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Leverage Your Network

The next thing that you want to dio after you've got your bates and after you've designed your website for readers and you want to leverage your network and so this is how we get the word out about our free resource and so how you do that is is basically like networking and when I say networking what do you guys think of lisa? You kind of rolled your eyes that's kind of how I feel about now working boring cocktail parties with small talk yeah here's what your one hundred business but I'm going to call you really yeah so anybody ever watched the show ugly betty there is that it's it's okay, if you haven't I do uh there's an episode of ugly betty and for those of you don't know what the show is about you know betty is, uh girl with braces and very attractive but by the name of it she doesn't fit she she moves in manhattan to work in the fashion industry and she's from this small conservative family and she moves in the big city and you know the show was kind of about how she adapts to th...

is fast paced, materialistic world and so she is sent on a mission from her boss to go to a networking event and she's shy she's nice you know, she's not a cutthroat business lady like a lot of her colleagues are and so she's really kind of squeamish about this and the the episode is about, you know, like when you have an opportunity to take advantage of somebody, do you take it? And this is kind of the struggle that betty has the dilemma that she's face that she faces and she kind of does something that's questionable and then she feels bad about it and tries to right that wrong, but that picture of a networking event when she goes into this bar, they're doing like this like speed dating networking thing where people are, you know, sit at a table for, you know, five minutes and they exchange a bunch of stuff, and then you just move on and I've been to events like that before mixers they call them and really what they should call them is like, use parties like, I'm going to use you because that's, what it feels like and in order to kind of keep up like if if I'm not going to be taken advantage of, I have to take advantage of you, but it doesn't work and, you know, it certainly doesn't work for me and it doesn't work for a lot of people, I don't enjoy it, I don't think it's fun, and for years I was like, I know that I need to be networking and I need to be building my network but I don't like that I don't like how it makes me feel and this is what everybody learned is that she didn't like the person that she became when she was trying to play this game and I feel the same way on. So for years I avoided meeting people trying to build my personal brand through networking because it has made me feel sleazy and then I learned another way to do it and this is why I no longer think networking is this sleazy thing I found that instead of me having a forced meeting with somebody where I'm giving them my information and I'm taking their information but I'm not really going to do anything with it hoping that they're going to remember me or tell my tell their friends about me but we've not really built a relationship stopped doing that instead of doing that I've approached networking is just an opportunity to help people to just generously give so instead of me asking you to coffee so that I can find some way to take advantage of your network or your relationship of your connections I just try to find a way to help you and at first this felt kind of risky because what if a bunch of people took advantage of me but as I started to do what I realized that this created a better positive, you know connection? What were that person was connecting me, my name with a sense of goodwill like like I was helping them with something just something small, you know, and I didn't have a bunch of connections, but I was always trying to find some way to serve somebody to help them even just buy them lunch. And I did this with enough people that these people sort of talking to each other and slowly this personal brand started to grow and people were talking about me and I have some friends who are photographers who basically did the same thing. They moved to city that was overpopulated with lots and lots of wedding photographers, and they just started asking all of thes influential local photographers and people in the wedding photography industry and wedding planning industry should ask him out to coffee and then after they have coffee with them, they send in a little starbucks gift card or a little think, you know, little like five dollars, you know, value, you know, items not expensive, you know things, and very quickly their brand grew and and the reputation grew because they were like the on ly people in town, they were doing this, everybody else was trying to use those people, and these wedding planners started bringing their brides to these photographers and saying, we want you to shoot this wedding because we know that you guys operate with integrity so it's powerful so networking is important you want to build a network but I like thinking of networking as doing favors because I always feel good about it and if occasionally somebody uses me that's fine but I want to be known as the guy who helps people and if you do that enough the thing that my dad always told me when I was growing up is true what goes around comes around so a networking strategy looks like this you want to reach out to somebody had love to buy you a cup of coffee on dh so there is that kind of initial ask this is just like permission marketing we're trying to get somebody on the list except in this case we're trying to build in influential relationships so that our brand spreads it's going to attract people back to our website to get people on our list so the reason that we're doing this networking we're connecting with people were doing favors is so that if we help enough people more people find out about what we do and our network is going to grow so you're going to reach out and then the point of that meeting is not thinking as much as you can from that person but to give as much and you know you could ask them how can I help you? You should definitely offer to buy their coffee I can't tell you how many times people ask me you're not too costly to pick my brain and then you know I end up paying for the coffee it's fine, you know coffee is not that expensive, but it's just, you know the gesture, the principle of it is I'm giving you my time and now I'm paying for your coffee too, and so if you're going to ask somebody for their time, pick up their coffee or their lunch, you know it's it's a good gesture try to help them first and then when it's appropriate overtime, as you build this relationship, there are opportunities to tell them about something that you're doing and then have them share it with their network but that comes later. What first comes is you want to get permission to engage with them, to have coffee with them, to talk with them on skype whatever is going to be appropriate, you know, wherever you are in the world, that doesn't have to be in person necessarily, although if you can you should do that because it's a great way to build trust uh connect with that person, find a way to help them and then immediately afterwards thank them. I wish I could say this was commonplace, but I meet with a lot of people who I never hear from again probably ninety percent never just go hey, thanks for your time it means something and what means even mohr is if you've given your time to somebody or somebody's given their time to you and you've lean something from that experience this is an influential person that's somebody who has never you know, networking opportunities that you might want to leverage someday tell them oh that's something that you learned from your time together that you've been now applying so you know, throughout this course I've seen some people on twitter some people have emailed me saying ok, yesterday I went and started an email list and I immediately you know, send out sent out a newsletter I had a woman named anna who reached out to me and showed me that she just got her first newsletter and I thought that is amazing that makes me feel so great makes me feel like this time up here is worth while I don't want to just stand here and talk I want you guys to go do something with this so we're goanna um so that's what that's the gift that you want to give us somebody who's going to give you their time and what you do when you do that is to show this person that I'm worth investing in that I take your advice I take your expertise seriously and I'm gonna be this relationship is going to be worth your while I have to tell you I've after meeting lots of influential and important people networkers, connectors these people care about that they want to know more people that they can invest in where their influence is going to spread and they're going to be ableto help more people because these are generous people they just don't have a lot of time and so they can only invest in the relationships that are hopefully going to allow their influence to grow and not in some sort of self gratifying way but in a way where they can help even more people through the work that you're not doing so it could be a really great when when the bottom line is when you're networking help first asked later down the line when it's appropriate and you'll know you'll know when it feels forced and sleazy and its and usually that's on the first meeting where you're asking somebody to coffee and then you're asking them to go check out your blood and then you're asking them to go tell all their friends about it you already asked them once you know them giving your time is a gift now it's time for you to reciprocate show them that it's worth it thank them and then if there's goodwill there if there's you know if there's a relationship there, then you can kind of build on that and if there's not you move on and find somebody else to help so some examples of how you could do that particularly online how you can leverage your network to get your bait to spread and remember our our betas could be like a product launch a resource that we're sharing with the world and it just happens to be free you can treat that seriously and so one of the ways that you could do that is you know if you whether or not you're writer you should consider working with bloggers to get your your resource out there because there's something like four hundred fifty million blog's in the world now and blocking is a great way for ideas to spread. Blogging is free or very cheap and getting promoted ana blawg is often more powerful than some of the most expensive publicity campaigns in the world. There's a reason why bestselling authors like tim ferriss are always looking for bloggers to work with when he when they launched books because they understand that there's something really powerful in fact sometimes mohr powerful than seeing something on you know the morning news or, you know a certain talk show is having hundreds or thousands of people talking to their dedicated tribe of readers of listeners their audience members saying guys I can vouch for this book this resource is a really cool thing that you should check out so finally is to connect with bloggers through this generous networking strategy that we talked about and offered to give them you know, piece of free content on their blawg or offered to do an interview with them. I was surprised that how many people wanted to interview me about this little well the book that I wrote that was free but it's a book and it's free and people want to talk about things and so if there's value in that resource and bloggers are always looking for content and if you can find a way to give them content that say hey promote me but I've got some great content it would be relevant for your readers that is a win win and then lastly you could host webinars or events you do online events. This is kind of an example of that where you know this is an online event, I've got a captive audience and and this is a great opportunity where it said, hey here everybody who registers for this course which is free you get my my e book and that's a way that where I'm introducing, you know, something that is value I sell that that you know, people buy that, but I appreciate your attention so much I want to reward you and for some of those people here in there they're going toe appreciate that and there's going our relationships going to build as a result of that and so you can do that as well by hosting events, doing things you guys are doing an event later this week on dh that's you know it's a great way to grab people's attention and then convert them to readers and eventually to customers. So that is that I think we have just a few minutes left for any questions you guys have any questions? The legal that came up over there but I was thinking for curating lists. Are there things we need to be aware of? If we have created a pdf? We're giving away for free, but if if we were to pull out a quote and say this is a standout quote from a book, do we need permission for that? If we link it to an amazon, you know, referral, something like that? Do we need permission for that before we give it away for free? Or is it just something great question? So they're a couple questions there again, I'm not a lawyer, but so first of all the affiliate sites, if you link to amazon and you are an amazon affiliate, if you ever have any affiliate links in a free resource, uh, the ethical thing to do and the legal thing going according the fcc, is you need to disclose that he didn't disclose that clearly that if you click this link and buy this book, I'm going to get a commission and sometimes it's just not worth that because it sort of feels like ok, now you're getting something out of this and I thought you're being generous that's up to you and your audience I would probably refrain from doing putting anything into this free resource that looks like I'm getting something out of it unless unless it's just you know it's clear that that it's a win win and it's not there's no weirdness about it but something to be aware of but if you wanted to do that you need to disclose that legally typically and this really depends on the publisher and and each book but at the beginning of most books there will be a little a little disclosure little line that says uh you know that this this is a copyrighted work and if you want to quote anything larger you know using x ert usually usually larger than something like three hundred words it depends then you need to contact us to ask for an official expert s o typically a shorter quote from a book is totally fine but if you wanted to double check on that you just you contact the publisher and they would tell you and they've got a legal department they would tell you how to do that and sometimes they've got you know release certain things so just to kind of protect yourself to keep things on the up and up what I would recommend doing is if you are going to curate the list um don't don't ever take somebody's content especially if it's not free content and even if it is free content you don't necessarily have the rights to that and republish it you know but what you could do is you could just have you know a list of links or and as you mentioned here maybe just some short quotes uh the exception to that is you know any any books that are in the public domain and so books go into the public domain that you know the copyright only last for like seventy five years or something and so anything before nineteen twenty eyes usually in the public domain and so something that a lot of people are doing especially the online business world is they're taking books that are now in public domain entire books because it's totally legal and giving them away for free ah great example of this in the business world is a business classic called thinking grow rich which is you confined free online anywhere you can download the pdf that book is in the public domain and if you're an online business person on the market or something and your readers would would want this uh you could give away that whole book for free you didn't write it but it's it's a valuable resource it's a free book and because it's in the public domain you could do that it's completely legal yeah terry for awhile as my bait just to make a pdf of the book that I wrote and and give that away I mean it's a short book but and now just after today I'm probably just going to take an excerpt of the book and build out on that a smaller e book but if I did do that it's already been on amazon it's already you know, people have already paid money for it are there any issues with people who have paid money for the book now you're giving it away coming back on you so wait a minute yeah I bought that thing yeah so there will be some of that or that could be some of that if you take something that you've been selling and then you give it away for free there's sort of this buyer's remorse that happens and what you don't ever want to do is you don't want your early adopters to feel like they're getting penalized oh hey, thanks for buying this thing but it's eventually going to be free and this is why you have to be careful with discounts or freebies of any sort with something that you've previously sold. So although we want to have something that's valuable enough to sell, we don't necessarily want to take something that we've sold and and give it away for free or people are going to go unless it's just some kind of super special thing like I'm doing with pretty wliw that's, a special thing for a closed community of people. But in general noah, I wouldn't do that. But an excerpt, I think, would be fine, you know, so nobody's going to go like I thought the whole thing. But now you're giving away chapter one for free, because that's, very typical to do with the blood to give away, you know, a chapter or two in exchange for people's information that kind of tease them to get the rest of the book, so I would recommend in the excerpts.