it was a every other month event, and now it's monthly with other events going on. And we've changed and altered over time, but started as a way for me to get real estate clients and build relationships and build my referral book.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

So I noticed that you said it was patio celebration, and now you call it patio social. What's the distinction there? What's the difference?

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Really, just the celebration was in the beginning, it was a hope that we'd be celebrating wins and connection and resales, and so a way to get clients to come out and kind of feel celebrated that it was about them. Over the course of time, it's it's turned into more of a connection point for everybody. So the the social aspects, meaning that it's a recurring kind of social atmosphere where we encourage everybody to meet each other, shake hands, and walk away with potentially new connections, um, far beyond just me. You know, I'm I'm really just the host at this point, and we hope that everybody benefits from the connections they get.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

So we go back to the seven levels of communication. Events was at the top. Kind of unpack that for us. Why why are events such an impactful way to connect with people?

SPEAKER_00 4:50

I think when we look at communication as a whole, and at the time of this recording, I can say we just watched the Super Bowl, right? So the advertising and commercials are on everybody's mind. Um, there's many different ways. What this uh author, and I'll have to pull it up in a second, would describe as seven different levels of communicating to an audience or to a customer base. The way to reach many people is through a couple different versions. As you go up the ladder, the way to reach people on more of an emotional level becomes very difficult on a mass scale. So a commercial on TV can be funny, can be impactful with the way that you create a brand, but really not is really not going to create an emotional connection from company to consumer. And so you climb up the ladder a little higher, then you start to get into well, what does it look like if I was making individual sales calls, right? Okay, that's more impactful than a commercial because that's a one-to-one conversation. What if well what does it look like to electronically be communicating with people that's posting on social media or texting or like there's a little bit of an emotional connection there, but not much, but you can do that a lot faster. And so mathematically, what it boils down to is if you can get in front of people's faces, many people's faces, at once, that the ROI of attention starts to really pile up. And so I would put events right next to making as many phone calls as you can per day, which a lot of agents and people in the service-based industry understand the sales calls strategy. Um, I would put it up there next to phone calls and individual one-on-ones uh as far as effectiveness and and uh brand growth. It's really good.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

What have been for you some impactful relationships that have come from the patio social strategy?

SPEAKER_00 6:36

I've been able to grow my personal brand far beyond what I thought was imaginable here locally and in my industry. That's you know, in the real estate industry, that's that's of the utmost importance to have a personal brand that grows beyond just your ability to sell houses and things of that nature. So personal brand growth and social media engagement has come from the events. But the biggest connection that I've made so far has been the connection to my now business partners at Front Porch who uh helped us in tandem advertise the patio social to the community. We were able to tie in together, grow a really great relationship, and then we asked each other. They asked me originally to come in and partner with them on Front Porch Real Estate, and that's how I was born. So without the connection of the patio social being a place where advertisers and entrepreneurs met real estate and you know, event guy, uh, we would have never had front porch. So that's cool.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

So patio social is essentially like an event strategy where you are literally hanging on on businesses front porch interacting with people. Is that is that kind of like how the naming came together?

SPEAKER_00 7:44

I suggested we had a list of probably 20-something names for front porch real estate, and I was not the one to suggest front porch, but uh ultimately it's the name we came up with, and so porch and patio has become my brand, and uh I don't think I can escape it now. So it's kind of cool how it's all come together though.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

No, for sure. It absolutely is. Now, has patio social become like a business kind of to you, or is it still just mainly like a free networking thing that for you? Like how have you turned that into revenue?

SPEAKER_00 8:13

We've really taken the next few steps with patio social, uh, where it originated as I'm just gonna get people together and try to mingle and and meet people, making it a little bit more myself-centric. Uh, about two years ago, we took a big step and almost almost removing directly myself and my name real estate-wise from the patio social brand and marketing it as uh an event for people to connect in the community, far beyond just myself. And so it is a business for us now. It is income producing as we have sponsors that pay us on a monthly basis to advertise in front of our crowd, speak in front of our crowd, be promoted on social media to our crowd, to our newsletter, to our social media, and be uh publicized in our website and things of that nature. So, yes, it's an income-producing business for me, and it's been amazing to see it grow in this community as well. And it's still, even with me making it less about my real estate and more about us as a sponsor whole, has still been very, very beneficial for Front Porch Real Estate and my business, which would be a second business to Patty of Social.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. So I I'm curious, were you always somebody that like wanted to put events together and like be in front of crowds and talk to people, or were you actually kind of more like on the other side, like shy, reserved, or more introverted? Like, because sometimes some people listen to this like, that sounds cool, but I don't know that I like want to get out there and like some people are like afraid of network, right? They don't like getting face to face with people.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Totally. It's a two-part answer because I think given the room that I'm in, really dependent on who's there and what the atmosphere is, depends on whether I'm introverted or extroverted. So can't speak to that. Raised by a pastor and a very extroverted mother as well, who talks to everybody. I I would say that I think it might have been within me, but the thought to start an event, put myself out there, invite people out, and really become a host of a gathering was very nerve-wracking and probably took me six to eight months to wrap my head around the idea of is this something I want to do? And to that no, I mean, it's really funny because once I committed to the event and said, I'm hosting this patio celebration, I'm I'm doing it, I don't know if anyone's gonna show up. Um, I slammed the phones and I really, really made sure, double and triple checked with people that they were going to go. So we sent out the email invite and posted on Facebook about it, but I was going to make sure individually uh that everybody I invited was gonna show up. So we ended up having about 40 to 50 people show up just on aggressive invites, and um, I could have a whole nother call and podcast about how to get people to show up, which I think could be valuable. But oh, it's definitely valuable.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

I think that's what everybody struggles with. Is like, how do you get people to show up to your event? I I would love for you to speak on it if you have a if you have a minute.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Yeah, I think it's a it's a balance of for us, our special sauce is we love to to be at local venues, and so um for just a social gathering, we love to be at a local venue. So there's kind of the atmosphere of people thinking, oh, I'll get to enjoy a a beer or a drink at a local place, mixed with the fact that us, along with our sponsors, provide that free drink for 21 year older. And so attendees get kind of that excitement about what they're being given at the door when they enter. And then the utilizing the free social media channels, especially from the start, having no market budget to promote the events is beyond the most valuable thing you can do. And so Facebook has always been the driving force for the majority of our crowd to show up. So putting together an event graphic and inviting friends, family, and encouraging them to invite friends is huge. And then what I said a moment ago, which was I was not an event host when the patio celebration started, I was a kid with a real estate license with no, right? So no qualifications or anything like that. So the personal invite was the thing that became kind of my my thing. I was going to make sure that 40 people showed up. I knew that if I put an event out on Facebook and 100 people marked interested, that might be 10 people.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Yeah, that's 10, 10, 20 people might show it.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

We all we all know that those numbers. And so, how did I guarantee that 50 people interested turned into 40, 50 people show up? It was back to that seven levels of communication. It was that direct invite, that direct call that I'm gonna I'm gonna ask. And my script became very simple. It was, you know, hey, I want I want you to come to this event that we're doing. It's it's gonna be really fun, uh, it's gonna be enjoyable. Will you be there? Will you be there? Such a job.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Will you be there?

SPEAKER_00 12:59

I'm gonna get a verbal yes, right? Um, or a no and a reason why on the phone, not a hey, here's an event, show up if you can, but can you come? Can you bring your spouse? Can you bring your friend? And I figured out that that that verbal commitment really pushed it over the edge to get people to to agreeing to come and join us.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

How many people did you have to like call and email to get 40 to 50 people to show up?

SPEAKER_00 13:24

I believe it was probably 60 to 75 calls.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

That's not bad.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Not bad at all, but with that kind of tone, yeah. I'm having an event, I'd love to have you there, I need you there because I would love for people to show up. And then are you able to come? Will you come? Really pushed people to to commit to where my guest list became a lot of very confirming yeses. And I would say from social media alone, maybe again that 10% number people showed up that showed interested on the event. And and I would be as confident as to say probably 80% of the people I called were able to write.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

And I think a lot of people think about like, you know, when you think about real estate traditionally, you're on the phones, you know, it's constant rejection. Like you're connecting with like 20 to 30 percent of the people you call, and like one to three percent of them actually want to talk to you and like actually do anything. Like it's a totally different conversation when you're inviting somebody to something that's valuable for them. So it's not like you're calling to pitch them, you're bringing them to something that's actually valuable for them that could help them do something, grow, connect with other people, etc.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

It's totally right. And that that's where I found the conversation to be extremely easy. Hey, come out to have a warm conversation.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Let's hang out, let's have fun. Low pressure situation, and as you and I both know, once they're at the event, then the yielding of the fruit can really begin for us. Whereas a cold call to sell a house could go nowhere majority of the time. A call to invite someone out to an event, to a gathering, to celebrate them, to have fun, can then yield many, many more opportunities. And so we played the long game in that in that regard.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

I think that so many people today think like, what can I take from this conversation instead of what can I give to this conversation? And I've found that when you are cold calling people, which I've done a lot over the last two to three years, and you don't have anything to sell them per se, the conversations tend to go a lot better. So when you're calling and you're trying to drag something out of people or take something from the conversation, and um it's a very, very, very, very good approach. I think a lot of people listening to this would think like, oh, well, he had to call like two to three hundred people and he had to, you know, work like crazy. And for you, it sounds like it, you know, it was six to eight months of getting the mind right, but then the execution, it probably happened pretty, pretty quick. You know, how long did it take you to put your first event together? Week, month, two months?

SPEAKER_00 15:48

We yeah, week or so it was really all very easy.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

And then it's become like the base it's become like the foundation of your your whole business, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Yeah, it's been it's been an extension of who I am, almost 100%. So I'm so glad I did it. And uh I was pushed into it, as I think a lot of us are, and the endeavors, you know, we we get comfortable in the way we are, and it's hard to do something new. So I could encourage anyone watching this to to host a gathering and and encourage people to come out by by phone call, by invite, and by multiple different touch points that will get people to come come and show up. And so it was difficult at first to to make that jump. But but I'll say this the second event was so easy because then the social proof of having people made it so easy for me to follow the same strategy, but then for also people to see, oh well, their last event was great. I'm coming out and I'm bringing a friend, right? And so just that simple success of doing it right the first time then became kind of the standard of how how our events went. And I think ever since then, every single one of our socials, besides maybe one or two that were hosted with weather being questionable and things of that nature, like have been very successful from from what I from what I think was that what made it go from three one every three months to two months to one month, was just by request, like people are wanting to do it more and more and more. Yeah, it felt like my fear was if I host one every, you know, I'm hosting one every quarter, if I do one every other month, they'll get tired of it. And then I was like, we gotta do it, come on. Like and then it's exact the same exact conversation. Well, if I do one every month, people are gonna get tired of it. They're they're not gonna want to come out every time because they're seeing everybody every month, surely they wouldn't want to. And I've continued to whittle that down, and I think we still have a massively growing crowd. I think that once every month number was very smart place to reach, and then with our some of our specialty events and more low-key events that we'll do within those kind of builds the brand and builds the you know, that ongoing, everlasting vibe for the patio social to be kind of always happy.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Did you need a big team to do this, or was it really just you?

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Dude, it was me. It was me. It was me. It was some helping hands along the way, some trade partners. I owe it to a lot of people to give them shout-outs to say that they helped me along the way. Had my cousin Thomas come along at some point and became kind of a mouthpiece for us in promoting and and communicating the events out to our audience. We had people from all over the place come out and say, Well, let me help you with this, let me help you with that. And so we've tried and done our best to promote them and equal value. And the coolest thing was we we had a uh, he still does our website and all of our design work to this day. But my buddy Juan appeared out of thin air at our one of our socials about two years ago. And um he said, uh, hey, nice to meet you, Pat. I met Thomas recently. I have a website for you because you guys need a website, and also you're struggling with all of your sign-ins for the events because they're getting big enough where you're pretty much an idiot for still using paper sign-in copies when the line is out the door. So I've figured that out for you as well. And then by the way, you know my one my name's Juan. So he's been with us ever since, and we've sent him as much business as possible and kind of um referral for referral tradition there. But things like that have happened and taken place, and it's been a huge blessing.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

This little community this community is just kind of like developed, and everybody supports each other and is referring business back and forth to each other, and that's really cool. If somebody was listening to this, and now they're like, all right, I I think I like this idea, I want to give it a shot. Like, what do you think is their first step? What do they got to do?

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Get an event on the books with a venue. It's a lot easier than it it may seem from the outside. Speak to the decision makers, whether that's manager or owner of a local venue, and say, I'd like to have a gathering. They may give you the back room, they may give you the patio, they may give you the whole place to use in uh a trade or a small fee or a large fee, depending on where you want to go, and get people together. And if you can if you can make your invites through social media combined with personal outreach and get commitments, then people will show up. And what I believe was that my only fear was really that people wouldn't show up. And so once I could just tackle that and just hit that straight on the nose and go, I'm gonna force people to show up. Yeah, everything else fell into place. All the social proof I needed from there on out solved the case. So people what whether people would judge me or not for doing this, or you know, really whatever.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

So I don't I don't think that that fear of people showing up has never gone away for me. Like I and it's to me at this point it's kind of irrational, but like I do I'll do events every now and again, paid events, and I'll have people that will buy tickets and they're I know they're travel I did events a few years ago. Uh like they had to travel to Arkansas, uh, people bought tickets, but still that morning of I'm like, nobody's gonna show up. Yeah. Like I'm like, so I don't know that the fear ever kind of like went away for me. I still will do events sometimes because you know we own the Rogers Farmers Market. Yeah, and I'm like, nobody's gonna show up. And then a thousand people will show up that day, and it's like, all right, it's it it seems like an irrational fear. I think if you're listening to this and you're like, I don't know, that sounds scary. It is scary. I don't think that I don't think the scary part goes away. Uh we've got a thing in our house, you just gotta do it scared. So take the first step. I've watched patio social growth, I've watched Pat grow, and I know it is an impactful strategy for turning your relationships into revenue. Pat obviously has built an incredible business off the back of it. I do want to know when I'm gonna get one of those front porch real estate hats. I'll I'll definitely rock that. But uh, dude, I appreciate you coming on the show today. It's uh definitely been an awesome conversation.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

The hat, we'll have a follow-up on the hat. All right, perfect. You'll you'll be on the list for sure.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Oh, there's a list. Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Only important people, so you'll be put on it.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Let's go. Let's go. What is um last question, man? Is like, what is the number one way that if we're listening to the podcast right now, that we could partner with you? How can we walk alongside you and how how could we help support you?

SPEAKER_00 21:55

I think with us being fresh with Front Porch, we have taken a, you know, just head on. We're getting all of our systems set up as we've gone and really being very particular with how we grow our brand. And so we'd love a follow on social media, particularly Instagram, frontporchnwa. We'd love a follow there. If someone's really curious about everything we're doing with the patio socials, we are at the patio community on social media as well. And would would love for you to come check us out and see what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Oh, that's awesome. Okay, we'll make sure that we link up the ways that people can connect with you following the show. And if you're listening to this, I highly encourage you to do that. I think you all just got a masterclass in how to how to grow something that could really accelerate your growth in business. And um something uh like I said, I've seen it uh in what Pat's doing. And so I know I know it's a very impactful strategy, something that you should execute on. Dude, thanks again. I appreciate you a ton for being here.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Thanks, Pat.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yeah, yeah, and thank you guys for continuing to listen to the Partner Profit Podcast. Today was a good one, and I'll see you on the next one.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Peace.