Transcript:

Brad Powell: 0:06

And so when you’re inviting someone to interact with you, give them a reason. By giving any reason, it doesn’t matter what kind of reason people are more likely to say yes to you, and you want to kind of flatter them and give them the idea that you really know something about them. And give them the idea that you really know something about them and they’ll be going oh yes. Now it makes sense to me why I would want to do this. Welcome to the Standout Business Show, where it’s all about making a bigger difference by doing business differently. I’m your host, brad Powell, and for the past 20 years, I’ve been helping elite service providers turn their personal brand into profit through great video storytelling that connects and converts. So if you’re ready to rise above the noise, become the face of your brand and turn your personal brand into profit, you’re in the right place. And today I want to talk about why most experts fail at building the right network. And this is coming from my own experience over the past couple of months where I’ve been in this program, where I was, among other things, trying to grow and build my network, and the methodology that was espoused in this program was to reach out to 20 new people each day, and the technique was to look for them on LinkedIn and basically do a lot of cold DM messaging. I can’t tell you how well that went. Let’s just say that it didn’t go that well, and I have increased my email list over the past month. In fact, I have about a thousand new people on my email list but the quality of this interaction and the depth of relationship building that came from this kind of experimentation I just don’t think was worth the time that it took to get there. This is what I want to dive into today.

Brad Powell: 2:18

When it comes to networking, most high-level service providers are hearing the advice just connect with more people, and yet I’d say at least 90% of them aren’t doing it right. So before you invest any more time in trying to network more, try and remember this the solution to feeling like you’re getting ghosted all the time when you try to do outreach isn’t simply connect with more people. It’s really about defining clarity and focus in your network, and what we’re really talking about here is relationship marketing. If you’re a high-end service provider, then your best marketing time is going to be spent building relationships with your prospects so that you’re able to earn enough trust in you. So the only way that somebody is going to come across the threshold is if they feel like you are exactly the right person for them, and the only way to get to that place is for you to build a relationship with them over time where you have some kind of connection with your prospects connection with your prospects. So the very first step in all of this is actually thinking about who it is that you would like to reach. The term that I’m going to suggest is thinking about your ideal connection avatar. Now, we all know about the ideal client avatar and coming up with a persona of who would be the best fit to actually become a client for me. But take this one step sort of further removed and think about well, if I’m building a network of people and I’m making connection with them, who is it that I want to connect with the most? Who are the people that I would like to work with? Who are the people that I would like to have in my close circle of colleagues and friends who, because of that relationship that we all have, all of our business together, will grow and thrive? A really good place to start here is to use an example of one of your current and most favorite clients that you are currently working with right now. Who are you looking for? That is very much like somebody who you work with now that ideally you could kind of clone.

Brad Powell: 5:00

As I went through this process, I started thinking about one of my favorite current clients, which happens to be a local landscape architect company that’s based right here in Boston, and here’s the characteristics of this particular client that I was saying, yeah, I want people like them. So in this case, this client, this company, this business, they offer a high ticket service and their service is highly visual, because what I help people do is I help them tell the story on video and if there’s a visual aspect, a really strong visual aspect of their work that works really well in the kind of work that I help them do. You know, they build these beautiful outdoor spaces and they have so many things to show that are highly visual. And in this case, this company has a small expert-driven team and this is where, like building trust and credibility really matters for the members of the team. Credibility really matters for the members of the team and this client already sees the value in building their personal brand and growing their authority and their thought leadership, and this is how they came to me. And, of course, bottom line, they have the budget to invest in high-end marketing and production, which is what I provide. So these are the criteria of this current client and it makes great for like, okay, in the future I want all of my clients to have the same set of criteria.

Brad Powell: 6:37

So then the next step is well, who are the logical clients, types of ideal connection avatars who would fit this general criteria? So here’s the list that I came up with. In my case, it’s luxury home builders and architects, and this, again, is like visual storytelling, for this kind of business is absolutely key of business is absolutely key. Interior designers same thing. They need to showcase their high-end visual work that they produced in people’s homes. A boutique law firm, and this is where those folks thought leadership and authority building is really important for them. Authority building is really important for them.

Brad Powell: 7:31

Another category would be high-end fitness and wellness consultants, and what they really sell is transformation, and, of course, they also have something to show. They can show before and after, they can show the different routines that they present. They can show all kinds of nutritional recipe, food stuff. You know these all make for a really good video. Another category was business consultants and high-end executive coaches, and then, lastly, premium high-end financial advisors and wealth managers. So these are all people who in in businesses that fit under my general categories, but these are very specific and now I have a really good list to target of who am I looking for, who would I like to connect with, and so you can go through the same process yourself Pick a single client that you really like, come up with the criteria for them, like, what is it about this particular client that fits the work that I do and then apply that to other categories out there so you can identify exactly who you would like to be reaching and who would you like to connect with.

Brad Powell: 8:47

Who you would like to be reaching and who would you like to connect with Now. Step two is now coming up with an invitation that is actually appealing and is not a simple cold outreach of saying, hey, can we have a coffee chat, or can I pick your brain about something, or hey, I saw your post about blah, blah, blah. That’s really cool. You know, I love what you had to say.

Brad Powell: 9:10

None of that stuff is necessarily going to get you very far, so what I do for myself and what I’m going to suggest that you do, is that you create a project of some kind, and what I mean by that is that you are doing something. And what I mean by that is that you are doing something where you can invite people to participate in your project. And the project could be anything from a podcast series that you’re doing, a live stream series that you’re doing on, say, linkedin. You could create a panel where you bring three or four people together and do a presentation together. You could start a meetup in your local community and start running monthly meetups where people gather and then you can invite your ideal connection people to come and be part of that meetup and be a speaker or be on a panel for the meetup. Or maybe, on a more simple level, you could be looking at writing a white paper or even a book, where you are interviewing people and getting their input and having that be included into the material that you are preparing in this white paper and getting them to contribute to all of that.

Brad Powell: 10:27

And in all of these cases, you now have a reason to reach out to people and say, hey, I see that you are, in my case, an amazing, wonderful home builder who does this amazing, cool thing, because your homes, you know, whatever it is, they’re unique in this way and they use sustainable materials, and not only are you doing high-end stuff, but you have a branch of your service that is also creating affordable home building, and on and on. Whatever the criteria is, I’d really like to have you come on my podcast or I’d really like to have you come and join my meetup and talk about whatever it is that you want them to talk about. In my case, how did they distinguish themselves as a high-end home builder, a luxury home builder, from all of the other luxury home builders in their area? And that’s a really good story for them to tell, and they’re going to be really happy to tell that story. And the key here is that when you’re making this invitation, you want to use the word because, so that you say I would love to have you join me in this project because. And then you tell them why.

Brad Powell: 11:48

And the reason this works is because that word because is a very magical word, and in fact, there was this really interesting study done by somebody at Harvard. I think this was in one of the Harvard libraries, so this was back in the day when in the library if you wanted to take reference material out of the library, you actually had to go and use a copy machine and make copies. And so all of the students would be in there doing their studies, doing their homework, doing their research, and then they would have to make lots of copies of whatever it was the material they were reading so they could take it home and work in their dorms and continue their work. And so often there would be like a long line of people waiting at the copy machine to make their copies. And so this researcher said okay, well, what I want you to do to students and there were three different levels of students doing this the first one is like I want you to go to the line of students, say can I cut in line? I only have two copies to make and see if anyone would let them in line.

Brad Powell: 12:59

The second person would go to the line and say could I get in the front of the line Because I need to make some copies. And the third student was directed to ask to cut in front of the line and say can I please jump to the front and make copies, because I have a really tight deadline. Now, which of these three do you think had the best response? And it turns out that the first kind, the one that said oh, I just want to cut in front, I just need to make some copies. They did pretty well. I think it was like 60. Some percent of people said sure, go ahead.

Brad Powell: 13:44

But the second one who said can I get in front of the line because I need to make some copies? They use the word because. Just simply because of that one word, they got like something like 87% of the people were saying yes, go ahead. And the third category, where they’re saying can I please jump to the front of the line, make some copies because I have a really tight deadline? That only changed by 1%. Like 88% of the people said yes to that person.

Brad Powell: 14:23

So the normal, the story, is that simply by using the word because, by giving a reason, by giving any reason it doesn’t matter what kind of reason people are more likely to say yes to you. Give them a reason, say hey, I’d really love to have you join me in this collaborative effort because. And then tell them why and that could be anything from you know about the work that they do. You’ve seen their written work or their videos or whatever it is that they’ve been talking about. Or maybe they’ve written a book and you want to kind of flatter them and give them the idea that you really know something about them. And they’ll be going oh yes, now it makes sense to me why I would want to do this and you’ll get a much better response. And now they’ll come and join you and you’ll be able to actually build that relationship. And now they’ll come and join you and you’ll be able to actually build that relationship no-transcript when they actually start collaborating with you on your project.

Brad Powell: 15:37

Now what I do? Because I have a weekly podcast. I do a number of things. So, for instance, first of all, I reach out and I invite them to be a guest on my show and I say, hey, I’d love to have you be a guest on my show because I’ve seen your work about this particular thing. This, I think, would be really good for my audience, and here’s why I think so. I think you’d be a really good person to talk about this particular topic and tell your story about this particular thing. And it’s very clear why I want them to come and join me on this show and they can see that clearly and they usually almost always will answer positively. But then the first thing that we do is I actually have a pre-show interview, where we meet without recording and I’m just wanting to talk to them about what we’re going to talk about, and the real purpose of this meeting is to break the ice a little bit and for us to get to know one another before we do a recording together, and that always makes for a much, much better interview, but it also primes the relationship building that I’m wanting to accomplish with this particular person.

Brad Powell: 17:00

The second step is that when I record my podcast, I actually do it as a live stream. This makes for more of a collaborative environment in the sense that we are both performing in the moment to a live audience and because when you go live with someone, you can schedule the live streaming in advance. That pre-advanced scheduling I can share with my guest and they can share that with all of their network before we go live, and so this is giving them a chance to shine their light on what we’re doing together and it puts them in a position of oh, this is good, because now I’m joining this event and I’m inviting my people to join me while I join this event and then, after we go live together, I publish the recording as a podcast, as an audio recording, and I also will publish a clip just a short video clip from the episode which is showcasing them, and then I follow up by thanking them and I send them assets like here’s that video clip that I made of you and then I invite them to have a follow-up conversation around other collaborative things that we might do together, and I find that this form of networking is relationship marketing at its best. As a result of my doing this now for almost four years, I have been able to meet a couple of hundred people, because I’ve done a couple of hundred interviews over this period of time and my network has grown and deepened with some of the most interesting people that I can think of, and it’s a continuing ongoing thing, and this is something that I’ve helped clients do.

Brad Powell: 18:53

One of my clients is a consultant for nonprofits and she started a weekly live stream show on LinkedIn where she was inviting the CEOs of other nonprofits that she wanted to work with in the future, and what happened was that she reached out to several CEOs to invite them on her show and they would come on and they would have this interview and their talk about. The main topic was how do nonprofits face the various challenges that a nonprofit organization is facing? This show actually started during the time of the pandemic, when a lot of nonprofits were having a lot of issues and, of course, the nonprofit world is fraught with challenges. So this was a really good kind of conversation to have and, as a result, she’s now become, first of all, known by most of the most prominent nonprofit leaders in North America North America and, secondly, she’s now known as an authority on how a nonprofit organization can deal with and actually thrive during times of challenge and crisis. And this has worked out really well for her and her consultant practice has grown over this time because of her increasing her network this way.

Brad Powell: 20:24

So let’s do a quick review for how you can be increasing your network without getting ghosted, without doing a lot of random outreach.

Brad Powell: 20:35

Step number one get really clear on who your ideal connection avatar is and focus specifically on that, based on whoever your favorite current client is, and go deep rather than go wide.

Brad Powell: 20:53

Secondly, come up with a project of some kind that you are the producer of and use that as the attracting piece that you can invite people to participate in, and make sure that when you’re inviting them, always tell them why Use the word because I’m inviting you here because of this cool thing that you do.

Brad Powell: 21:18

That would be really great as part of this project that I’m now working on, and if you make sure that the experience that they’re having when they work on this project with you is a really good one, this is how you win the game and this is how you’ll be creating deeper and more meaningful connections with the people who you are most likely to want to serve. That’s what I have for you today. Thanks so much for listening,