1596 – The Networking Mastery Coach with Gil Petersil

0:28Hey there, thoughtful listener. million in revenue. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you.

0:58with us right now gil petersill gil you are a keynote speaker and a networking and mastermind facilitator you're found on the web gil at gil petersill.com to our friend that's listening to our podcast just click on the show notes click around we've got a direct link gil to your website so folks can follow along but gil petersill it's great to have you happy to be with you heard a lot about this exciting for us to be able to serve your community as best as possible all the way from Bali, Indonesia. Not a bad place to be. And Gil, I'm really excited to talk about your area of expertise in and, you know, particularly today, right in 2023.

1:39I think when we think of, you know, a lot of us maybe physically have become more isolated or we're working more virtually or, you know, we're doing our work in exotic locations like Bali, and that's not necessarily where all of our clients are or, you know, our audience is or certainly our team members are, but yet here we are. So networking is exceptionally valuable. But, you know, again, the tools that we use and how we do that and kind of our processes, I'm so excited to kind of learn from you today? Ask away. I'm here to share. This is a big part of my mission in life is to be able to give people the tools, the hacks, the methodologies, the strategies that I've learned through my pain and my successful failures throughout the business world.

2:33And it's something that I believe that people misconstrued and completely misunderstand what is truly networking and the spiritual depths and arts and sciences of human networking is not something to be toyed with because it's not just exchanging business cards at a random event. It's not just starting to talk to someone because you want something out of them. It's a really deep approach to serving a community, to building a network, to cross-pollinating and moving countries or moving industries. The understanding and comprehension of how network can make a massive difference in our lives makes us stop and really explore, hey, who's really around us?

3:11Who's got my back? Who do I want to be around? What type of friends do I want to have in my life truly now? Not because I want to make business with them and I want to monetize my network, but I just want to be happy. I want to feel nourished by my network. Yeah. And when we think about networking and all of the things that we can do, and I think about how new relationships are built. First off, let's talk about why your network and your ecosystem is so critical for success in today's business environment? So, you know, historically, we've all heard all these amazing speakers from Brian Tracy to Tony Robbins, even people as spiritually deep as Eckhart Tolle that I'm really honored that I've had to work with, I had a chance to work with all of them, hence the end and still work with people like Tony Robbins after 10 years, very, very closely.

4:06And they all speak about the importance of the people that you have around you. Whether it's five, six, or seven, they all say different numbers of how, if you look at the key people around you, they make a big part of who you are. And if you explore the people that are around a person, this is who they'll become. Today, after 10 years of going very deep and seeing myself as one of the leading students of human networking in the world, I don't see myself as a networking guru, even though I've been on covers of many, many magazines around the world calling me that. I see myself as someone who's understood how much we really don't know and how important it is for us to just understand that, hey, if I want to make a change in my life right now, I've been always told I got to start with me.

4:52I got to change me. I got to do everything with me. It all starts with me. Yeah, there's a lot to do with that. But actually, sometimes just changing a few people around you, you'll get the job done right away. You want to lose weight? You know what? have some people around you that are constantly into health, into biohacking, into going to the gym, just have them around you or be around them. You want to start understanding what it means to have multiple income streams. Well, if all of your friends are all corporate employees and they could be very good friends and happy with what they're doing, you will not become a successful entrepreneurs with multiple income streams.

5:29If you don't have those, you know, immediate networks surround you. If you're someone that's been in one amazing, you know, business for the last few years, and you're happy with it, and everything is good, but you kind of feel that you've hit a ceiling, you know, you know, like you're good, you're making a million, 5 million, whatever it is, you're doing a good job. But you've hit a ceiling. All you got to do is just look around you and ask yourself, do I have a network of people around me in my immediate network, people that I look up to. I spend time with them. I try to see them as mentors.

6:01I'm curious about who they are and how they're doing. And unless I spend my time and attention on that part of my network, I will not be able to step up to those levels of jumping to another industry or breaking through a limiting belief or breaking through a mental money block that we have. And this is where the importance of auditing, maybe refining, refreshing, bringing in some new fresh blood into the network. And the mindset that chooses to do that, I think that's the first step we all have to take. You know, I've seen some, Gil, particularly I'd say in the bro-y marketing world who really just seem to focus all of their energies on just sales and marketing and just kind of more cheap lead gen kind of activity as opposed to if we think about, you know, our most valuable relationships today, usually those initiated a little bit differently.

7:03Like there, it was, my experience, maybe it was a little bit more organic, right? I think of like, you know, people that I've met in the green room, people that I've served with, people that I've done good stuff that we've, you know, we've, we've, you know, good, great relationships are going to take time. And without those meaningful, deep relationships. And we just have like a, just a bunch of, you know, we compare that versus just a bunch of surface level, you know, well, this person bought my$39 course and therefore they're a connection or they're a, you know, they're a Twitter follower or something like that.

7:37Can you talk maybe about the value of, you know, deep and rich, you know, collaborative partners and, and, you know, mentors and, and just truly people, what's the difference between close relationships and superficial ones. Okay. There was the question, Josh, at the very end. So I love the question. I know that your question had actually multiple parts to it, because the ability that we have to give our time and attention to another person is something that we don't take seriously enough, because it's our time. It's our biggest asset. But That is really how friendships or business relationship or partnership are created when we spend time with another human being, talking deeply, sharing, listening to each other, being vulnerable, asking for help of each other.

8:31And what you said initially is what should really strike a crow with everyone who's listening. Spending quality time with someone doesn't have to be one-on-one. You could be doing something in service of others, volunteering at an event together, experiencing a Tony Robbins seminar together for a few days with someone. will build a long-term friendship with anyone, serving in the army together, going on some kind of a boot camp, going on a yacht trip with some people. And because I've learned this at an early stage of my adulthood, I found ways of hacking that. So I found ways of, well, I can create some sort of an opportunity where a hundred people could join a regatta where we've rented 20 sailing boats.

9:16And because we'll spend seven days together, We'll get pretty close together out of these 100 people. I can definitely choose a few people I can build long-life friendships with. The shallow relationships that we have in life is not because they're shallow. It's just because we haven't gone deep with them. We haven't maybe held space for them to share with us. We haven't truly asked them, what's most important for you right now in your life? instead of having small talk with someone, you know, hey, I haven't seen you in a while. Out of curiosity, what's the most important thing for you right now in your life?

9:55Just changing the way we ask our friends questions because we all have friends at different levels, friends that we've had for a lifetime, 20, 30 year long relationships and friends that we just met through a local club, some sort of a hobby that we've shared, you know, common friends connected us and we felt that kind of tingle in our stomach. You know, we want to build that relationship. And by spending time together and by showing curiosity and giving that person attention, we can go very deep quickly. So the people that you feel that maybe whoever is listening you have shallow relationships with, don't discount them.

10:30Show curiosity. Pick three of them and send them a one-minute voice message, sharing with them how you've been, what's new and exciting with you, and then ask them what are they currently focused on? And, you know, what's important for them right now that you would love for them to know? You know, like, what should you know about them? And by sending that to a few people, maybe they won't respond right away, but you'd be impressed how many will respond. And I found that, you know, in my first book, I wrote a lot about the networking funnel. And I kind of since then, I've completely rewritten that because in the beginning when I was writing, I was thinking, oh, we have these strangers and then become connections and contacts and relationships and potential partners and friendships.

11:11but then I understand it's actually more of a tunnel and the tunnel we're actually going in in this beautiful rhythm and we sometimes clash into relationships and we cross paths with relationships and sometimes you meet someone you have an amazing relationship with them and only takes you a few months later or maybe a year later when you see them again and it's almost like all those sparks came back again and you should ask yourself hey why did I not follow up with that person the first time, like some sort of a power brought us together. And then it's time for us to ask ourselves, how are we at time management in relations to the world of networking?

11:52Do we give 10 minutes a day to follow up with old connections? Do we give a half an hour a week to cleanse some relationships and literally archive them from our inbox? Just archive them for now, just for three months to see what happens. Do we allow ourselves to create space within our circles, first or second level of circle, just to create space for someone else to be able to come in? Because when someone else comes in, that's when the depth comes in. That's when the new opportunities comes in. That's when revelations, insights, you know, aha moments come in. Because very simply, out of the 8 billion people, we suddenly just let one or two more people into our networks.

12:35Of course, everything in our life will change. Yeah. I bet, Gil, that some of your biggest moves forward, for example, like, you know, your relationships within the Tony Robbins world, that likely, in fact, I don't have time to share my story, but that's how I got to speak for Business Mastery is it was through relationships. I had a meaningful relationship with another speaker. Got, you know, again, just really took the time and just invest into that. And, you know, and I think we all know what it feels like to be on the other side of that, right, is we know when someone truly cares about us.

13:15And we certainly know when we're just, you know, we're a piece of meat or we're a dollar sign in their eyes, right? And so if we move forward in leadership with just a little bit more empathy, ask, you know, what can I do for other people? You know, some of these old adjectives are tried and true because they absolutely are, you know, work with human, you know, how, how we're wired, right? We all want to feel a little bit of significance. We all want to feel like what we do matters. And, you know, to our, you know, to business leaders out there who might have, may have just relied upon cheap lead gen tactics as a way of building relationships.

13:55And, you know, good luck. I don't, I don't see that stuff working too well these days, but Gil, you mentioned your book. And I know that that's, do you have a published date on that? Or is that later this year? So it's funny. I published my book in a completely different language, even though I recorded the whole thing in English. There's two books that are coming out this year, The New Code of Networking, my first book that was actually published a few years back. and the follow-up code, which I'm actually a lot more excited about because that book is completely experiential. You know, what I do these days is I've worked with, you know, dozens of corporations around the world, multiple governments, but for the last few years, I've been really focused on entrepreneurs that are trying to make an impact.

14:41Not an entrepreneur that's just opening another small little sushi shop, but an entrepreneur that's really trying to make an impact in the conscience community, an entrepreneur that's building communities. And what I do is I show them how they can get to their goals without big budgets, how they can build that awesome team that's got their back and how networking is just a set of mindsets and it's a set of methodologies and habits that they can easily bring into their business. Whether it comes to, hey, we need to start raising money, Gil, and where is instead of finding that one investor, how do we go into a place where there's a pool of investors and they're all very relevant to us?

15:14Or instead of trying to create a funnel to look for a few clients and struggle those few months where how do I get that lead generation fun working is how do I create strategic partnerships or alliances with other people who have very similar client base to me but have no competition whatsoever. And I love bringing those results to clients that are really making a difference because so many people out there, especially entrepreneurs, are artists just like myself. As an artist, we shouldn't try to fight hard and try to manage situations to try to get the business going. We should be more in the flow and we should be more connecting with the right people around us.

15:52And when we have those right people coming towards us, it's quite easy for that business to flourish, to scale up, whether it's 3X or 10X, whatever that ambition people have. But a lot of my accelerators that I have today and a mastermind that I've been running for a few years is all about going global. And for me, going global is an entrepreneur that wants to just scale up to a position where they feel like a global person. They could travel more. They have clients in different countries. They're actually opening up offices in different countries. Even better, they're finally going up to their life partner and saying, hey, how about we go and try to live three months or six months and next one year somewhere else?

16:31Like, let's go live in our dream place and not be scared of it because what you have is you have a network that's waiting for you there. And I've done that now seven times in my life every time I've moved. And I want to be able to give entrepreneurs those solutions so that they don't network because they need to sell. They network because they want to just have a better, more freedom in their life. They want to have more cushion if they need to fall because as entrepreneurs, I've gone through 20 plus successful failures and we fall and it's completely okay to fall. But when you have a different network to fall onto because, hey, now I'm in a restaurant industry or now I'm setting up a mobile app company or now I want to set up an events company, being able to switch the networks around, being able to create a new network, whether you need to connect with a royal family here in Bali because you want to buy land or whether you want to connect with some sheikhs in Dubai because you want to understand what it means to get a golden visa, or you just really want to make some new friends because you're tired of your old friends, which happened to me before, you know, when I was 33.

17:34I was tired of some old friends and kind of felt that I came out of tune. The values we didn't share anymore, the parties that I didn't want to go to anymore, I wanted something else. And for me, all these little lessons in life, I find that now I see in my clients. I see it in friends and it's almost like my heart goes out to people. I'm like, you don't have to go through the hard journey. There's no need to suffer to try to find that client again or to spend all those marketing budgets where you convert one, two percent. It's better to just build connections, build relationships that just flourish just like plants.

18:10And for me, I've learned a lot about networking for my massive garden here in Bali. I have an edible garden. And I've learned how nature spends a lot of time to network underground, to build roots and connect to each other so they could support each other with energy and water and nutrients. And one of my favorite plants is the bamboo plant. And I have a lot of them around the house. And when you plant a bamboo plant, it takes four to five years for that bamboo to feel confident enough to step out of the ground. So for four to five years, they're building roots and connections and feeling like, okay, you know what?

18:48Now I feel held. I feel that my network has got me. And when they step out of the ground, within two weeks, they shoot up as high as your home. and that is what excites me about network now we don't need four or five years but we need to understand that when we meet people we shouldn't see them as a potential client now a potential investor now we should see them as hey this is someone that might need my services this is someone that i should be more curious as to yes what they need and who they want to meet and then see if i could build that relationship with them and offer them whatever services i need to offer I love that concept of approaching every because it's audacious to think otherwise, like, oh, this person's going to buy my thing.

19:29Well, maybe, or maybe it could be something better. And I think that if we move into or look at a relationship with one, only one expected outcome, I think that short changes possibility. And I think possibility, and you know, you can get a little metaphysical here. You know, when we're thinking about the universe, I think the universe can be far more abundant than our little minds can comprehend. Gil Petersil, your website is gilpetersil.com, G-I-L-P-E-T-E-R-S-I-L.com. When somebody goes there, you provide, you have a mastermind, you provide speaking, coaching, a lot of great resources. What's someone's next step?

20:12Someone's next step with me or someone's next step to get networking in general? I'll answer both in short. Next step with networking in general, look at the three very simple steps. If you want to build anything new as a networking strategy, compliment people around you a lot more, even if it's just in your mind. Show curiosity three times more than the time you speak and you want people to be curious in you. And learn that follow up is a beautiful piece of art that never really needs to end. and a follow-up step with me. If today I said anything that intrigues you, if today I said something that you want to know more, one of the things I ask people is, you know, you have the power now to network with me because you know my name and Gil Peter, so there's only one on Google.

20:54Please connect and just say hi. Don't just follow me on LinkedIn or Instagram. Ask me a question. So if you compliment me, if you ask me a question and you follow up with me, that is the biggest gift a human being could ever give to me. And I will give them back 10x that because I love feeling loved by people because I give so much love to anyone that I ever meet. Yeah, I love it. Gil Petersil, again, your website, gilpetersil.com. Lots of great resources. Again, to a friend that's listening, just click around, spend some time on your blog. I will also compliment Gil. You're a great LinkedIn follow.

21:35So find Gil's LinkedIn icon, connect with him there. But again, I'm really looking forward to your book as well. But I'm really, really grateful, Gil, that our paths have crossed. So thankful to have you as a guest on the podcast. It's been wonderful. Thank you, Josh. Appreciate you. Take care, everyone.

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