Yes, it’s true, through a simple cup of coffee I was able to convert those I bought a cup for into my customers. And quite an ROI I might add.

Let me set the scene. Back in Sept 2013, we hosted our fourth Start Norfolk and we had ordered 16 pounds of coffee from a local vendor. For those of you who don’t know, that’s a lot of coffee. In December I saw that it was still in full force and making a dent into the load was unlikely unless we did something about it. I tried coercing a few of our portfolio companies to organize a coffee meetup, but no one wanted to. So, instead, I decided to launch Coffee Downtown, a simple no agenda meetup every Tuesday morning for four weeks. I didn’t know how it would go as morning meetups had not been huge for us in the past. And remember, the only real goal here was to get rid of the coffee.

So, we launched! And people showed up and liked it. At first, the only people who attended were people I knew, but as the weeks continued more and more people I didn’t know started to attend. The group was never huge, maybe 10-15 people each week, but it became a consistent meetup for us. AND, it allowed me to meet with people who would ask for a meeting. Before, I would have to spend 30-60 minutes with them to hear their story. Now, I could ask them to attend Coffee Downtown. This meetup allowed me to clear the majority of my weekly schedule to focus on growth not meetings.

Why should you launch an event?

1. High ROI

2. Brand Recognition/Authority Status

3. Community Give Back

4. Office Hours/ Way for you to have meeting without the hassle

Okay, let’s run some numbers. A cup of Starbucks Coffee would run you just shy of 3 bucks. When we first launched the meetup each pound of coffee ran us $10/pound and remember we had 16 pounds. We had a industrial coffee maker that brewed 100 cups of coffee, which we would brew 30-60 cups each meetup. 3 months in the coffee was gone and a decision needed to be made. Do we keep doing this, because now we would have to spend money where before we were trying to get rid of the coffee. I decided yes and also invested in a smaller coffee pot, which brewed 12 cups and costs us $15. Of course I needed to buy coffee too. We had seen that the event wasn’t about how good the coffee was it was more about the conversations. Since there was zero agenda, we invested in some spectacular Folgers Coffee priced at $7.99.

Let’s fast forward to today. We invested in 5 large Folgers Coffee containers and coffee filters along with the $15 coffee machine, for a grand total of $53. With an average of 10 people per meetup and 32 meetups hosted since we started buying coffee products, each person is costing us $0.165 each week. 32 meetups * 10 people = 320. $53 total spend/ 320 people = $.165 per person. For less than 17 cents a cup of joe, we were able to convert these coffee drinkers into our customers.

How did we convert them?

1. Added  them to our events calendar email list

2. Those who asked about business, we would follow up with and share with them our events and programs

3. Sponsorship’s

The truth is, when you start to learn a lot about a person or their business, the more likely you are to have an understanding of what they need. In the case of many of our attendees, we learned that many would be a great fit for our 1000 Four Venture Growth Program or our marquee event Start Norfolk. When we thought our programs were the right fit, we told them. Either through a follow-up email or the events would come up in conversations at the meetups.

All in all, just to get rid of some coffee, we were able to find new friends at 17 cents a meetup and convert them into a 7 figure percentage ROI.