Rylee Meek:
Yeah, A.J., happy to be here, man. This will be a great conversation. Looking forward to it.

A.J. Lawrence:
I’m glad. And, yeah, since you’re in a nice, balmy Northern America right now, where it seems like it’s the south, it’s cold, in the north, it’s warm, so it’s kind of getting to be a fun bit of time. You have so many different things going on, you have the Social Dynamic Selling, and I would love to kind of talk about what that means. But you also have your not-for-profit, the King’s Council. You have your own podcast, the sales conversion podcast.

You’re on the Forbes Business Council. I’ve done Forbes and Inc, so I would love to kind of how you’re thinking. You’re doing a lot of different things, but at least from what I’ve been following, I’ve been very interested in how you seem to do very well in weaving them all together. Where do you see yourself as an entrepreneur these days?

Rylee Meek:
Oh, man, where do I see myself? Well, I think entrepreneurship is a, if we look at the root word of it, it’s a french word and it’s entreprendre. Pardon my French, A.J.

A.J. Lawrence:
I’m American. I speak one language.

Rylee Meek:
All that really means is to undertake, right? So I really believe at the core of it, most human beings, all of us, we’re born undertakers, right? If we really think about this. But I think culture and society today, especially today, does a great job at teaching that out of us or dare I say, indoctrinating that out of us. And so as an entrepreneur, where am I at today? Like, I’m in the midst of this undertaking, this task at hand. Now, it’s numerous tasks.

And me as an entrepreneur 10 years ago, even 15-20 years ago, I jokingly say I gave my life to entrepreneurship at the age of 15. I’m 38 now. It’s like there’s been different journeys over the last 23 years, I guess, but I’m still in the midst of this bad boy undertaking it. And I will be until the day that God calls me home because it’s just too much fun. It’s so fun to just build things for the benefit of others and then get rewarded for it. That’s the beauty of this entrepreneurship journey that we’re actually all on.

A.J. Lawrence:
No, I cannot agree more. I mean, I’m constantly talking to my team and the magic is in the definition there. But it’s like, look, our main focus is we create more value for the people we serve and if we do a good job there, then we figure out how to extract some of that for ourselves. That’s the game. Yeah, there’s lots of little steps and there’s words and there’s opens and software we use at all different levels, but create value, extract some of it. Let’s talk a little bit just because I am curious about this structure. It’s something that reminds me almost of things I heard about out of the seventies. But from what I’ve been able to look at in the Social Dynamic Selling System, you’re approaching it in a much more sophisticated way. And I don’t want to put words and I don’t want to kind of miscalculate.

So would you kind of just walk through like what is the social? And then let’s kind of talk about how other entrepreneurs could look at stuff like this.

Rylee Meek:
Yeah. At the core of it, the Social Dynamic Selling System, often people just equate that to like, oh, you do social media. And that’s not the case at all. Actually, couldn’t even be further.

A.J. Lawrence:
You do well. I’ve seen some of it.

Rylee Meek:
Here’s the thing about good entrepreneurs, they delegate appropriately. So I don’t, I barely am even on it, but I know I’ve got to be at certain times to film certain things and create certain content and then I let the experts do what they’re best at. But the Social Dynamic Selling System was created really out of me kind of back against the wall being freaking broke as a joke. In the sales world, I had made a decent amount of money as a young entrepreneur. I hit my first six figures at the age of 18 and thought I was really something.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah.

Rylee Meek:
And, you know, went through just that sales journey. I love the idea of sales and I always love the concept that I can earn what I’m worth. One thing I heard a lot of A.J., was your earning ability is uncapped if you’re in sales. And I kind of equated that at that time with entrepreneurship. But I never fully bought into it because at the time, I was selling things. My income was really based upon the amount of time in a day.

Rylee Meek:
Right? And I could sell something.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah.

Rylee Meek:
I gradually increased my commission level or the profit margin based upon the higher the ticket item that I was selling. But I was still like, wait a minute. All of my ability, my earning ability is based upon my efforts and the amount of time in a day. And I came off a failed business venture. I was out in Mexico. I lived down there for five months, and ultimately, we kind of got shut down by the government. And I found myself on a flight back here to the states. And I was actually even homeless at the time.

I leased out my condo so I came back and I found myself living on my sister’s couch. And I was just on a journey of like, alright, God, what is next for me? Because I didn’t know. I was only 24 at the time but it was just, I felt like it was like my midlife crisis. And I came across this ad that said, work three days a week, make $10,000. And of course, I was like, yeah right. Right? I mean, this is 2005? Something like that.

A.J. Lawrence:
Okay, yep. Just as it was kind of coming back. Believe me, I know that period quite well.

Rylee Meek:
And through that process ultimately, I was introduced to this kind of concept of one to many. Because everything that I had done was like one on one. It could take somebody from a “Hi, I’m Rylee” to closing a deal, and dependent upon the length of that sales process, it could be timely in this concept. It blew my mind. It was like literally inventing fire in front of me because I saw this guy. He invited me to a presentation.

He delivered a presentation to like, 24 people. Out of that presentation, he simply asked for an appointment and seven of them gave him the time of day. The very next day, he met with him and then he ended up closing a handful of those. And I was like, oh, my gosh. If this guy could do that, like I’m gonna get rich doing this thing. Because what I loved, we hear all the time now, these ideas of just online funnels, right? And top of the funnel and bringing them through your sales process.

A.J. Lawrence:
Click funnel world. Yeah, I know.

Rylee Meek:
And this was really, to me, because clickfunnels wasn’t a thing at that point in time, but to me, I was like, this is an offline funnel, right? Because where we invited a certain amount of people out and a certain amount of them showed up, a certain amount of them listened and gave an appointment, a certain amount of them met one on one, and a certain amount of them closed. And it was really like I said, inventing fire to me at the time. Because it’s like holy cow, this is it. This is how I can take my skill set with sales, but I can speak to many at one time. And then I’m sifting the sand and I’m only meeting with those that actually want at least to know what the price is or a proposal of some sort. That was then I really looked into it and I’m like, yeah, this has been around for quite some time. It’s not like I invented this at all. Frankly, I was mad.

A.J. Lawrence:
Conference stage talk.

Rylee Meek:
Yeah, I was mad that I didn’t think of this prior to this at all. And what I did though is like, alright, how do I fix and refine this process? How do I really streamline this thing? And so I took some of his concepts of the things he was selling, added a few of my own, and kind of made some bundled package, and did my first presentation. Man, I had $673 in my bank account but I had a credit card. And the biggest thing was I had that burning desire for more. And it was like, how do we make this thing work? And so I stumbled into a few sales and I kept reinvesting that money. Then I didn’t go buy a new car or buy my lease out or anything like that. It was like, I’m just going to continue to sleep on my sister’s couch.

And for six months, I just kept reinvesting and reinvesting. I looked up the end of that year, we had done $2.1 million in sales and I was like, alright, this thing works. And from there, it was now I’m going to start recruiting and teaching people this process, learned a ton through that next year. By the end of that following year, we’d done 12 million, I had 26 sales crews across 38 states, and it was a system that we really put in place at that point in time. And then it was really the realization that it was the system, the product was really irrelevant.

I’ve started eight of our own companies in this system. Every single one of them, we’ve hit seven. A couple of them, eight figures within the first ten months of each. And we’ve done a quarter of a billion dollars over the last 12 years utilizing this system.

A.J. Lawrence:
Well, let’s talk about this type of thing. Because I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, the folks listening here on the podcast, we have a lot of they’re looking at it and I think where I started getting interested but I wanted to really leave this in your hands. I think a lot of people think of this approach as being like the coach mastermind direction, or my course. Lets kind of talk about how the different types of businesses that can be used and then maybe some businesses that you wouldn’t think this would be useful. So just the listeners can start putting themselves in the process of thinking about it.

Rylee Meek:
Yeah, absolutely. I’m glad you brought this up A.J. because this system is unique, right? It isn’t for everybody because our primary source of marketing is still direct mail to this day. I do hundreds of thousands of direct mail pieces every single week, actually. And so from that standpoint, we’re sending these invitations out, we’re bringing people to a restaurant, we’re feeding them a dinner, typically. And so there’s money that’s involved with this. And so we need to have a high enough product or price point that can afford this market.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, lifetime value out of this.

Rylee Meek:
Exactly. So if you’re selling a $48 widget and there’s no additional lifetime value to our customer-

A.J. Lawrence:
There’s a french fry.

Rylee Meek:
Yeah. This is not the system for you. Go figure out clickfunnels or something like that. But if you are specifically direct to consumer, so if you’re in the home services industry. Like the thing that I started out selling was insulation, which is not sexy. I mean, get this, A.J. The funny thing is, man, I still to this day don’t even know what r-value stands for. And I refuse, so don’t even say it, man. I refuse to learn because it takes the fun away from this story.

But I sold millions of dollars to homeowners, helping them to reduce savings on their utility bills. We did LED lighting, we did solar attic ventilators. And so it was like just figuring out, What do people want? Right? Because a lot of people are looking for finding a need in the marketplace, which is great, but people don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want. So how do we make this thing sexy enough to want this? And how do we craft a story around this that people will understand and buy into? Take them on an emotional journey to ultimately make a decision.

Whether the decision is yes or no, that’s fine. Because I’m not here to pressure people into anything that they don’t want or need. But if I can create an environment where all of a sudden they have the understanding and realization, “oh, yeah, this makes sense. We should get this or we should do this.” That’s an ideal product or offering is direct to consumer. Home services work great. It’s typically not an at-need product.

And what I mean by that A.J. is let’s take a roof, for example. People don’t shop for roofs when they think they’re going to go buy a roof.

A.J. Lawrence:
It happens, you need it tomorrow.

Rylee Meek:
Right. It’s like, oh, crap, hail came in and we’re gonna get this thing replaced. Same with like a furnace. People aren’t pre-forecasting like, oh, we should really replace the furnace. It’s like, no, the dang thing goes out and then we replace it. Right?

A.J. Lawrence:
Better not be in winter, please.

Rylee Meek:
Exactly right. Yes. If we can create something, like we’re extremely successful in the solar industry right now. Where it’s like, okay. It’s high ticket. It’s direct to consumer. Anything along those lines.

A.J. Lawrence:
News, Awareness.

Rylee Meek:
You got it. We work a lot with doctors in the regenerative medicine space, helping them acquire patients at the core of what we are. We aren’t branders. We’re not like putting billboards up. I equate it to this, in the marketing world, there’s farmers and they’re hunters. We don’t farm, we hunt. So if you throw a dart at a map and I can find a restaurant or a location in that town or that city, I can pull a list, demographically of people that fit your demographic. Like who buys your stuff?

A.J. Lawrence:
Your avatar.

Rylee Meek:
Yes. We’re going to directly market to them to come to the event, we help then our clients craft this presentation to create that sense of urgency to ultimately help them make a buying decision. So when I say hunting, we find our prey. We seek it out. We find it, we shoot it, we clean it, we cook it, we eat it, and then we move on to the next territory versus planting seeds, planting seeds, planting seeds. One’s not better than the other.

I just prefer hunting over farming each and every day because it’s something that’s controlled. We coin our system. It is a sustainable, a predictable and a scalable sales system that we have control over that I can turn up or I can turn down at any point in time based upon the volume that I can actually afford to take on.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah. I mean, the mailings you put in. That extra kind of step. If you have a home service, like one things, even the heating, cooling, the rise of subscription packages for a lot of these because I moved. The lovely fun of moving from another country and buying a house remotely. Like, oh yeah, this thing is old and needs 20,000 things. As long as you can model out a value prop, direct mail, while not super extensive thing, is work. It’s that event, the thing, the planning, your consulting. What’s the typical size of like an event? Is it like 30, 50 people coming to something? Or does it depend on what’s being offered?

Rylee Meek:
It depends on what’s being offered most definitely. But I will tell you, when I call any event, I typically include that within what we call a seminar series. And so, for example, if I’m sending an invitation out now, I want that to hit at a specific time frame before the event. If it hits the day before the event, people don’t have time to respond to it. So we usually are marking 10 to 14 days in advance. They’re getting this and they have the time to respond either through our 800 number or online. But we have multiple times available. This is going to be dependent upon the avatar that we’re targeting.

When are they available? Do they still work? So we need to do this after hours. Or is it an older demographic where we can do like an early afternoon event? But I typically like to have at least three options on that they can choose from based upon what works for them. Our job is not to make our lives easy. Our job is to remove as much limbic friction as possible for the customer or the prospect. And so we give them a few options. Typically with a lot of direct mail, I mean we’re always shooting for like a one and a half percent response rate is phenomenal. Right?

A.J. Lawrence:
Pretty good. Yeah.

Rylee Meek:
For simple math, if I send 10,000 pieces, I get 100 responses. Oftentimes it’s husband and wife, not always the case, so that may be we’ll call it 150 people that are going to show up over three to four days, different time slots that I have. So I’m typically presenting to 20 to 40 people give or take at any given time. And truthfully, my favorite number, A.J., is like 20 to 22 people just because I feel like it’s still intimate enough to connect with them, take them on that journey, so by the end of it, they know me, they like me, they trust me.

I’ve now earned the right to ask for a one on one appointment to ultimately then close the sale at that point in time. I want to be crystal clear, our system is not rah, rah, rah, rush to the back of the room and make a decision you regret. It is make a wise decision to meet with us and then when we meet, now, we can actually do a needs analysis or whatever it is that they’re looking for to actually close the sale.

A.J. Lawrence:
Maybe not a super high consideration set, but it is more to that moderate high consideration thought process. The multiple research points, things, and youre basically moving geeked out and mapped out in my past life as a data scientist, mapping out the touchpoints into that consideration point, that familiarity, that sort of brand comfort comes later into the cycle. So you, by kind of attaching that experience with that top of the funnel thing, you’re kind of jumping past a little bit of that middle nurturing ground or at least increasing the likelihood, moving it through. That is cool.

And I like that it is abroad because it’s like in looking at a lot of the franchise, the rise of franchise and looking at franchises, I mean, that’s an amazing consideration set. All right, this is really pretty cool. And doing that, what’s the process in sort of working and understand? But you got the confidence, you got the smoothness going on. How do you make this so it works for the entrepreneur who’s curious about doing this with you. You know, doing it for themselves.

Rylee Meek:
Yeah, absolutely. The thing with this is it depend upon the level of engagement. I’ve written a book on this, it’s called Food for Thought, literally teach you everything you need to know to actually go do your own. Now, if you’re needing additional help, I have a course for it as well. It’s going to walk you through a little bit more handholding process.

But majority of the people, truthfully I’ve had people go through that and I’ve gotten emails of like, “just held my first event”. The most recent one was 63 people showed up. “I did $48,000 in closed business that week”. It’s like, all right, well, amazing. Like that to me, that’s life changing stuff for them and it warms my heart. Even though I make $4 off the book, it’s wonderful. It’s helping them fulfill their destiny for their family. But a lot of people come to us, and they’re like, I don’t know what I don’t know. Right? And as an entrepreneur, it’s like, we either figure it out. We either have time or we have money. And if you got time, by all means, go figure it out.

But if you got a little bit of money to invest into this, I offer a strategy call initially, free of charge. I’ll hop on with anybody for 30 minutes and just walk through what is your product, what is your service? Are the price points there, or can we adjust them? Can we bundle things? For example, at a mattress company, price points weren’t quite there. But could we now bundle this with a relaxation massage chair? And now we’ve hit the margin that we need to actually make this thing work. So it’s a matter of just getting creative, which is, that’s the fun process of entrepreneurship. Right?

Like, how do we get creative and create something that people want? And then from there, it’s usually a strategy day that myself or someone on our team will really peel back the onion on this thing and start to lay out the marketing piece. What’s the messaging that we need to speak to our avatar? We start to run demographics. We figure out geographically, where are we going to market to? Are we limited by location, or is this something that can be nationwide? And we really start to peel back the onion and lay out a playbook, we call it. Not a business plan. Business plans are great if you’re looking to raise capital or something like that, but we truly knocked out your business playbook. Like, this is what happens to have to happen on this deadline. This deadline. This deadline.

A.J. Lawrence:
SOPs, this process, yeah.

Rylee Meek:
Exactly, yeah. As long as you follow those steps, we know there’s only one variable really at that point, and it’s going to be the one that’s presenting. And the exciting thing about this A.J. is, man, my sophomore year of high school, I basically failed speech class. Standing up in front of people, I would quiver. I’d have my note cards, and it was a train wreck, man. And what I can say is that this is a learned skill set.

Now, some people have charisma. Some people, they command that room. They have that energy about them, which is amazing. But I didn’t have that. This is something that I had to learn and really hone in and craft. It started at an early age. I started to really figure this thing out because speaking to groups is much different than speaking one on one, right? And why we call that the Social Dynamic Selling System is because there is a social dynamic that takes place, right?

You think about any setting that you’re in within a group of people, even if you just go out to the restaurant, there’s this dynamic that’s taking place in that setting. There’s other patrons maybe sitting up at the bar, there’s the bartender, there’s your server, there’s the people in the booth behind you. There’s a dynamic that’s taking place and there’s the ability to understand that and to use, I’m going to call it just skill sets or tactics. You can learn tactics on how to get people to take action, how to move them in your favor, how to win people over utilizing this social system. And so that’s kind of a higher level type of training that we go through on the sales side of it.

But big answer, I guess, but just to narrow it down, it depends on the level engagement that that person needs. Is it just, hey, teach me. Is it, hey, teach me and fill the room. Is it, fill the room, teach me the presentation. Is it done for you? Like, we even have programs like that.

A.J. Lawrence:
You run the gap.

Rylee Meek:
You just collect the patient or the product or, excuse me, the client. I say patient because we do that for a lot of doctors. Like, doctors just want to treat patients. They don’t want to understand marketing. They don’t even like that stuff. So for that though, we take a heavy chunk of that because we’re the ones that are spending all the time, energy, and effort to get to acquire the patient. So we do it all, but it’s really just dependent upon the level of engagement that would be required for that particular business owner.

A.J. Lawrence:
Okay, let’s talk about some of the tactical structure of this. And I know everyone’s price points are different. Locations, you’re doing this down in Palm beach versus doing it in the middle of Arkansas. Your event space is going to be factors differently. But generally, what is the cost? Let’s first focus just on the event structure, and then we don’t have to specifically talk about your services at the different levels. But let’s talk like, okay, the direct mail piece. Let’s say if you’re going to do three events and you want to target about 20, 25, so it’s about 60 to 75 people, what’s that direct mail piece going to cost? And you were saying one and a half, I could do the reverse math except I’m no longer 18. If I don’t pull the calculator out in the middle. So what’s that going to cost about for someone to get in a location, to get about those 75 people? That direct mail piece just starting there.

Rylee Meek:
Yeah. So again, this is a lot of factors. I’m gonna do my best to answer this. If we have a terrible, terrible offer, let’s say, my target, my avatar is left-handed, blonde-haired people with peg legs. Okay, that’s gonna be hard, right?

A.J. Lawrence:
I understand. I am putting you on the spot, don’t worry. Just from the mindset.

Rylee Meek:
The more factors we layer on here, for example, like a financial advisor. We fill events for lots of advisors. We have our own insurance agency.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah.

Rylee Meek:
Now those, demographically, that list that we pull, it’s a little bit more expensive than just a generic every door direct mail. Because I’m layering on like okay they income producing assets and things like that. Every time we add those things on, it increases cost. So across the board, though, I’m gonna-

A.J. Lawrence:
Smaller audience, more segmentation.

Rylee Meek:
You got it. Yep. A seminar series though could be anywhere from like four to ten grand. Well, it’s a huge range but this is where I say if you have a $48 widget, this isn’t for you. If you can profit a couple grand, a few grand per sale, we might be able to make this thing work.

Here’s my sweet spot on this A.J. is a 300% ROI.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah.

Rylee Meek:
If I know that I can invest-

A.J. Lawrence:
ROAS. Yeah.

Rylee Meek:
Yes. You got it. So if I know that I can invest ten grand into marketing, if I can make that 30 grand, I’m doing this thing all day long. Over the long period that we’ve done this, why if I’ve fallen in that number is I’ve realized that if I’m a little bit higher than that or even a little bit lower than that, either I’m not spending enough on marketing, or let me change my language,

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah.

Rylee Meek:
investing enough or I’m doing too much. And I don’t have enough fulfillment to actually nurture, take care of those potential clients. And so that 300% man, is like a prime number for us now. We’ve blown that out of the water before. And so then it’s like, all right, well, I’m going to just spend more. Because my concept with this when I talk about a sustainable, predictable, and scalable selling system is if I go to the casino and I know that every three quarters that I put in there, I’m going to get a dollar back, why would I ever stop putting quarters in? And this is what a lot of marketers do. They like, oh, no, recession or things are tightening up. This thing’s recession proof, baby. I’ve been doing this for 13 years. I made more money when things were in the tank. Actually in 2020, dude, this is crazy.

So we do dinner seminars in restaurants, which means we gathered groups of people in restaurants that were completely shut down. So March of 2020 would be light of me saying devastating for us. I was in Scottsdale, Arizona, supposedly on a vacation with my wife and there’s rumors of this over the weekend. My team is calling me going, hey, man, there’s talk about restaurants closing down. I’m like, what? No chance. Like, that can’t happen. We live in America. Right? That’s not happening.

And I got that news on Monday morning, and I was like, God, what am I going to do here? I had over 111 events that week We had to cancel. I had over $300,000 in money out, like sent mail out the door. And it was like, now I can’t even. What am I going to do here? So, like every other entrepreneur, good entrepreneur I will say, is we pivot, right? Like, okay, head on a swivel, Wayne Gretzky skated to where the puck was going to be. That’s why he was the greatest hockey player, right? Because every product that I’ve ever sold A.J., I’ve never been like, this is my passion. I just love this so much.

I don’t really care. Morally and ethically, it has to be a good product, right? Am I providing value to somebody else? If that’s the case, can I create a want? And then from there, like, alright, is there margin? Can we make money in this thing? And if that’s the case, then let’s freaking go. This is why I have a walk in bathtub company. Bro, I don’t give a rip about walk in bathtubs. I love the people that need them, but it’s hard to get excited about that. But it gets exciting when we can create enough revenue that affords me the ability to actually go do what I love to do.

A.J. Lawrence:
Oh, funny, I remember doing that for my grandmother. Getting there, walking. But okay, you and I are similar. I like the concept of figuring out how to create value for businesses because, yeah, I don’t care any specific business. I just like the puzzle. To me it’s that puzzle of figuring it out. I like that approach in this. That is a really cool concept and looking. I mean, yes, it lends itself.

You guys, I went crazy during 2000. To me, my point was 2008 where I got very lucky. I acquired from my little SEO and paid search. We acquired a media buying firm that could do all sorts of crazy things. And it was sort of like our secret weapon was just like, look, we went out and found clients that if we got them more business they would, you know, performance, basically would pay. And we’d be like, look, if we find a way to do this, can we turn the jets on? And it was like, sure. One or two clients that were like, this is too much business. I was like, okay, well, I think you have the wrong problem if this is the case. But yeah it is. You find, look, shadows scaling, you know, it depends understanding where something like this fits within the scale of your business and it could fit within different structures and different levels of sizes. Obviously theres not an infinite tap per but there is an ongoing capability in multiple business concepts.

Sorry, you have me geeking out and I know I’m supposed to be interviewing you on your journey and stuff, but right now I’m geeking out on how to just from some of the people I know, some of the things I’m looking at, I’m like, okay, how did this fit in? Okay, and how much would a brand structure kind of fit in? Kind of talking. Oh wait, I know, I saw that. Oh wait, yeah, he was a nice guy. Look, look at that TikTok. He does. I think this is cool what you’re doing. And I like that because it does. Yes.

The sell part, that actual presentation part I think for some people is going to be hard because we are very conditioned on the one on one. Yeah, I always joke my main skill from business side is that cross sell upsell that farming side, but with whale hunting I combine it like day to day sales. Yeah. You get me someone in, I’ll find a gazillion ways to make them happy, understand their thing, do it. But then let’s go find, let’s go find Moby Dick out there and go bring him in. But I like this because there’s a structure, the direct mail. And do you own the direct mail capability or is that something you partner with?

Rylee Meek:
Yeah, we own the whole process. And so, yeah, that’s, yeah, that’s super smart.

A.J. Lawrence:
In this day and age.

Rylee Meek:
That was something that I didn’t realize is so important to this, because a lot of people, when I started out, I was naive. And I’m like, well, yeah, you just send direct mail. Like, it’s not that simple from a timing standpoint. Right. If, because one variable in this is the most unreliable thing in America, and that is our government-run companies, right? The United States Postal Service is a train wreck.

A.J. Lawrence:
It’s a great, great gift, at the same time, it’s just like, oh, my God. Yep.

Rylee Meek:
Yes. And so we control, I’m a firm believer you control the controllables. You don’t have any right to complain about what you tolerate in your life or in your business. If you’re tolerating it, you’re the problem. And so, mail not hitting it at appropriate times, then it was like something that was infuriating for me. When it’s like, listen, I’m spending money, and if it’s not hitting when it was supposed to be hitting, it’s the opportunity cost, not even the cost of the mail, it’s the opportunity cost that I lost on this. Because if I can go make 50 grand a week, you just took that away from me. So it was infuriating. So we had to bring that in.

It’s like, all right, let’s control this thing. Because if I’m going to sell anything or provide consulting services to anybody, I need to be the best product and service possible. So we had to bring that in-house.

A.J. Lawrence:
I hate the term the VA wave, I always call it the business mullet. Americans for Face and global talent for back office. But I’ve seen some really interesting, I’ve had some discussions with people around call centers. English as a second language is growing globally, especially throughout Central America. And you can put up a center in a lot of Central, Mexico, Central America, even parts of South America, and you’re talking to someone who’s going to sound just like they’re from down the street. Their English is so amazing. And with the increase of bandwidth and Elon Musk giving us the nice little satellites, it ends cutting this cost down to the point, and I know this isn’t your model, but are you looking at call centers to kind of also add in? To maybe bring this in? Because I could just see how globalizing your talent could just make this all, you know. You’re localizing an offer.

Rylee Meek:
So we do have an inbound. So when people RSVP, we handle all of those.

A.J. Lawrence:
Your own call support. Okay.

Rylee Meek:
We’ve never done outbound for that. I’ve done it for other business ventures, but it’s not something that we’ve taken on in this sphere yet. Just because number one, I would always test it first myself. I never make suggestions to anybody even on the consulting side. But even the coaching side of things, I’m never going to be like, oh, you should look at this or do this. It’s like, I’m going to test it first and make sure it works well before I would ever make any recommendations on that. But certainly I think it probably could be done.

But then the thing that we always take into consideration, A.J., is the type of person that we’re attracting. Right? You’re gonna always catch the fish based upon the lure that you’re using. So you’re hunting for whale, but you’re also chumming the water. So you’ve got the nets that’s picking up the starfish and the marlin, but then all of a sudden there’s a whale. Like, beautiful. That makes great sense. For our standpoint, the reason I love direct mail, cause I’ve done a ton of online marketing as well, it’s a different person that responds.

And I love having this conversation with people that think direct mail is like archaic or it’s, oh, it’s dead. People don’t check mail anymore. I say, I’m so happy that you think that way because that means there’s less clutter in the mailbox for me. You got all the direct mail.

A.J. Lawrence:
Literally owning a home, Ttis is because the Google sometimes searching for people, I end up with lead gen sources or basically private equity owned companies that are crap. So direct mail ends up being a lot of how I choose my service. Okay, yeah, sorry I took you off.

Rylee Meek:
But it is the type of person that responds, the type of person that I’m the highest return on results. How about that? Because from a return on ad spend, it’s like, okay, I sent an ad and I got 100 people. But out of how many of those hundred actually bought? Because remember, the person that’s even online or scrolling on Facebook, they see something like, oh, cool, they click it. There was no commitment to them versus picking up the phone, making an RSVP, taking that piece, putting it on your refrigerator. It’s forward facing, it’s front of mind. And it’s people that make a decision like that because most people are checking their mail over their garbage can. And so can I catch their eye, get them attracted to make a decision quickly? That’s part of our model. Again, to attract the right person so that the likelihood of us, when we meet them, we’re not spinning our wheels or wasting any more time.

And again, that’s just why we like the direct mail concept best. And I’ve tried everything, man, literally everything.

A.J. Lawrence:
I’m glad you have. Looking at this, it’s just sort of like, all right, pulling it in, figuring out this. And still, I have avoided, and I know this will be something for a lot of people because I do think a lot of, especially business owners, we get good at that one to one sale. I’ve done presentations. I’ve done the speaker circuit. Back in my last company, I realized, okay, too much of that’s ego you’re doing is not the ego speaker circuit. You have the process. You have this.

The way to look about it from this is really just, do you have the inherent offer? Is there something where there is the location structure that enough blonde, left handed, peg leg people in the location that you’re trying to target? If you can kind of do those two, I think the discovery process, for those of you in the audience, is worth exploring. Yeah, we didn’t even go anywhere close to some of the other things, the fascinating things you’re doing and the way you’re approaching community and stuff like that. So telling is so important.

I approach a lot of things at looking at, do you have the correct foundational structure in place to be able to handle things like this? My approach is always like, look, you have your goals, your vision. Can you measure things? Can you understand? Do you look at your data in a way that helps you learn from what has happened? And what’s really cool is if someone has that structure in place, gliding in something like that, and they fit and they have that type of footprint, both from a local, local business. There are multiple ways this type of execution can work if you have the right structure to push it into. No, I think this is really cool.

I’ve been impressed with a lot of what I’ve seen about King’s council and how much you’re bringing your religion into this, but also as a support system for people. And I would love to go on, but how do you go about defining what success is going to be for yourself as an entrepreneur? Not for the selling system, not for the king. Yeah. But for yourself as an entrepreneur, how do you go about making sure that you are understanding what success is?

Rylee Meek:
Yeah. So early on, my definition of success was, I want to do what I want, when I want, where I want, with who I want, how I want, right? Freedom. Because everybody wants that. And then it’s like, well, how do I get freedom? We live in America, right? So I got to make money like this.

A.J. Lawrence:
America, freedom.

Rylee Meek:
No matter what any religious mindsets might say, money is, it’s a great tool, right? And it is a. It’s something that I like. Zig Ziglar says it best. It’s like, it ain’t everything, but it’s right up there next to oxygen. And so it’s what greases the wheel. It’s what continues to keep things moving. And that was my motivation for many, many years. But, man, I tell you, I realized you can be incredibly successful at a lot of things and still feel like a fit failure if you’re not operating for the God given intended purpose of why you were created.

And, A.J., I’ve experienced what the world would call success many times. Right. Until four years ago, a little over four years ago, I’m just sitting in my basement just kind of going, oh, my gosh, is this what life is about? Like, is this. Is this really it? Just to build business? And nothing wrong with that. Like, it’s. That’s what gets us going as entrepreneurs. Like, that’s our gifting and our skillset. Therefore, we should do it in excellence, like in everything that we do.

But it was just this feeling inside of me, like, God, there’s got to be something more, right? And I equate it to, you can be successful at a lot of things, still feel like a failure. For example, I have a treadmill in my home gym here that is incredibly successful at hanging my clothes. Super successful at it, right? Yeah, but the manufacturer is looking at that treadmill going, that thing is a failure. Right? It’s not operating for why I made it. And as humans, we have a manufacturer, right? We have a creator that has designed each and every one of us for a purpose. And our job is to really determine what that purpose actually is, right, corporately being. I’m a Christian, right? A follower of Jesus. So I know, like, in reading the Bible, I know what, like, corporately, my job is to love the Lord our God, with all our heart, love our neighbor as ourself.

That’s the freaking hard part, is loving our neighbor. But once I’ve got an understanding of that, it’s like, how do I do that? Well, and in an entrepreneurship journey, how do we love our neighbor? Like, we provide excellence, we provide the greatest product, the greatest service in the world, the highest value that we can possibly have, and they’re gonna reward us for that. Right? And that is a loving relationship. But what really got me is I was a part of a number of different masterminds, a lot of different ones, and they were very valuable for me at the time. But as I matured and I started just to look at the community of people that I found myself around, I just realized that, man, this wasn’t the life that I wanted, right? Because a lot of those masterminds, if we can be honest, most of them are circle jerks. And it’s like, I don’t need that anymore in my life, right?

A.J. Lawrence:
Disguised selling opportunities.

Rylee Meek:
Yes, I want like divine relationship. I want connection. I want community. And that’s really out of that feeling of just unfulfillment and understanding what my definition of real success is now, A.J., is not what did I do in comparison to what anybody else did, right, in this. In the world that we live right now? That’s what most people are looking at, right? It’s like they’re on social media. They’re seeing all this, I mean, fake crap because it ain’t real.

Rylee Meek:
Most because ain’t nobody putting, like, negative stuff up on their social media. It’s like, oh, here I am doing all these wonderful things. Here’s my jet. That. It’s not even mine. You know, it’s just like. It’s ridiculous. And I wanted, like, real relationships.

Rylee Meek:
So success, to me, is not what I did compared to anybody else. Success is, did I do what I know God called me to do? Whatever that situation is and that time and that purpose, it could be. This is a daily thing that I take on. All right, God, what are you calling me to do today, right? And then when I lay my head at night, then I can determine, was that successful? If not, I really, truly don’t believe in failure anymore. As long as we’re continuing to get back up, right? There’s no such thing as failure. It’s only feedback. And every night when I lay my head down, if I’m replaying, was I successful in this day? Did I do what I know God purposed me to do on this earth? If not, all right, that’s feedback. I’m going to recalibrate and I’m going to get up and I’m going to get after it again tomorrow.

Rylee Meek:
That’s success. From there, though, I knew that I can’t do this thing alone. If you want to go as an entrepreneur, if you want to go fast, it’s easy to go alone. But if you want to go far, the only way you go far in this journey is to go together. I’ve heard this said, it’s only lonely at the top if you don’t bring people with you. So that was the birthing of the King’s council, which at the core of it, it’s my passion project. It’s our ministry. I don’t make a dime off of this thing, but it is a community in which we disciple entrepreneurs.

Rylee Meek:
That’s just what we do. It’s like, hey, how do we do this thing of entrepreneurship? But I know the only way that we can do that well is if we’re healthy, mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually as well. And so, and then there’s the financial component, which kind of flows into the entrepreneurship side. But we talk about these five pillars of how we operate at a high level continually, and that ain’t easy, right? But we tend to run our businesses this way in these different divisions where we have marketing, we have sales, we have, you know, maybe HR, we have the fulfillment side. And if one of those areas actually struggles or is declining, the whole company struggles, right? If sales is struggling, because, you know, maybe leads suck, right? That’s what they’ll always tell you, right? But marketing is saying, no, they’re providing leads, but sales suck, right? And it’s just like there’s, it’s a continual struggle. If there’s any, any department that’s struggling, our lives are no different. So how are we mentally? How are we emotionally, physically, spiritually? And if those are dialed in, I know I can bring this financial ring up, right? But if I’m only operating because I’m crushing the business, crushing financially, this is where I was, man, the nine figures in revenue. But I was a freaking train wreck inside.

Rylee Meek:
And it wasn’t until the revelation of like, all right, how do we operate this thing? How do I live a life by design versus by default? And that was really just in the last four years now, in which the birthing of the king’s council, which is really just a community of, like, mindset people. Mindset. No, it’s not a real word, but I believe we are the growth.

A.J. Lawrence:
Like, it mindset. Yes. Actually, like that.

Rylee Meek:
The idea is that, dude, if I’m only around people that think like me, I’m no longer challenging myself. Right. We know that iron sharpens iron. And so the only, like, preface that I want people around me is, are you growth mindsetted? Like, we are either growing or we are dying, and there is no such thing. People say I’ve hit a plateau, or I’m just, like, feel stagnant. No, you’re dying, bro. You are dying slowly. And this is where we can grab each other’s arms, lean on each other, and be growth minded in every aspect of our life.

Rylee Meek:
And if we did that, if we truly did that until the day we died, dude, there’s incredible things that could be accomplished with that mindset. But most people are limited in their thinking. They’re limited in their community, which ultimately is limiting their destiny for them. And that’s really what the king’s council is about, is unlocking that destiny so that we can go farther together.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah. I love it. I mean, I’ve gone through so many of the groups you’ve talked about, the masterminds. The amount of times they glorified four-hour work week wannabes who haven’t even really read the book.

Rylee Meek:
Right.

A.J. Lawrence:
Because it’s like, didn’t Ferrers really had something really brilliant? You kind of going and doing this is not really that. Yeah. But signing and I have only a couple I truly like, and I’ve talked with a couple of other entrepreneurs, and I’m very curious. Like, yours are, but, like, yeah, there are very few out there that really bring the game, and it is about finding the like minded people push it, because this journey.

I think I joked with you before. I’m going through due diligence on an acquisition and my life right now, he’s like, yeah, we just cleared up some stuff. The company, this deal’s gonna go through. And then literally 15 minutes afterwards, the same guy who just told me everything was good sends me a list of like, here’s all the things we’re worried about.

I’m like, oh, my God, we’re never going to get out of this. And then, okay, we walk through. But that’s the journey of being an entrepreneur, and that’s what’s so cool. And just the way you’ve kind of brought that focus from sales from one to many and kind of then expanded into it, I think is great. We’re going to have to have. You and I are going to have to have a talk just because I am so- so many questions.

But then let’s find a way to bring you back and maybe walk through a little more specifically on this because, yes, I jumped us all over the place. I’ve kind of. I’ve become, you know, I was geeking out. But let’s feel a little bit more structured just because I think a lot of people can learn from your approach in doing this. And I think that sort of pivot around how to include something like this and the multiple steps you use to approach that is really worthwhile because, like. Yes, and I don’t want to use some, yeah, I jokingly call it the clickfunnel world, but there is some really good things they have out of that and your approach to looking at that lifetime value, but they offer stacking from lack of looking at ways that things can fit within the metric structure of. Okay, it’s four to ten k, plus tar, plus this, plus consulting. So it’s like, you got to figure it out.

You can. Here’s another approach that I think looks really promising. All right, let’s. Sorry, back to the point. I know you have a great instagram. Your twitter is really active. You’re on LinkedIn. What’s the best way that people can learn more about you learn about the Social Dynamic Selling System, about the King’s Council? How should they go about doing this?

Rylee Meek:
Yeah. I mean, certainly socialdynamicselling.com if they want to know more about our dinner seminar, marketing and sales system. Joinkingscouncil.com, it’s free to join. We’re launching an app here this coming week, which is great. Great community just amongst again, like-mindset people, a great place to network. and it’s faith based. You don’t have to believe in Jesus, but you’re gonna learn a lot about it.

A.J. Lawrence:
Hear a lot.

Rylee Meek:
We would love you to be a part of this and maybe even question why we think the way we think. Because I think it’s an incredible thing that I got to go through over the number of years being a train wreck and now how is it that God has allowed me to grow through so many different things. And so, yeah, just invite anybody. I mean, at the core of it, we dive into entrepreneurship. We’re here to make money. No question about it. But that stewardship of it was the biggest thing for me. Like, now there’s a different reason of why I know that I’m called to go make hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and those that are attracted to this community as well.

And the podcast, so the podcast that we’re really focused on now is the King’s Council podcast. I’ve been at this now.

A.J. Lawrence:
Okay.

Rylee Meek:
You mentioned your sales conversion, I started that about five, six years ago. But about three years ago, we really pivoted and it’s now the King’s Council podcast, which we talk all things entrepreneurship, but also then how it relates back to the Bible. And so that’s kind of, again, my passion project. And every other social media platform, people could find this too.

A.J. Lawrence:
All right, cool. We’ll make sure that all that is in the show notes, that we blasted on to the socials when this episode comes, and I always realize as I’m saying it like, okay, you’ve already seen this and you’ve gotten the newsletter when the episode comes. But yes, this will all be in the newsletter and also the book, we’ll link to Amazon, I take it.

Rylee Meek:
Yep.

A.J. Lawrence:
Done. All right. We’ll also make sure the book is there. Anyway, I like having those little Amazon associate credits. I use the credits to buy, let’s just say geek toys.

Rylee Meek:
Yes.

A.J. Lawrence:
Those are my geek toy things. Alright, Rylee, thank you so much. I think this is really cool. Your approach to doing this, and obviously, your enthusiasm and the amount of time you’ve put this comes across, like, oh, wow. But this has been a long journey to get to be able to build something so interesting. Thank you for kind of coming out and discussing it because I think a lot of us want to build things that are really worthwhile.

Not just for the test of time, but for the thing that creates so much value. That’s our struggle, is to create more value, but it takes time and effort. And hearing your journey and hearing your discussion of how you got there really, I think helps other entrepreneurs. Because it’s like, look, you put the time in, there’s no guarantee you get there. But the more time you put in, the more you work on the journey, and that work on the journey sucks. There’s just no other. But the more you do, the higher the likelihood of creating something as cool as you’re doing right now. So thank you so much.

Rylee Meek:
Thanks, A.J.

A.J. Lawrence:
Hey everyone. I really geeked out today, so yes, I took us all over the place. I think there’s a real value in something like this within the right business model, the right structure. Obviously, you have to have your Ps and Qs lined up. Not even the right phrase, whatever. Wrong metaphor, but whatever. Take a look into this if you have what you think something could be. Check out his book, go reach out to him, and reach out to Rylee and set up that call just to do some discovery on yourself.

But if this fits within what you’re thinking about, this could be a really impactful addition to your own business. So hey, if you enjoyed today, share this with another entrepreneur who could learn more from what Rylee’s talking about and tell them to subscribe on their podcast listening platform of choice. Follow us on YouTube, et cetera, et cetera. Look, the more people who can follow us, the cooler entrepreneurs we get to talk to, like Rylee. So please tell a friend. All right, everyone. Thank you so much. Can’t wait to talk to you again. Bye-bye.