🏸I try PICKLEBALL!! ➕ My Rant About How to Really NETWORK: Jay’s SCOOP | Ep. 474

0:01Jay Schwedelson:Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Do This Not That podcast. And usually I come on here and I talk about marketing tips. Oh, do this on social media or stick this in your subject line. You're going to get this open rate. But sometimes I like coming on here and just talking about general business and career and life stuff that kind of drives me a little bonkers. And so this is one of those moments.

0:37I want to talk about networking. Everybody always is trying to network. Maybe you're trying to get a new job. Maybe you're trying to get a promotion. Maybe you're trying to grow your LinkedIn connections. I don't know what you're trying to do, but everybody's always trying to network. And when they say networking, or even when they say that they're looking for a job, I think that people are doing this wrong, and they have the wrong mindset, and this is just me. And there are little things that you can be doing that I've always done in my career that have helped me out a lot that I wish I knew sooner.

1:08All right, so first, let's talk about LinkedIn for a second. Oh, I don't really like going on LinkedIn. It's really not whatever. Listen, LinkedIn is the long game. You need to be making time all the time, every day, 15 minutes a day for LinkedIn. And you want to be doing networking on LinkedIn, not for today. Maybe you love your job today, but things happen. Okay. And you need to be growing your network with the exact right people now. So you are ready when you do want to reach out to people or you want to be reaching out to

1:38Jay Schwedelson:people right now. And it's hard to connect with these people in a meaningful way. So how can you actually get connected to people that are really at that higher level or people that you really want to be connected with? You can't just go on their profile and send them a connection request. You can't just go on their profile, even write a custom note saying, Hey, I think you're great. Let's connect. That's not how you get kind of higher level people to want to connect with you. Here's the secret sauce. Okay. And people do this to me all the time and it works all the time. And I do it to other people all the time.

2:10Fine. You make a list of, let's say, a hundred people that you'd love to connect with. The director of whatever, the vice president of whatever. I don't care. Whoever they are, whatever industry you're in.

2:21Jay Schwedelson:Okay. Then you go to their page. You can go to their page every single day. You follow those people. And in the upper right-hand corner on their page, there's a little bell. you turn on the bell on that person's profile page, that director of whatever. And every time they post, you're going to get a notification. And if you don't get the notification, you make that list of 50 people, a hundred people, and you go to their page every other day or every two or three days. And every time they post a new post, okay, you go on their post, you like their post and you write something intelligent. You write a sentence or two, maybe you ask a question in that post.

2:59Jay Schwedelson:And then you do that for about 30 days, 60 days. And you do that with every single post that they do. I will tell you this. I don't care. I don't care how significant the person is. You will start to become branded in their mind. They will start to see your name. They will start to know that you are commenting on their post. And then you send them a connection request, not before. And when you send that connection request, you make it a custom note. So you can only do it on desktop. You can't do it on mobile. You go on LinkedIn, you click connect and it says, do you want to add a note? You always say yes.

3:39Jay Schwedelson:You get about a 30 % increase in people accepting your connection when you write a custom note. But in that custom note, what you're going to say is, I've been learning so much from your content. I want to continue to learn from your content. it would be amazing to connect with you. Great. They're going to accept that. A lot of them will. Now you're connected to this really important person. Amazing. When they connect, you write them, it's so great to be connected. That's awesome. Now, another secret sauce thing that you want to do is you want to say, okay, let's say there's like 10 companies that you're really interested in working with, getting as a client, right?

4:15Maybe there's 10 companies you really want to work for, you want to get a job at. What you do is you don't go after and try to connect with the person that is the vice president of whatever, because when they see your connection request,

4:26Jay Schwedelson:they're going to see that it shows who else are you connected with in common. And it's not going to show anybody else on their team that you're connected with. So what you want to do is you want to go down. You want to go down manager level, as low as you can within different organizations, right? And you want to connect with lower level people in the companies that you want business from. Okay. In the same department, let's say you want to go with people in the marketing department, you have to marketing managers, you connect with the marketing managers in those companies, as many of those as you can.

4:58And then when you go to connect with that director or that vice president, they will see that you are already connected with three or four other people on their team and the likelihood of them accepting you goes up astronomically. You need to play the LinkedIn game a very specific way. Let's talk about other networking things. It drives me bonkers how people think about events. They go to a cocktail reception. Maybe they go to an industry event. Maybe they go to a local networking event, whatever it may be. I will tell you it's the most annoying thing in the world to do this. But I'm going to tell you right now that this is secret sauce for your career.

5:37Okay. I've always done this. Whenever I go to any little event, could be an event, like 10 people are there, a thousand people there, 50 people are there, whatever the event is. Okay. Leading into that event. I am not going there saying, I want to have a good time. I want to go get a cocktail. I am not saying those things. I am not saying, I wonder what food they're going to serve. I am not saying those things. What I am always saying is, all right, Who is going to be there? And I go down, I try to figure out who is going to be there. And then I say to myself, who are the two or three people that I absolutely need to be able to meet and connect with at this event?

6:18All right. And I come up with who those people are. And this is terrible, but this is what I do. When I get to that event, I don't care how big or small it is. That is all I care about. My focus is somehow weaving my way over to that person, getting introduced to that person, befriending that person, laughing with that person, exchanging

6:38Jay Schwedelson:phone numbers with that person. I am always intentional about any event that I go to so that I walk out of there and I have met the person. I am not going there to have a good time. Stop going to business events just to have a good time. Go there with a plan. Execute on that plan. man, I am telling you by doing this, you will advance your career so, so much. And I know that this is not fun. This is like party pooper stuff. And I know it sounds aggressive and you're probably trying to relax right now. And you're like, why am I listening to this? But when we think about, oh, I sent out 200 resumes today, I didn't hear anything back.

7:21Jay Schwedelson:Or I've been waiting on this promotion. I'm working so hard and nobody recognizes what I'm doing. Or I can't get this sale. I can't get this new client. I can't seem to get traction with anybody. You've got to mix it up. You've got to do things a little bit differently. And then the last one is ask for introductions. It's underrated how much people are willing to help each other. Okay. If you see somebody you know is connected with somebody that you want to meet, it is okay. Say, hey, I would love a favor. Would you mind introducing me to that person or these three people? I see you're connected with them.

7:58Jay Schwedelson:Or do you know anybody in the retail sector? I'd love some introductions. Let's say you ask 10 people for those introductions. One of them is going to say yes. And that introduction might change your business, your career, your whatever. We all say it, get comfortable being uncomfortable. Everything I just talked about is nauseating. It's not fun. It's the opposite of what you want to do. I don't want to do any of it. It is the worst. But if you want to grow, you want to advance, you want to do these things, this is what you do. All right. Let's get into since you didn't ask. Since you didn't ask.

8:37By the way, before we get into since you didn't ask, I want to let you know that this podcast, this episode is sponsored by a company called CallRail. Now, if you don't know what CallRail is, you are missing out. If you're a company that gets phone calls, if you're a company that gets website traffic, and people are going there, and you want to be

9:00Jay Schwedelson:able to do attribution, is this converting? Are these phone calls going well? Are these website visits going well? What is going on with our business? I am telling you, CallRail is it. if you own a business, if you are a marketer, you want to make sure that every click, every conversation, every time your salesperson is talking to somebody, every time a customer service rep is talking to somebody, every time there's a chat going on, you want to know it's working. Go to callrail.com slash do this. That's callrail.com slash do this. You will see it all. Amazing company. I've relied on them for a long time.

9:42All right, let's get into the ridiculous portion of this podcast called Since You Didn't Ask. This is where I talk about what's going on in my life. So my family thinks I have no life. They do. They think I'm a big loser. And they say to me, touch grass, because all I think about is work. And they go, you need to go out and do get a hobby. So I go, I don't want a hobby. They go, you have to get a hobby. So they said, I go, what should I do? And they said, you should try pickleball. And I'm here to report I had a pickleball lesson today. Now, if I were you, I would make fun of me. Because if one of my friends said to me they had a pickleball lesson, I would call them a nerd.

10:29I would say you're a loser. And I would make fun of them. Now, that doesn't mean if you play pickleball, you're a nerd or a loser. And if you get lessons, it doesn't mean you're a nerd or loser. I'm just a horrible person. And this is what I would say. So if you want to say that about me, valid. I agree. How did it go?

10:48Jay Schwedelson:It went well. I liked it. I did like it. I will say, here's the story with pickleball. Horrible name, horrendous name. It's like you got this little racket. It's like a half a tennis racket and you hit this wiffle ball style ball and that's what you do. And it's a shorter court than a tennis court. So that's good because you get tired very fast. What I will say, the negative about pickleball is number one, way too many rules. There's 4 ,000 rules. And I'm trying to learn all these rules. You can't stand here. You can't do this. Too many rules. We need to cut down on the rules. It's like when, you know, anybody's like, let's, some people play card games now.

11:36Jay Schwedelson:Let's play Rummikub. What? What is Rummikub? Let's play Mahjong. I don't know. I have no idea what's going on with that situation. Everything needs to have less rules. You know what games I like? I like, like, remember Boggle? You got the little letters and you shake them up in a box and then there's like a quicksand thing and you have like two minutes to see every word that you could see across all the letters in this little box there's like three rules great i'm all for like three rules what else has three rules checkers great you make it to the other end they king you great i could do checkers candy land you slide down a slide very few rules we need less rules with all the games, too many rules.

12:24Jay Schwedelson:What am I talking about? I don't know, actually. All right. Listen, jschwedelson.com launched a new site. I want to work with you. Let me do the demand gen for your business. It's what I do for a living. Register for Guru Conference. Register for Eventastic. They're all free. Check it out. You're awesome. Later. Wait, the party is not over. Go to jayschwedelson.com because I want to do stuff with you. I want to partner with you. When you click on the button partner with Jay, you let me know what you got going on. Work with my agency, work with me directly, get access to all of my free resources at jayschwedelson.com.

13:07Jay Schwedelson:And I got a book coming out this April. It's called Stupider People Have Done It. And all of the net proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Go on Amazon. Buy stupider people have done it. That way you can help kick cancer's butt with me. And if this podcast wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, it might have been, leave it a review, follow the show. You are awesome. Go out there and crush it.