2003 - Your Network is Your Net Worth - Building Connections That Last

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05Welcome back to our special series celebrating 2 ,000 episodes of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. I'm Elisa Nolan, Chief Operating Officer at Up My Influence, your guest host, and today we're exploring a theme that has proven to be incredibly impactful, the power of networking. The phrase your network is your net worth has resonated with so many of our listeners and guests over the years And for good reason. It's not just a catchy saying. It's a fundamental truth in business. Josh, over the years, you've spoken to countless entrepreneurs about the importance of building and nurturing a strong network.

1:49Why do you think networking is so crucial? And how is your perspective on networking evolved as you've grown this podcast? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, And this is so critical, right? Because when we think about like how to grow business, when we think about how we get to places, it always involves people, not things. It's human connection that drives everything today. All right. And so, so many of us spend our time chasing tactics. so many of us spend time looking for activity to do. When, again, usually when we look at the biggest deals, when we think about, you know, who's in your dream 100?

2:37And if you had a magic wand, like what is the greatest thing that you could possibly hope to happen between you and this other person? This, Alisa, is where we see this exponential growth happen. And often it's a formula that can look like a one plus one equals 11 dynamic because leaders like working with other leaders, particularly the leaders that are their friends. So if you can become that trusted friend in a lot of people's lives who just happens to be very good at doing what you do, well, again, it's kind of a game set match situation. Like, you know, imagine that you are a, you know, even just like a local realtor, right?

3:26But you have built relationships with, you know, a couple of hundred local centers of influence, like meaningful friendships, right? Now that's not going to happen overnight. overnight. It's going to take you a while, which is good news because it's going to get easier the more that you do this. And the more that you lean into your network and you have people that you've already pre-reciprocated into, but again, you're not entering into relationships because you want reciprocation. You're not entering into relationships because they're transactional. You're not giving so you can get. You're giving because it's the right thing to do.

4:03You will get to a point that when you lead in generosity in your industry, you will get to a point where you will not be able to out-give your industry. And that's not just generic giving. It's people. Your generosity led you and your noble intent led you to these deep, meaningful relationships. And now you get to do all kinds of great stuff together. That's how leaders do business today. Well, one of the guests who really articulated the importance of your network was Blake Johnson. And when we spoke with him in September of 2021, he emphasized that the people you surround yourself with are everything.

4:44To succeed, you need to align with people who are running toward the same goals. As Blake puts it, quote, what's good for one is good for all and what's bad for one is bad for all, end quote. Let's take a listen to his perspective. What is the value of your network and how much effort have you put into building relationships with people? And how has that impacted your business success? Great question. The network is everything. You know, the relationships you have with people are everything. In order to do something well and to do something at scale, it takes a village. which takes a lot of people operating in concert.

5:30Not only do you have to be thoughtful about who you surround yourself with and who's on your team, but most importantly, how they're incented and how they're aligned. You could have the best idea and the best product on the face of the earth. And unless you have the people yourself aligned with the people on your team, it's going to fail. It's going to fail because at scale, there's too many competing interests and there's too many people pulling, you know in different ends of the rope but the network is key I always give the analogy you know businesses and the way I look at a business and building a team is like a baseball team what makes a great pitcher makes a really really bad first baseman you know what makes a great outfielder doesn't necessarily translate into making a great catcher and you can give that you know, analogy to different sports, but where I focus and is really making sure two things, we recruit the best people and align ourself with the best people specific to the base that should be played and that everybody plays their own position and stays in their own lane.

6:38Problems happen when, you know, the second baseman starts criticizing the first baseman and saying, hey, I think I could play first base better. And that causes a lot of dissension on a team. We, in turn, try to keep those lanes very focused and everybody aligned operating and running towards the same goal. And what's good for one is good for all. And what's bad for one is bad for all. But at the core base of it all, the network and whether it's people you see every day or vendors or partners you rely on are absolutely critical. Blake's point about alignment is so powerful. Josh, how have you seen the importance of aligning with the right people play out in your own experiences, both as a podcast host and in your business?

7:30Listen, I only know what I know. I'm just one person with my own experiences. I've got my own network. I live my life. I'm fascinated in that someone I get to meet for the first time has their whole lifetime of experiences behind them and network and friends that they're bringing to the table, right? That is potentially so much opportunity for them or me or us. I don't know what it looks like, but I'm open to however that ends up looking like, what can we do together? And, you know, so again, and this is really interesting, Elise, I'm kind of bringing up a point that I've learned about lucky people or people that are perceived to be, wow, that's just a lucky person, right?

8:18What I found about lucky people is they generally are curious about other people. They like other people and they want to learn and grow from other people, right? They generally don't feel like they've got all the answers, but they're happy to serve and give. They're happy to be generous, right? But they're far more interested in learning from and expanding their own view of the world. And so as a result, because they're exposed to so many different people, networks, ideas, points of view, I just think that they live a far richer life. And that leads to so many opportunities. If you're just a keyboard warrior hiding out behind your computer screen and not connecting personally with people, you might be missing out.

8:59And so I did extend an invitation to do the hard stuff of spending more time with fewer people, but build deeper relationships. Networking is often seen as just a way to get business, but it's so much more than that. In your experience, how can entrepreneurs build meaningful relationships within their networks beyond just looking for the next sale? Yeah. Well, listen, it's either in your heart or it's not. And I see that, you know, kind of with some finality. I can either inspire you to shift toward noble intent, or in time, you will realize that going into a relationship with a huge agenda and a huge intention where your number one outcome you want is you want this person to buy your thing.

9:49I understand what it's like to need to make sales and the hope and the nervousness and you really need this thing to happen. Hey, Ben, they're done that. But the longer you hang out in that energy, the longer it's going to take you to accelerate and get out of the rat wheel. And what I'm telling you is that the path out of the rat wheel of always needing business day after day after day after day is you got to just lead in generosity. Where you plant your seeds is not necessarily where you will reap your harvest, but it's your job to plant seeds and trust the process. Leaders love doing business with their friends.

10:32Industries and leaders love celebrating and doing nice things for nice people. That's innate. That is wired in nearly all of us. We like to support genuine, authentic people. So if you're looking for outcomes and you're deciding, hmm, do I be a bro-y marketer and just start pitching people? Or do I play the long game here and make a friend for life? Right, where the friend says, oh, good. Now I have a friend who does what you do. What do you think your results are going to be if you were to engage in that process? I don't know, let's say 40 times. I can tell you this. If you have 40 high powerful friends, you are going to end up doing business together.

11:15Okay, if you're selling and slamming 40 people, you might get a sale or two. But, you know, again, if you got to do that at every stage in the relationship with those people, you're going to have to continue to sell them. Okay, that's the relationship dynamic, as opposed to a relationship that's built in real trust and friendship. And now you have a shared desire for outcome. Alisa, you're on the fulfillment side of things with our clients. We have really, really great relationships with our clients. We're committed to that because they like us and we like them. And that's the most important. The friendship is the most important thing.

11:51Then we have these shared goals of things that we want to create together. So COVID changed so much about the way people did business in terms of networking. And now that networking is happening online now, how do you think entrepreneurs can effectively build and maintain relationships in a digital environment? Yeah, well, it's easy, right? So in the past, if you wanted to build a lot of quick relationships, getting together in person is, I think, one of the most efficient ways to do that, right? This physical proximity, getting together, that's hard to beat. Now, if you can't do that, or you don't want to be a road warrior and go to events every single week, what else can you do?

12:34Well, during COVID, Alisa, our company really started taking off because people lost the ability to connect in person. So what do you do? Start a podcast, start serving your industry, start building relationships. And guess what? You can have a line going out the door of people who want to connect with you and maybe do business with you, right? But you won't get that if you don't earn those relationships. And the way to earn those relationships is not running around slamming people's DMs, trying to sell at them. That's what amateurs do. Leaders don't do that. They don't need to do that. Advertising and lead gen is the tax you pay for being unremarkable.

13:17That was Robert Stevens, the founder of Geek Squad, who said that. I added in lead gen in there because it's the same thing. When you're remarkable and people like you, trust you, you've got a good relationship, again, it's game, set, match. You are set for life. How soon would you like to get there? That's up to you. If you want to get there faster, by the way, someone listening to this who's kind of resonating with what I'm saying, let's put some time together. I don't know if there's an opportunity for us. I love hearing opportunities. I love hearing offers. I may have some immediate connections.

13:47I don't know. I may have already solved this exact same problem that you're working on right now if you're looking for consistency and predictability on introductions. But what I can tell you is that leading in generosity, use a little bit of your authority to differentiate yourself and noble intent and leverage platform. It's easy. You can be eventually, right? It'll take you a little bit, right? But, you know, you do this for, here's just our numbers. If you do this for about six to eight months, chances are really good you're going to be close to 100 % inbound for the rest of your life. Would you like to do that?

14:23Well, again, by the way, if we never chat to our friend that's listening, if you want to go and watch my, it's a free video. You can just click and play. I don't need your email address. I don't need you to opt in. Like, you're an adult. If you like me, you'll come find me. But I do invite you to watch what's known as my Traction Mastery Workshop. It's an hour and 15 minutes long. It's excellent. If, again, you could play it at 1.5x speed if you want. I dare you to do it and see if you can keep up with my already rapid pace at speaking. But by all means. And you don't even have to watch it. You could just like, you got some multitasking time.

14:58You got some dog walking time. You got some driving time or whatever. listen in because I go through a lot of data around kind of supporting the things I'm talking about. And this is in your due diligence. If you're making business and sales development decisions for your company, you need the latest data about the state of lead gen, the current state of B2B sales. We work with a lot of VPs of sales. We work with a lot of founders who are responsible for growth. And so a lot of what I share in that workshop that you can just click can play after we're done here. You're going to learn a lot. And I think it's really going to inspire you to think a little bit differently about who you have in your network and why you have them in your network.

15:40Our next clip is from Dr. Benjamin Ritter, who we spoke with in one of our longest and most insightful interviews. Dr. Ritter shares his journey of earning trust and credibility within the leadership development space. And he talks about the importance of having a strong network. What's particularly interesting is how he ties this back to crafting a message that resonates, something we also touched on in our last episode. He emphasizes building relationships not just for sales, but to establish your presence and identity in your space. Let's hear from Dr. Ritter. How did you do it? How did you get the sales?

16:20How did you grow your practice. And I think that that for earlier stage, obviously that's probably one of the number one concerns for people that are also professional consultants of like, I want a great steady stream of business. I want to make an impact in the world. And so how did you solve that problem? Yeah. So when I was first thinking, what do I need to build my business? What do I need to invest in? What is going to have the greatest ROI? And it really was like, okay, I need clients. And well, okay, so how do I get clients? And it was, well, I need to have trust and I need to be seen as credible.

16:54So I initially went back because I know I wanted to work with more professional organizations and business professionals and like proven entrepreneurs. I went back to get my doctorate in organizational leadership. And I actually ended up publishing in the field on value congruence and job satisfaction. So it's like credibility, done, door open, done, have the titles done. But I tell people all the time when they come to me and say, do I really need to go back to school and I say, no, that was the direction and path I took to build trust, right? To build basically a brand immediately based on those credentials, based on not having experience, not having career capital, not having a network in the leadership development and coaching space.

17:36So that was my choice. That was only one way out of many that I could have went. Then after I ended up getting that credential, it was, okay, let's build a brand. So building a brand? Do I have evergreen content online? Am I creating a network that relates to the field that I want to work in? Am I putting in that grunt work? And then trial and error in terms of what messaging really relates to my target audience and where do I find them? And I tried a bunch of, I mean, I think the reason why I exponentially shot up this past year was because I found the platform and I found the message that gave me clients.

18:10And that, that they took, it took a while. my, my, so I try to name my years and my name for last year was crack the code, crack the code. And where, where can I find clients? Cause if I don't have clients, I don't have a business. Right. So I, you know, I have a series of live events I host every month. I tried different, different social media platforms and writing articles and peering on different shows and peering on, you know, peering on YouTube shows on, on podcasts and live, on live shows and panels. And the, the sweet spot for me, this really big sweet spot, not just from building a brand or getting more evergreen content out there, but for getting clients has been LinkedIn.

18:47Yeah. That has been a cold mind point. Yeah. And a certain type of messaging. Because I remember I would test out different messages, track that data to see what worked, what converted, what didn't, what got replies, what got connections. And then once you figure out what works, you have quality, then you can just work on a quantity and just throw it out there as much as possible. You can hire services. You can set automation tools. You can, there's so many ways that you can do things on such a greater scale once you know it works. Yeah. So we've got right now two uber LinkedIn fans right now.

19:22And, you know, for us, you know, we're a little agnostic in terms of lead gen. But right now, I just for B2B, nothing comes even close to the potential that you can do with LinkedIn. and we actually do a lot of sales system setup for our clients. But, you know, so we've tested everything. And, you know, again, for B2B, I mean, we've done a lot of testing on Facebook, Google, you know, just going and scraping data off the web, which is, you know, that is a way that you can reach out to people. But LinkedIn, just it's so doggone efficient right now. But, and this is my question for you, there's absolutely messaging that does not work on LinkedIn.

20:12And maybe you've tried some of that and you've discovered some things that don't work very well. I'm curious what you have found that does not work well on LinkedIn. Yeah, if you treat LinkedIn like a sales tool, you're lost. Yep. You have to look at LinkedIn as if you're walking into a networking event and meeting people for the first time. And the same rules apply. If you walk up and pitch at all, you've automatically defined yourself as someone trying to take something. And if you ever define yourself as someone that's trying to take something from someone that isn't ready to buy from you, right?

20:50They're at a certain buying stage where they don't know you. They haven't told you they're looking to buy anything. Then you've lost them. because now you're trying to take something from them instead of actually giving value. And so anything that's formed as I need something from you is a loss leader. Yeah. So it's kind of like, and this is, here's kind of my thinking on this, is if you are selling a product and that product is say like$59 and that's your average lifetime value, you're just not going to have a lot to work with in terms of your outreach and messaging. And so you're going to have to rely more on CPL, CPA kind of advertising and paid ads.

21:37I mean, that's really your best option. If, however, and I'm just guessing based on the services you provide, which we'll talk a little bit about, your average lifetime value is probably pretty valuable because of I know what you provide organizations. That's some pretty valuable stuff. So because of that, your average lifetime value and you probably have an okay close rate, it makes sense to spend, you don't wanna just blast to thousands and thousands of people. That would be horrible. Like, cause I would, if I were, if you wanna do, if you wanted me to hire you, for example, and you're just blasting spam at me, I'm just going to ignore that, right?

22:20You would ignore that. And so the idea is to spend more time on the front end with people and create a conversation that's kind of a no-brainer as opposed to getting right into the sales pitch, as it were. Is that kind of, I would imagine that's your philosophy on this. Yeah. And if you are going to do any sort of pitch, let's say I want to, not an organization, let's say I'm working with a personal coaching client and I have a very targeted list of warm leads that might be interested in coaching, then a lot of times because of the brand I've built, I can send out a mass message that offers like a free clarity coaching session or something because they're already ready to buy.

23:05They're looking to buy. And the conversion rate on that it's fairly high. But if I'm looking for a contract with an organization at all, or I'm speaking to someone completely cold, then I need to invest the time in the relationship. And like you said, I can. These deals are fairly significant. So to spend the time to build that relationship, it's not even to create a sale. It's to build a relationship, to build awareness of who I am. Because you look at the leadership space and you're like, there are so many people operating here? Well, in reality, if someone's in an organization and they're the buyer of leadership development services, they're probably not Googling leadership development services in XYZ city.

23:50They're probably going to other executives of VPs or people that they know in the area and they're going, hey, did you hire someone for leadership development? Right. So if I built a positive trusting relationship with my potential buyer or target market, all of a sudden now I am going to be the person they remember because there's not, you know, how many people do you keep in your head of like, how many accountants do you know? You know, how many, like, I don't even, even something simple, like how many massage therapists do you know? How many personal trainers do you know? Probably not a lot.

24:21And probably the person that you remember is someone that invested a little bit more time on the front end to build that relationship. Or you know that they helped with someone that you know, like in your current network. To the person who's listening to our conversation right now, imagine if in 2019, your major accomplishment was that you created 400 to 500 meaningful relationships with, and they may have not purchased your services, but they network with people that inevitably, they're going to have someone in their circle that will purchase those services. Dr. Ritter's journey really illustrates the long game of networking, how it's about more than just immediate results, but about building reputation and trust over time.

25:09Josh, how do you think entrepreneurs can balance the need for immediate business results with the long-term benefits of building a strong, meaningful network? Yeah. So I do believe that relationship building and friendship building, I think that that's inaccurate to say that that automatically means it's going to take longer, that it's far better to just go for the jugular and try to make a sale. Because again, your conversion rates are going to be better overall. Simply, they're going to be significantly better overall. It's just going to come in lots of ways. So usually, Alisa, again, when we're working with our clients, we try to be pretty realistic.

25:51I say, listen, if you were to walk into a room and spend meaningful time in a non-salesy environment, it's a VIP mixer, okay? No selling. You're just hanging out. Just be cool, right? And if you were to spend, let's say, an hour in that room just getting to meet people, mingle, no pressure, everyone's relaxed, they're drinking. And, you know, they have drinks, wine or coffee or water, whatever. They're just hanging out. Like how many people, if you, let's say you had meaningful conversation and some serious relationship building activity, say for a good, you know, 10 people out of that room. And with each of those 10 people, you agreed, yeah, listen, let's, let's, let's connect.

26:35Let's, let's grab some time and see if there's something we should be doing together. Right. What percentage of those people would you end up doing business with? Well, it varies a little bit, but usually we see conversion rates around 15 % to 25%. If you're in the right room with the right people. If you're in the wrong room, no. But we're talking about being in the right room with the right people. And B2B for high-ticket engagements, consulting, coaching, that sort of thing, usually 15 % to 25 % is pretty reasonable. So what that tells me is that if you are going to consistently convert, say on average around one out of five, your goal is to build a meaningful relationship with 10 people as quickly as possible.

27:24Now, if you want to take four months to get through those 10 people, that's a choice. Or you could condense that into four weeks. It's up to you. But what I can tell you is that if your offer is generally good, you're usually pretty good at what you do. You got some okay authority, right? And you convert consistently. I mean, listen, if you want to drive your revenue, and this is why people hire us, Alisa, and me specifically as the, you know, kind of a role of a fractional chief revenue officer temporarily, right? I am going to get you consistent and predictable relationships with high-level leaders because that is your number one job is consistent, predictable relationships week after week after week after week after week.