I just got done watching a video blog by the founders of Kiosk, the web hosting company that provides infrastructure for a lot of online businesses, and I must say that I like what I saw – a couple of guys just having some light-hearted fun. It made me stop and realize something really important that I think often gets forgotten in the daily shoulder-to-the-wheel-nose-to-the-grindstone things of working and building a business.
Sometimes you’ve just got to take a break and have a few laughs. Stop taking things so seriously and just let your hair down a little!
As time passes and things change – they always do, that’s just part of the package – I’m realizing more and more that if you’re not too careful you can focus so hard on making a living that you can forget to make a life for yourself.
In the world of business, we’re led to believe that we have to be dead serious about everything all the time. And of course, sometimes the things we have to do in the course of making a living aren’t all that much fun. They have to be done, and so we do them. But I’ve always found that if you can find some way to make a tedious task fun it always seems like it takes less time to get it done. It may not shorten the actual amount of time to do it – it just makes it seem that way.
One good example of this is our My VM Team Blog Talk Radio broadcast on Friday June 27th. Now I’m not saying that doing the radio show is tedious or unpleasant – far from it. But there can be a certain degree of anxiety and self-imposed pressure in figuring out what to talk about for a one-hour broadcast 3 times a week. But the good Lord always seems to provide us with things to talk about. But this show was different.
Jim, Steph and I were well into our planned program when we got a call from a fellow who said he needed help with his business. He told us he was really excited about the product he was promoting, but he told us he faced a lot of ridicule from people he talked to about his product and he wasn’t seeing a whole lot of results - he was getting discouraged.
Of course all 3 of us immediately went into “detective mode” to see if we could find out what the source of his problem was, and in the course of our questions the fellow revealed that his product was a solar-powered flashlight. Very environmentally-friendly, he said, long-lasting, and worked wonderfully – as long as there was enough sunlight available to power it! It wouldn’t work at all in the dark!
He did a great job of making it sound like he was dead serious – so well that it took us some time to understand what was really going on. We got so wrapped up in trying to solve his “problem” that it took a while for us to realize that there was really no problem at all! The guy was just having some fun with us, and we fell into his “trap” of taking things – ourselves included – perhaps just a little too seriously.
Then along comes the video blog from the Kiosk guys. Like I said, it really got me to thinking about how seriously we take ourselves and our businesses – maybe too seriously sometimes. We were enjoying doing our radio show that Friday so much that we extended it by a half hour – something we’ve never done before.
And I think one of the reasons that it “felt so good” is that all of us sort of climbed down off of our “expert” soapboxes and just started having a conversation with each other and with our audience. The guy with the solar-powered flashlight had injected something into our show that it needed.
Humor.
As you go about building your business, meeting and talking with new people and building relationships with them, please try to remember not to take things too seriously. Try to keep the door open to letting a little humor into the conversation. It can go a long way.
When you get someone to smile it means you’ve made them happy somehow - even if it’s only for only a moment or two. It shows them that you’re a real person and not just a walking talking robot spouting business all the time. It helps to “break the ice” and make people more comfortable – on both sides of the conversation, yourself included. It will attract people to you, because people want to smile and have an occasional laugh. It’s a very valuable part of the human condition, and can have an amazing effect on not just your business, but on your whole outlook on life.
And if the guy selling solar-powered flashlights happens to read this - please get in touch with me...
I want to buy one from you!
Showing posts with label business networking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business networking. Show all posts
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Saturday, May 31, 2008
The Keys to Networking Success
The Keys to Networking Success
There seems to be a notion going around that networking as a means to expand a business is dead – that it’s just not a viable way to accomplish significant business growth. I constantly hear people complain about how much time they put into “networking” with nothing to show for it but a desk drawer full of business cards and no sales or recruits.
“Networking is just a waste of time,” they tell me. “Everyone I try to network with is just trying to sell me on their deal and don’t care about what I offer at all!”
When they say that, they’re telling me a lot about how much they actually understand about networking – which, based on comments like that, would appear to be little or nothing!
People who voice such complaints about networking not being effective are obviously under the impression that networking is a sales process.
It isn’t!
While more sales and subscriptions can definitely be accomplished as a by-product of effective networking, selling directly to the person you’re networking with is not the core purpose of networking. When people focus only on that, to the exclusion of all else, they’re not networking…
They’re just “selling!”
Networking is really all about expanding your sphere of influence.
Each individual has a sphere of influence – a group of people who they know, and who value their opinions and relationship with them. In some cases, these spheres of influence overlap with those of other people, such as within church, professional, and civic organizations. But in many other instances, each person within your sphere of influence has their own individual sphere of influence which may not overlap yours at all – or at most, only very little.
What is at the very core of, and the driving force behind, effective networking is the expansion of your own personal sphere of influence into that of others you are networking with – and theirs into yours as well. It’s a 2-way street, with both parties realizing some type of benefit.
If you’ve been involved in internet marketing for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly heard about those $10,000 seminars that the “big guns” hold fairly regularly. While the information that’s presented at those events is valuable, more often than not the real reason people pony up that sort of money to attend is to gain access to, and to network with the other attendees!
That isn't just my opinion - I’ve heard many of them come right out and admit it in their emails.
Bear in mind that each of those people who pay ten grand to attend has a sphere of influence (their email subscriber lists) which extends to tens of thousands of people. (Some actually have subscriber lists numbering in the hundreds of thousands!)
Now I ask you - what would it be worth to you to be able to sit down, have a cup of coffee, and talk with someone who has an opt-in list of over 100,000 people, and they are also open to listening to new business ideas?
(And they all are, or they wouldn’t be there. They would just wait for the course to be released and buy it.)
Most of those people don’t bat an eye about writing out a check for ten grand, because they know how to effectively network with the other attendees. In the process, they often work out a joint venture with other attendees that ends up netting them ten times that amount (conservatively)!
They understand the power of real networking – by leveraging the spheres of influence of other people! It’s really about the sharing of ideas and strategies that are mutually beneficial.
You don’t have to have a list of tens of thousands to network effectively. In fact, it's often the other way around. Building a larger contact list is one of the natural by-products of effective networking. If you’re a member of any online social networks, consider your “friends list” there.
We all network every day – we just don’t consciously realize we’re doing it most of the time. Every time you meet someone you haven't met before, and try to get to know them, you're networking. There may not be an obvious immediate benefit for either of you, but by becoming acquainted with new people you're expanding your sphere of influence.
But remember that networking is not selling – it’s sharing. Share yourself, your knowledge, and your expertise with others so that they will be willing to introduce you to their spheres of influence. That makes the sort of impression which is both lasting and profitable for all concerned, through the leveraging of overlapping spheres of influence.
At My VM Team, each member has developed a considerably-sized sphere of influence, and the leverage it provides all of our members grows as correspondingly! With a wide diversity of people of all levels of experience and expertise, and representing an equally diverse field of business interests, My VM Team has only just begun sending ripples across the internet that are welling up into waves of change as our collective spheres of influence increase.
We’re accomplishing that through networking, which is indeed very far from dead – in fact, it’s really only beginning to come into its own on the internet, and you can expect to see it become an ever-growing trend as we continue to share our knowledge with anyone and everyone who wishes to learn how we do it – all at no charge.
To learn more, (especially how to really start networking effectively with an energetic and motivated group of people) I invite you visit http://www.myvmteam.com/.
And when you understand how to really network, you can put that knowledge to work for you in a big way at www.Directmatches.com/donhill as well.
There seems to be a notion going around that networking as a means to expand a business is dead – that it’s just not a viable way to accomplish significant business growth. I constantly hear people complain about how much time they put into “networking” with nothing to show for it but a desk drawer full of business cards and no sales or recruits.
“Networking is just a waste of time,” they tell me. “Everyone I try to network with is just trying to sell me on their deal and don’t care about what I offer at all!”
When they say that, they’re telling me a lot about how much they actually understand about networking – which, based on comments like that, would appear to be little or nothing!
People who voice such complaints about networking not being effective are obviously under the impression that networking is a sales process.
It isn’t!
While more sales and subscriptions can definitely be accomplished as a by-product of effective networking, selling directly to the person you’re networking with is not the core purpose of networking. When people focus only on that, to the exclusion of all else, they’re not networking…
They’re just “selling!”
Networking is really all about expanding your sphere of influence.
Each individual has a sphere of influence – a group of people who they know, and who value their opinions and relationship with them. In some cases, these spheres of influence overlap with those of other people, such as within church, professional, and civic organizations. But in many other instances, each person within your sphere of influence has their own individual sphere of influence which may not overlap yours at all – or at most, only very little.
What is at the very core of, and the driving force behind, effective networking is the expansion of your own personal sphere of influence into that of others you are networking with – and theirs into yours as well. It’s a 2-way street, with both parties realizing some type of benefit.
If you’ve been involved in internet marketing for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly heard about those $10,000 seminars that the “big guns” hold fairly regularly. While the information that’s presented at those events is valuable, more often than not the real reason people pony up that sort of money to attend is to gain access to, and to network with the other attendees!
That isn't just my opinion - I’ve heard many of them come right out and admit it in their emails.
Bear in mind that each of those people who pay ten grand to attend has a sphere of influence (their email subscriber lists) which extends to tens of thousands of people. (Some actually have subscriber lists numbering in the hundreds of thousands!)
Now I ask you - what would it be worth to you to be able to sit down, have a cup of coffee, and talk with someone who has an opt-in list of over 100,000 people, and they are also open to listening to new business ideas?
(And they all are, or they wouldn’t be there. They would just wait for the course to be released and buy it.)
Most of those people don’t bat an eye about writing out a check for ten grand, because they know how to effectively network with the other attendees. In the process, they often work out a joint venture with other attendees that ends up netting them ten times that amount (conservatively)!
They understand the power of real networking – by leveraging the spheres of influence of other people! It’s really about the sharing of ideas and strategies that are mutually beneficial.
You don’t have to have a list of tens of thousands to network effectively. In fact, it's often the other way around. Building a larger contact list is one of the natural by-products of effective networking. If you’re a member of any online social networks, consider your “friends list” there.
We all network every day – we just don’t consciously realize we’re doing it most of the time. Every time you meet someone you haven't met before, and try to get to know them, you're networking. There may not be an obvious immediate benefit for either of you, but by becoming acquainted with new people you're expanding your sphere of influence.
But remember that networking is not selling – it’s sharing. Share yourself, your knowledge, and your expertise with others so that they will be willing to introduce you to their spheres of influence. That makes the sort of impression which is both lasting and profitable for all concerned, through the leveraging of overlapping spheres of influence.
At My VM Team, each member has developed a considerably-sized sphere of influence, and the leverage it provides all of our members grows as correspondingly! With a wide diversity of people of all levels of experience and expertise, and representing an equally diverse field of business interests, My VM Team has only just begun sending ripples across the internet that are welling up into waves of change as our collective spheres of influence increase.
We’re accomplishing that through networking, which is indeed very far from dead – in fact, it’s really only beginning to come into its own on the internet, and you can expect to see it become an ever-growing trend as we continue to share our knowledge with anyone and everyone who wishes to learn how we do it – all at no charge.
To learn more, (especially how to really start networking effectively with an energetic and motivated group of people) I invite you visit http://www.myvmteam.com/.
And when you understand how to really network, you can put that knowledge to work for you in a big way at www.Directmatches.com/donhill as well.
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