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Natural Networking Techniques

This is the wrong way I this is me the shark right here dude, you don't wantto be hanging around this guy he wants something from you and you know I like this guy however there is apparently in the right way you have to turn into a woman from a man woman thing but this is the right way, right? So here we're actually building a relationship we're actually like listening talking not tryingto angle for what it is I want but just like oh so like um I noticed you have such an interesting background how did you end up here and listen don't just sit there and get oh she's saying this perfect is now minutes served my script about if you do that and I find out you use of my scripts like that I will kill you this is the right way we're listening we're actually building a relationship and if I get something out of it great but that's not even for now remember that phrase with top form we'll discuss money later right now let's just see if this a good fit see any similarities anybody see any simila...

rities were drawn across the whole course today so what do you do here? Identify the right people you don't network with everyone that's why you don't go toe networking events where everyone's unemployed you want to meet those people it's pointless you're gonna get nothing out of it they're going to get nothing out of it you just wasted your time and actually feel worse about yourself reach out directly don't wait for these people to find you on some website that's not gonna happen twitter is not networking okay social networking is a huge misnomer if you're waiting for people to come you've already lost and three chat over coffee, phone or email sound familiar to anyone kind of like how to find clients kind like how to do research there's a lot of similarities here so let's go through each of these steps I'll show you how they work, so identifying the right people who are the kind of people that you want to quote network with or as I like to say you want to sort of go through the natural networking process with national means it's a natural process who were the kind of people you'd want to go through the natural networking process with people who are where you want to be eventually give me an example specifically so specifically like I would reach out to people who are writing or editing for the websites that I'm interested in do you have you don't say their names but do you know who those people are? Several of them? Yes, but not directly but I know you know that you know of them yes okay very good and have you ever reached out to them before I haven't that's so interesting, huh? So it's so it's so interesting you want to do this for your dream job and yesterday you told me about your clients and yet the people who are where you want to be you haven't struck up a relationship with him it's super intimidating we're going to go through that but can you just before we go into everybody else fast forward six months from now tell me what happened tell me what's happened ideally or yes scenario yeah totally I've reached out with these people the people that I communicate with regularly a lot of them are sort of spread out um across the country or even sort of internationally um you know, I've gone and I've met with them um I've collaborated on projects with them where we've been things we've done things together and written about it shows up on their side it shows up on my site you know, things air going really well and none of this is going to happen unless I sort of get over the fear you know? I'm gonna write something and they're not gonna respond or it's gonna be silly or I'm not gonna like them I think that six months from now you've maybe even developed friendships with a couple of them you hang out socially uh you've sent them some interesting articles you sent them some interesting links you've maybe even got them featured in the news because you happen to know someone who's a local tv producer they've sent you a couple of gigs they were too busy to do them because they're a little bit bigger than you are they sent you a couple things that you should try this you know I got a conference I don't speak that often in fact I rarely do events I do conferences usually if they're like a cause that I like and I do them for free or if they're like a strategic thing for me on then it's usually like for pay but the money is not that interesting so um so I rarely do them I did an event recently because, uh somebody I know who's a mentor of mine he was too busy and he's like you should have remained to come and speak so now I'm like okay I'll do this because I want to honor my mentor and also because I think that he knows me really well so he recommended the right conference for me so basically he's sending me all these gigs and I also send him opportunities to be in the press and stuff like that and I quote him extensively it's back and forth I'm offering value he's offering that right right um what else but the question that originally asked was who are the people you want a network with who's got what I would like to network with um business owners wedding people who own wedding businesses who need help restructuring their internal to get more consistent results. Okay, but why I thought your client I thought your customers or clients are like brides they are that if you're asking about a job like five yes brides are different rides um however market to a bride it's not the job I'm gonna go on apply for if I'm actually gonna go for a job that I'm gonna get hired then that would be who I want to be networking let's talk about you in the real world so you have this business destination wedding who do you want a network with? I want a network with brides I mean, obviously I want to get to know brides but I want to get to know other business owners because they confuse me business and I could be very good remember yesterday we talked about all those vendors that are associated with a wedding the hotels, the flower people, whatever all those people. Plus I bet you some of these people have been doing it longer than you have. They probably know a bunch of insights like that you don't know maybe about timing maybe about pricing about these type of people are the best clients and these type of people we never do you know, whatever whatever you see the point so networking with brides is great? What about, um press? I've thought about that you said people don't know how to find you they only find you do google yeah I'm done press I've never gotten anything I like I've been on a couple of tv shows and stuff like that never okay, I've done magazines and I haven't gotten it's kind of been a wash remember when we on day one when I asked I made that crack about like how we have these fantasy scenarios and some people can't even imagine like their own fantasies here I'm asking you to create a fantasy scenario who would you network with if you could network with anyone unlimited time unlimited money if I'm you I'm saying I want a network with a producer on the today show maybe I want a network with, um the world's top wedding designer who's on oprah or whatever, right? I'm thinking big, but your answer was I wanted network with bribes and other random business owners I want to focus us on way kind of know where we want to go we want to grow our client base and all that stuff let's think you're good and network with brides there's no question about that after we go through this process, I know you're gonna do that, but what else can we do that think bigger than that if if I'm a photographer, I'm saying I want a network with photographers who are slightly better than me because they have a lot to teach me and a couple years from now, when I have a big network, I want a network with guys like chase. I want a network with x y z editor of popular photo magazine or whatever, I want to put it all out on the table and then start saying, oh, that's not practical that's not practical, but I want oh, stop limiting myself right now, okay, cathy well, I want to know what people like you and wires because I think you're being interesting conversation and that your thought leaders and changing people's behavior and you've done a lot of research and I just think it would be interesting and how could you were going to get to this in a minute? But I want to cut right to the chase. How? Why would a guy like me or tim I want to meet with you? Okay, we're going to cover that I'm going to show you because there are ways that you can add value. You've already done it, actually yesterday you did it, you don't even know it, but you did it, and I'm gonna show you how you can actually be strategic about that. Okay all right uh by the way some people picked the wrong people to network with their like I wanted to work with tim and I'm like why and they're like I just think he'd be cool to me and I'm like you're never going to meet him because it's not a good reason tim's a really busy guy right it's just not gonna happen because you don't have a reason or people like I want to meet rianna why I just think she's awesome okay okay what do you want to say to that? So let me put it this way it's hard to meet the busier and busier the person gets or more important it's hard to meet him if you want to meet that person you will go through a lot to meet them right? You're gonna have to leapfrog and get different networks it's gonna be dark times and do you think that uh you being like brianna's awesome is going to carry me through that? No. But if it's like I know that this is the one person the world who's gonna help me grow my business because they know something that I don't know that I know I need to know that's definitely gonna carry you through or they're the one person who uh went to this college and then did this and then did that and they can explain why they thought that through I'm so fascinated that's how you think about identifying the right people let's go to the web for a minute wei have people who were kind of saying like they wanted to work with people five to ten years in advance and then kind of you've been talking we're getting more with single in saying I want a network with ellen and anderson cooper or michael olive wants a network with roger corman and clint eastwood why what's the point those as you're too big for you like I want a network with the president what's the point what you gonna do? What value can you possibly add to clint eastwood it's not realistic I like the idea of someone five to ten years ahead of you that's more realistic and you can actually look ok put it this way let's say someone's ten years younger than you or ten years junior than you in whatever position you have or company don't you think you have a lot to teach that person? Of course you do now does anyone ten years younger than you ever ask you for advice? No because they think they know everything young jackass is right however you're in the same position you don't ask people ten years older than you or more experience than you if you did and you do the right way they would love to help you so this anderson cooper stuff I find really weird I mean if you were a newscaster and you had a show on some b level network then it might make sense to figure out a way to me anderson cooper and take him out to coffee one day like, how do you get to be so big on cnn? Whatever, but some random dude, what do you say to him? Oh, I really like your hair. Okay, so I think this is interesting. We meet that. Christina says o m g ra meet after listening to you now, I have no idea what I want to network with and people are still asking questions about how do I figure that? Darla suddenly saying so think big, but not too big can of worms wanted to move on. I'm sorry. Okay, fine. Look, all right, let me get into this for a minute and then we're gonna move on. All right, so, um, there I thought I was so crystal clear I didn't realize when you, when you pick who you want to never with, I'm gonna take a few examples and show. Okay, so if I'm a photographer and I, I'm gonna take creative entrepreneurs, I'm also going to take people who work at a nine five job we're going to both. If I'm a photographer, I wantto understand people who are more successful than I am if you know your market it's quite obvious, who's more successfully if your question is, I don't know who's more successful than you haven't done your homework go home by the course right now so you can review this later and make sure that you can figure out who in your market is bigger than you. It should be quite obvious, like if if you're looking at like personal finance blog's it doesn't take much research. It takes less than a day of research to figure out who's big who's, not etcetera. Um, the reason too, how to identify those people is they know something you don't know, and you also will offer value to them. I'll tell you an example from my own life, uh, when I was starting out and my blood was kind of getting bigger, I studied people who were bigger than I wass like they heads and bigger, I wanted to find out they had success in ways that I didn't have maybe they were doing products, which I wasn't doing back then because I wasn't monetizing at all, maybe they understood adds a lot and I was doing ads, so I wanted to meet those people uh, maybe they just had, like, a ton of comments, I was like, man, how do you do that? Like I write, I thought my stuff is pretty good and just nobody leaves comments, so I those are the kind of people were I knew I wanted something like a goal I didn't want something from them, but I wanted to learn how they did it. What did they know? That I didn't know? And, uh I met them and I befriended them, and I added value to them, which I'll cover in a minute, and they were more than happy to say like, hey, one thing you should do is tweak this thing on your site and it'll, like, change everything for you. I was like, oh, that would've taken me six months to realize if I didn't know one of my students uh, she wanted to do business development everybody who's young wants to do bt they think business development, sit around and do emanate deals all day, throw money around, go on jets! I'm like twenty three year olds don't do bd twenty three year olds do excel okay? Uh, so but she didn't know this yet and I don't want to tell her I made her go through the natural networking process to discover it for herself. I knew if she did her job right within weeks, she would quickly discover that bt, when you're really young, is really not a great job. It's not you don't get the respect you deserve your given menial tasks etcetera but I made her go through it. How did she do this? She had narrowed down her job description to a very specific type of job so she knew exactly who she was talking to she's like I want like my other example, I want to be inside sales rep so she found inside sales rep people who are a bit more experience and she said, listen uh is this a good job? Does this make sense here? My goals, etcetera. So this person she quickly found out bd is not what I want to do that's how you identify the person you go through the hard work here which I cover here I covered some of it today I come for some of it on my site that tells you who you want to meet meeting anderson cooper doesn't it's not what's it gonna do for you fast for it like we did this experiment fast forward six months. Where are you? I think your answer was exactly right. Sarah, I want to meet people who are like me but a little bit more successful, okay think in terms of tears, by the way, it's just like a media strategy you don't if you're just starting off your business has like one dollar and revenue you don't try to go on the today show try to get a local paper right? Start off, get some local press get those logos go higher and higher and one day you can go on the today show the same thing is true when you're meeting somebody you say like let me start off just meet people were kind of my level a little bit higher learn from them if I like them and they like me and I had value they're gonna be like you should meet my friend and it's become very organic from there we'll take one question here and then we're going we'll make sure that the web gets it now, as a photographer, I can easily come up with people that are more successful than me people that I should aim to neck network with where I get stuck is they're more successful. So what value can I add to them? We're gonna cover that right now. Does the web get it recall? Yes. Then they appreciate plus one for you doing that. All right, thank you. You got it. So we're gonna do the value thinking of me because I know I just want to establish step by step, all right? I want to jump around I wanted to walk through it step by step that's why I paid extra attention we got to get the foundation right the second point is to reach out to them directly sounds so easy, right? When was the last time anybody here emailed someone's cold email saying, hey, I really admire stuff I'd love to take you you don't know what you've been reading my stuff too I didn't ask him that I sent a letter you send a handwritten letter what is this? Seventeen, twenty years like glorified fan you know what you know it's funny so at the bottom of every one of my emails, my my address is there because you have to legally put your address it's a p o box I get the weirdest stuff in there the weirdest things of all okay, I get books that's nice please don't send me books have so many books the weirdest things I get are hand written notes you know, when people do is like runs for cancer or whatever and you like go to your friends and you're like, hey here's, my girl can do anything I always donate to my friends, okay, always if they if they're doing the run or something but like people literally hand, write a letter and send it to the address at the bottom of a newsletter there's subscribed to I'm like, is that effective at all? Has that ever worked for anyone? I don't know anyone I find it so bizarre that someone would hand write it and then sent it off to an address of someone they've never talked. Apparently you guys don't think it's as weird as I so reaching out to them directly. It sounds so obvious, but we don't we don't do it at all. We don't even know how to reach out to and if we find those people so everybody here does everybody. You have at least three people that you would be able to reach out to you after today. Three people don, you better put your hand up. Who are those? Three? Um specifically my contacts at the knot and wedding wire. Good. Great. Okay, three, three people. Kathy yeah. Okay. You lying? No. Okay. It's two and a half. And I'm awful in here. The surface. All right, she's already a friend, but it. Okay, so we have these three people, all right? Three is not that hard. Over time you're gonna be doing three a week, maybe even more. We'll show you how to do that later. But three people it's a very modest amount gonna reach out to them directly. I like to just send an e mail it's really simple, okay, but notice the strategy here is different than just putting up a blogger and waiting for the right people to come to you that doesn't happen or getting on twitter forget it that's not gonna happen here's the actual script for how you could reach out to a pipe take a look uh hi steve greetings from a fellow alumni I was doing some research on project manager position's on linked in and I noticed your project manager at acme I'm on a quest for my dream job and would love to ask you three to five questions about your experience at acme would you be available for a quick chat over coffee this thursday at ten? I'm also free any time friday sincerely john smith ps I'm sure you're busy so if it's easier for you I'd be happy to send my questions via email what's going on in this email and go ahead establishing their relationship right off the bad people have that connection to their college uh huh what else here's a multiple options if he doesn't want to meet in person and he's short on time he can also do it by email he's he's just he's being really accommodating profound respect for the busy person which is exactly as it should be and by the way did you notice that it's no accident that he chose this specific combination of times is some really subtle stuff I cover this in my dream job course but he's chose thursday at ten a m because he's specifically choosing something, so if the busy person wants, they could just reply and say thursday at ten, works or that's, it's, almost like the high low high technique, which I'll teach you later or any time friday. So if the busy person wants to look at his calendar, he can take his pick any time friday or hey, I'm sure you're busy. In other words, I understand you deeply, so if you want to do email that's totally cool with me. What do we call this from yesterday? Riskreversal remember that? Take my risk away. What is my risk in talking this guy? If I'm the busy guy what's on my wrists? He's, a weirdo eliminated u c l a alumni eliminated the weirdo. What else? He's going to stop my time? Three to five questions, or I usually put ten to fifteen minutes. You always want to limit it so people don't busy. People don't feel like I'm going to stretch it out for an hour. What are the other risks? My risk is a busy person. If someone's going go through ten back and force on scheduling eliminated, what else is going on in this scene? He says that he did research so that he's also suddenly making it clear that he's looking for project manager position's, right. So there's a point to this conversation. You do not understand how many e mails I get from people that I like. I love your stuff. Can we chat? And I used to be able to respond to all the minutes, you know, unfortunately and now I just can't respond. And honestly, I wouldn't anyway, because if you haven't taken the time to even define why and who you are, what's the point. Do you deserve a response? Think about that's. What a busy person. Things candidly. So this script, which seems so simple on the surface, is actually quite detailed. Some of my students report over a ninety percent response rate from using this script alone. So in my dream job course I have multiple scripts. They just copy and paste him. I'm like test. Um, you made it. You may think it sucks. Trial trying on three people. Just watch what happens. I love that phrase. Watch what happens. I know, works because I tested on many, many other people. You can get this script and other scripts like it that I will teach you to be rich dot com slash creative life okay, so anybody have any questions on that? We'll go to the web as well. But questions on this if you're not working with people that you can't meet with face to face geographically um is it appropriate to copy and paste questions right there? Can you say let's chat and chat like what would your alternate b how are you? I would just first start off by saying, hey, you know, big fan, blah, blah had a couple questions wondered if it would be okay to send them over via email ask him first before you intrude on their lives. Okay, but emails good, then you could graduate to phone skype whatever other questions ten from the web francisco ramirez is wondering what about the subject matter in email? The subject subject really important for a subject line like this? And also I show the subject lines in in the dream job the subject line I learned a lot of this from b j fog he didn't study it, he just is really good at writing subject lines and now I test subject lines, so I have like this huge like corpus of tested subject lines for something like this, I would put, uh hello from u c l a alum dash question about pm positions it's almost like a full sentence like I'll write out a subject line it's actually quite long, whereas most people would say something like project management questions now the subject line is important but it's not important as you think okay you do want to if you khun strike a personal connection like john jones suggested I get in touch dash pm question that will definitely get you a pretty good response but in general if it's anywhere somewhat descriptive it's going to be fine I would say that that's a good question but it's a minutia question what else way have a number of people asking about okay so I try a couple of times what happens when I get no response lukewarm was franz how many times I try good good uh all this is covered but I might as well just shared with you guys right now so get inside the mind of a busy person you send this to a busy person they don't respond why there's nothing in it there's nothing in it for them ok, yeah so maybe it's just your right there's nothing in it for them. What else you got married never had that happen to you uh but what? It's funny remember I talked about the dating example yesterday where people are like texting and then someone stopped like oh my god, they hate me I said something wrong I'm never gonna be with them again um you just have to understand look, maybe you did say something wrong maybe there's nothing in it but let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were busy let's try one more time so I would give it a few days that's why I like doing e mails like this on mondays monday afternoons after the emails in boxes cleared out again thinking deeply about my client or in this case the person that I'm deeply respecting so I'm going to send them an e mail monday morning at nine a m why buried in all this other crap wait until noon I'd like to send out e mails like this on a monday monday afternoon uh because if they haven't responded I can still get him again around thursday not friday because they're off but thursday and I would say something like this I would reply directly to this email and I would say hey steve just wanted to make sure this didn't get buried in your inbox I know you're really busy hope we have a chance to chat soon email copied below why did I put the email below so it doesn't have to search for it on waste ground correct people do this all the time to me they're like and by the way I'm not trying to sound arrogant at all about like the way that I handled email but I get over six hundred emails a day okay? So by necessity I've had to create these systems of who I respond to it so I don't I'm not trying to sound arrogant I want to emphasize that, but I do want to give you insight into what a busy person thinks, okay that's sad thing is most busy people won't talk candidly about it because they come off looking really arrogant so they just don't talk about it but actually give you insight because a lot of my friends are busy too and we talk about this stuff we talked like tim and tim farris and I we send each other the most ridiculous emails that we get we have back in force about like I can't believe that somebody just sent this ah now I actually have my own filters I filter people who I filter really funny e mails I filter people who hate me like hate mails, but they have to be really bad to be filtered light because if you're just like I think your stuff sucks, I'm like, okay that's fine like we're not right for each other, but sometimes they're like they're really funny like one guy was like, um rem eat uh I saw you speaking at whatever you have really weird body and you're very harry, you should hit the gym and get a personal trainer I laughed so much and of course what the first thing I did I forget to all my friends like, can you believe this? And the funniest things like all the guys were like all the guys were cracking because guys love to tear each other down right that's how we relate to each other and all my female friends like oh my god, who is this tell me their email address I'm gonna write them like no, you're not stopping so okay, so the other so people the reason I told you that was people will email me and they'll be like, hey, I was just wondering if you had a chance to take a look at my email I sent the other day I'm like what what do you what email you talking about and like in the midst of six hundred emails am I really going to search for an e mail from some guy? I don't even know who by definition is probably not a top performer because he's not even sending me a copy of the email no delete move on okay, any other questions? Yeah, we've got plenty let us know when you want to stop elsie. How do how do you incorporate a payoff to the v I p and the female what's in it for them? We'll cover that later right now you don't look it's about building a relationship, people get too crazy oh oh I need to tell him everything in one even though you don't you need to know what is the point of this email what's the c t a the call to action chad not uh get married chat why did I choose the word chat loose let's check so easy right? Noncommittal don't tryto pack it all into one thing we're building it step by step that's a relationship you want to have a relation to this guy for five years? Ten years you think you're going to start by packing everything and know what else? S k waldman what happens if you don't have a direct connection like a personal reference or college connection you should find one if you can don't get lazy a lot of people say like, oh, I don't have a connection odds are you might have you looked at linked in, you know, you know, try to find one if you can if you really can't then you khun you have to create a reason for them to listen to you. I have a lot of those examples and dreams I'm not goingto mentioned was here, but there are other ways to create connections if you don't have them okay, all right, let's move on. Um we're going to go to step three uh if I get my slide thing to work okay, so check for fifteen to thirty minutes over coffee why that amount anybody any idea if you extend it and it's too long they will never meet with you again correct, they'll be like oh my god, that guy roommate he just sucks the wind out of me the life out of me no exhausting totally right time suck and busy people are by definition busy so they don't want they don't want you haven't earned the right to spend more time with them you haven't earned it you're earning your relationship with them um so I like to meet again, preferably for coffee, particularly for women I would recommend you meet for coffee in the day if you can I discovered this a cz one hundred percent of my female students were hit on and I was like, what the hell is going on? And I thought it was just like one girl or two girls I was like, well, you're pretty attractive no, it was everywhere and I was like, oh, man and I discovered and there's reasons for this right men are approach so infrequently by women that way we naturally just we assume things and there's a whole bunch of other stuff going on in this social dynamic. I don't wanna get into the gender dynamics here, but it was a simple switch. I made some recommendations I put him in the dream job course and uh those problems largely went away not one hundred percent but they largely one way for example meet during the day it's very quite simple so meet during the day meet for coffee try not to meet for drinks uh and coffee is preferable for number one two would be phone three would be e mailed any questions when you get there what do you do? Yeah yeah um you want to spend I would say ninety percent of the time talking about them asking them questions and the last if it's a thirty minute meeting I'll spend twenty five talking about them five about me last five so I would have my questions prepared it's actually okay to write them down um questions we tested all of them but the questions or you know you start off by like so interested in your background here's why I wanted to meet you. You know, I noticed that you did x y z how'd you make that decision that really opens it up broadly and then you can get narrower and narrower. Okay, the goal of this is to simply you really want to know the answers to these questions don't walk in there like oh, I have my fake agenda I'm just gonna ask him big questions they'll take him out and then I'll get what I really want that's not natural networking you actually need toe want to meet this person so if I'm a writer and I took uh someone out who's five years older than me and has a lot more experience I'll be like I'm really curious like what was your path to start off right I noticed you just had a personal blawg and all of a sudden you're writing for oprah dot com so curious like how did that path work and oh wow so you you actually chose to work offline for a while what what made that happen? I'm really curious right these are actually gonna help me and they can tell versus the shark movie I'm like yeah that sounds great ok yeah so so then what else did you do? Okay right no one they could tell your fake in the last five minutes I might say something like you know, I really appreciate what you share with me today and uh one of the things that I learned was blah blah blah and also you know as I'm kind of starting to get the lay of the land is I'm looking for my dream job I've kind of narrowed it down to three positions project manager blah blah and blah blah blah that's what I want to talk to you and I'm curious if you were in my position, what would you be doing also if you're in my position, who else would you be talking to? Well, remember the referral strategy yesterday if you have a client, you ask him who else they should be talking to if you have someone you like, and if they like you, they'll actually introduce you and there's a whole other set of scripts in terms of how to get referrals and stuff and introductions, but that's the general framework for that, all right, questions on that? I really did a story on this, and I feel like I may have just been remitted by a person. I just, um, so I put out an ad for massage therapists, and, um, but the person they ended up hiring, and I got all these, like, really crappy cover letters and stupid resumes, um, that I didn't even reply to you, and it wasn't even that many, but I was like, but who I did on the piron, he actually reached out to me three, wondering if you're out, you're put. You reached out to me three months before, before I even knew I had a need, and he was just genuine. He had obviously read the content on my site. He invited me out for coffee. We just establish this really thanks relationship, and that was beautiful, vicki, maybe he read my stuff or maybe not, but but it's just it's natural networking it's wise yeah, and it's not sleazy. Look, you you had it done, teo. You done to you and you actually appreciate it when people send me emails like one thing I taught my students is, um, busy people love to see the phrase no reply needed, which I'll show you in the closing the loop technique they love it because if I get six hundred emails, I don't I don't have to feel obligated to reply now that's done to me about two hundred times a day and I love it I love it that it's being done to me you have to understand every one of these techniques I'm teaching you people will appreciate you doing it if you do it right if you do it genuinely, you're not tricking anybody. You go and ask a busy person. Would you appreciate having value added emails sent to you every month or so? Like with a great link or interesting article you may not have read, they're gonna say yeah, would you appreciate it if I also added like no replied that's because I don't need you reply, I just thought you might financially off course, so these are not tricks remember I told you people who work for me negotiated me, they negotiated against me and I happily paid them I wasn't tricked I knew what was going on but I appreciated the way they did it okay from the web way have a ton of questions coming in and this one is, uh is in particular two photographers a k or other artists take a photographer says is it is bringing my portfolio of my work too much of that first leading keep it in the bag but don't take it out it's like a little bit presumption is if they asked but I might even like slow it down I think I think you want to build a relationship first if you pull out your portfolio what's the first thing that photographer thinks yann yang you're probably not that good according to photographer I mean if you're starting out what else what? They stink getting their head salesman why why were they expecting to bring this first? Yeah and like they want something from you what do they want? Yeah yeah yeah so you know I'll give you example I had photographs taken of me for fortune and the photographer's a pretty big guy uh he's photographed president stuff like that and think about really great high end photographers I've learned is they're like super cool super cool they're just like really personable they have to be at that level so you meet anybody you guys have seen chase right frequently and he's actually like that in real life you're like, wow, this guy is like pretty cool he's actually just a normal dude you want to hang out with this other guy who photographed and we spent like a full day together he's just like a very entertaining cool guy and actually e mailed him afterwards I was like, hey man like let's grab coffee because during that time he talked to me about, you know, he's asking me some money questions I said, dude, I'll totally help you out of that no problem, so I followed up I said, yo let's, grab coffee, we spent, like a month scheduling because we're both so busy and we met for coffee, I didn't bring some I didn't bring a list of head shots that I wanted from him. All right? I was just like, you know, what's going on, I remember you mentioned this like how's that going like and we started talking about like life in new york and it's so crazy how people over focus on the craft and they don't put the time we're just like talking right just like vibing becoming friends and at the end I said, you know, hey, men, so if you need any recommendations like what kind of what kind of people you're looking for right now, let me know so I could keep my eyes open and he told me, I'm looking for this and that and I said, you know, hey, let me know if you need this or that photos I said, thank you so much. I appreciate that that's a great kind of like coffee shop meeting right now, it's about follow up and stuff like that, but nobody brought anything, no one exchange any business cards were just cool the picture with those two women in it, it was just cool. You could do that, alright. Beauty of the lake from st pete, florida is wondering, do you cut them off at fifteen to twenty minutes? Or do you let them keep talking if they seem like they want to go longer? I know that's a great question I actually go like this, I'll say, you know, hey, I just want to make sure that I'm respectful of your time. I know we had scheduled time until three thirty I loved it stay as long as you can, but I want to be really respectful of your time and let them decide if they want to stay or not. See, did you already addressed the gender dip differences here? I'm thinking that, uh, arena saying, I'm thinking that a woman asking someone to coffee could give the wrong ideas to someone, yeah, you can wand you have to do a few things differently as a woman you probably want to meet during the day you want to be crystal clear that it's a business meeting if there's you don't wantto if the conversation goes over to social stuff you know like oh, where do you go out stuff like that? You really want a guided backseat and in fact if you go to my website right on the log I have the actual I think there's an actual scripts we wrote what was one of them one of them was like, oh, you know, I'm actually yeah, you know, I go out a fair amount, but actually I'm really interested in talking about this very polite right like, nice what's interesting when I actually wrote this article as an email to my list and a bunch of women wrote back and they were so interesting they said one of them said thank you so much for sharing the script because I I actually got, like, unnaturally unhappy what was the word like aggressive towards people when they would hit on me and she would basically be like, don't do that like I'm not here to talk about that and she's like that's not my normal nature, but I didn't know how to react so I would just go to aggressive place sarah, you I totally know this is one of the things that I did when I initially left reed was I got copy with a bunch of these people, and there are a couple, not the older guys who I probably should have been talking to anyone because they were sort of too high, but a lot of the younger guys like, wow, you're so like, driven, and it must be cool to be, you know, um and I would do the same thing where I would shut down and just be like, this is gross, like what? Yeah, I'm really interested in this, but actually, you don't have to do that, you have to do what you do need to do is plan for this to happen, you have to plan that this is gonna happen and how am I gonna react instead, if you're caught unaware you're of course, you go to this weird, visceral place, right? And just gets weird, but if you're calm and collected you, khun navigate, you say stuff like, well, I'm really flattered, but actually, um, I'm actually just really focused on this career stuff, right? Or if you have a boyfriend, so you know, I'm flattered, but I have a boyfriend, but I did have another question for you super respectful, it allows the other person to save face, but you're also firm right you're not like oh I'm flattered you're not just saying like weird stuff like oh I'm really flattered huh? You know you're like I'm really flattered that was my giggle by the way that's my sexy it never works you know you're you're saying look I'm flattered I acknowledge you but firmly redirect and get back on topic never being angry because what happens when you're super angry what is the other person oh they do exactly what I'm doing in the opposite direction and the meeting is over totally it's horrible yeah you can actually salvage that not even salvage you can actually make this meeting go so well if you do that so I know I mean this is so weird for a guy to be up here talking about women's gender dynamics I hope I'm not overstepping any bounds but I tested this myself with my female students and you interviewed a woman recently I did I interviewed a woman recently talking about exactly this I asked her her name is amanda steinberg from daily worth I said how do you handle getting hit on uh business means she said you know it's gonna happen so I planned for by the way a couple of people were really angry I said that they won't be very long email saying we need to change the way the world works and you need to talk to men not blame the victim and and my response to that is like, you know what men do need to change. But just like the political situation, he's changed x y z. I'm dealing with what we can do today. So what can we control today? And I actually have seen very good success helping students walk through this.