And am I alone in this? No, you're not alone in this.

Some people just don't, they don't like to network.

Some people are, they're so busy that they feel they don't have time to network.

But the problem with that, of course, is then how are you going to get business? If you don't have time to go network, how are you going to get business? Well, you can advertise.

I believe in advertising, but how are you going to make the money to do the advertising? So, you know, it's, it's, it's one of those things that you have to do.

Now I can give you a baseline.

of what the average person spends in their networking efforts.

all your energy

Right

... at, at a funeral.

On the other hand, if you run into somebody that has a need, there's nothing wrong with saying, "I know somebody that could help you with that." And I'll give you a true story that relates to that.

It wasn't a funeral, but it was a church function that I was at, and it was a, you know, a potluck mixer thing.

And, you know, you don't go around passing out your business cards to something like that, right? So, uh, somebody said to me...

I asked him how, you know, what do you do? How's business? And he said, "You know, business is fantastic.

My biggest challenge is charitable giving.

'Cause I've heard many different origin stories.

Or two, we're not willing to continually show up so that we can start getting referrals and so you just can't come to one meeting and expect these things to happen but people are attached to the outcomes how can we manage that expectation that it's not a sprint that your behaviors are what's going to outlast out connect and outperform the competition not the results you get immediately

Yeah.

Well, I think part of the problem is that we don't teach this in colleges and universities anywhere in the world.

So when people are out there networking, they use it as a face-to-face cold calling opportunity.

Hi, David, my name's Ivan.

Let's do business.

And, you know, or worse yet, they'll, you know, I've met so many people and you probably have had this too.

I like to bring up, you know, what do you know? What do you know about it? What don't you know about it? What do you like about it? What don't you like about it? And what works for you and what doesn't work for you? Because if I can figure out any capability of would it help you if I was able to introduce you to this person, do this for you, provide you this, I now have expedited that credibility into some sort of emotional connection in relationships.

Be

incredibly specific.

People remember specificity.

They can't refer generalities.

And that's counterintuitive.

People want to say everything they do, and that doesn't work as well.

So those are the top referrals marketing do's.

Most importantly, tell us what is the lesson that you'd like our listeners to take away?

Yeah.

And what's true is, um, how you stand really does change who you meet.

And so what you wanna do is look around the room and con- figure out where, where do you start.

So I'm gonna make it a little bit easier for everyone.

Um, now I understand that many people listening to this are beyond this point, and I get that.

A lot of people really understand how to network and they, they go to networking events where they know a lot of people.

But it's important for you to recognize that there are many people that are presently having the experience I just gave.

[laughs]