337: How To Reach Out To Any Influencer And Get A Response With Steve & Toni

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You’re listening to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap entrepreneurs and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now today is a special episode and I actually have a big announcement to make. In addition to the mywifequitterjob.com podcast, I just launched a brand new show with my business partner, Tony Urbach called the Profitable Audience Podcast. And in this podcast, both Tony and I leverage our experiences with blogging, running events, list building, YouTube, podcasting, membership sites,

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and digital products in order to teach you how to build and monetize your audience. So if you’re interested in starting your own online business, then please subscribe to the Profitable Audience Podcast and leave a review. Now, long-time listeners of this podcast know that I also cover some of these same topics on the MyWifeQuitterJob.com podcast. So what’s different about the Profitable Audience Podcast? Well, as you know, the My Wife Quitter Job podcast is predominantly an interview-based show. Now, I do solo episodes here and there.

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but for the most part, I rarely share my own opinions. And in fact, because some of the guests I have on are just acquaintances, I’m actually usually on my best behavior and I will rarely be as blunt as I normally am. But with the profitable audience podcast, I’ve actually known Tony for a very long time and actually don’t really care what I say. In fact, I’m unconstrained and basically say whatever the heck I want. And I have the opportunity to truly express what’s on my mind.

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In any case, today I share with you one of our first episodes. And if you liked the podcast, we are also running a big contest where we’re both giving away a membership to my Create a Profitable Online Store course valued at $1,800, a membership to our Profitable Audience course valued at $997, a bunch of Seller Summit virtual passes worth $1,200, and one-on-one consults with both Tony and myself. Now you can enter this contest over at profitableaudience.com slash contest.

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Once again, that’s profitableaudience.com slash contest. Now we both appreciate any support that you can give for our show and please share it with your friends. And with that, here’s an episode from the profitable audience podcast on how to reach out to any influencer and get a response. Now, if you’ve been trying to get the attention of someone famous or well known, here’s exactly how to do it.

02:21
Alright, welcome back to the profitable audience podcast. Today we’re going to talk about a topic that’s actually very important. And that is how to get the attention of more prominent influencers to help grow your brand. And you’re in for a treat today, because this happens to be one of Tony Anderson’s greatest strengths. In my opinion, I’ve seen this woman in action. She is a master. I have my own techniques also, but I feel like they’re not nearly as effective as hers. So

02:50
Tony, I remember seeing you in action. What was the first event we went to together? Well, I guess our first event was a Startup Bros event. I don’t know if we’re gonna count that one. You’re gonna count that one? That’s the one? Well, no, I saw you in action in that one, right? Because you wanted to get the attention of somebody. I did. Well, I’ll let you tell the story. But I just remember seeing you on Twitter doing something. And then all of a sudden, you were talking with this person. And I was like, whoa, how did you do that?

03:20
Well, the person ended up speaking at our event as well. So it benefited you as well. All right. This is actually a really important topic when you are just getting started, because I know when people just get started building a business online, it is really hard to connect with anybody, let alone somebody who you feel like is light years ahead of you in the business world. And doing it the right way, I think, is important. And the one thing I want to start off by saying is this has to be genuine. You cannot…

03:48
I’m trying to think of the PG word. You cannot just be a kiss up to people. You have to actually be genuine in your desire to meet and get to know these people. And it has to be, at the end of the day, mutually beneficial. So when we talk about this, I know a lot of it’s going to seem maybe a little bit. Manipulative? Yes, manipulative. I was trying to find a nicer word for manipulative. But I think, so I think at the end of the day, both for you and I and other people we know that are good at this,

04:15
there has to be a genuineness behind it. It cannot be phony because if it’s phony, the influencer or the person that you’re trying to get to know will sniff you out and figure you out pretty quickly. All right, so walk me back. Startup Bros, what did you do? So we were at Startup Bros and this was my first e-commerce conference. I’d been to many other conferences before, but this was my first e-commerce conference. I was a little overwhelmed. So even though maybe I was a seasoned online person. for this? Seasoned what? I don’t know, influencer, online? Net worker?

04:45
Networker, yeah. Season networker. I don’t like the word networking, by the way. I don’t either. I was trying to think of a… I’ve been around the block. That doesn’t sound right either. It wasn’t my first rodeo. I just saw all these different things. I felt a little out of place at an e-commerce event because I didn’t know a lot about e-commerce. So I had a lot of the feelings that people might have when they’re attending their very first event or going to a meetup or something like that. And there was a person on stage speaking that you and I both…

05:14
thought did a really good job speaking and seemed like a very interesting person that we wanted to get to know. However, the problem is, is when you are speaking at an event, you don’t always have a lot of free time and you have a lot of people that want to talk to you. So you have to figure out a way to stand out among all the other attendees at the event or meet up that you’re at to get to know this person. Had we known that he was speaking and I knew he was cool before, I probably would have done the strategy before I even went to the event, but it works when you’re there as well. So the first thing I started to do was just tweet at him.

05:43
because he had a Twitter account and I think he even put his Twitter account on the screen while he was speaking. So I started responding to some of his tweets. I think a really good way to do this is be funny if you can. Now you don’t have to be a comedian, but if you can be witty or interesting in your tweets back or if you’re gonna comment on their Instagram or if they’re not on Twitter and you do this well with Photoshop I know, but I think that was the first thing that I did is I started engaging with him on Twitter and the reason why I did that is because I wanted him to have a frame of reference

06:13
when I walked up to introduce myself. He happened to be an NBA person, a fan, and so I latched onto, I found that commonality. It happened to be NBA, which was a real bonus for me, but I could probably find a commonality with just about anything, and anyone can. This is not something that I can do and no one else can, anyone can do this. I found that commonality, and then I found those tweets, and I started interacting with the tweets that I felt like I could have the most impact on.

06:38
So I did that, I responded to a couple of his tweets. I noticed that he followed me back on Twitter. So then when I ended up, I don’t know, it was probably later in the day, we went up to introduce ourselves to him. I already had that in because I introduced myself and I made a reference to the conversation we had had on Twitter and then there was that immediate connection. I wasn’t a stranger anymore. I had already interacted with him before I ever got to the in-person moment, which is the hardest moment. I’m trying to, you keep using the words we, I think.

07:06
back when we went to this conference together, we weren’t really friends. I mean, we were friends, but we weren’t. I went to the conference with you. feel like we had to have been friends. But there was no cellar summit, right? No. was no ulterior motives. And I actually don’t even remember who this person was now. It was Zach. Oh, it was Zach. OK, that’s right. Zach. It Zach, yeah. That’s right. Do you remember what you texted him? Well, he was a big Utah Jazz fan. And so he had tweeted some things about basketball. So I had kind of

07:34
done some smack talk, which is not surprising if you know me. So I’d come back with them with that. And I think that’s sort of the technique, right? You find the commonality, and then you engage in a lighthearted type dialogue. You don’t want to come at somebody or immediately attack somebody for their views. That’s not a good way to get their attention. And you don’t want to just kiss up, right? There has to be something in there where you’re a peer. You’re an equal. And then you use that to…

08:02
make the introduction. So and we’ve we’ve actually done this at many events, right, where we will comment on someone’s Instagram or do something. And then we go up and introduce ourselves and they have just a tiny bit of name recognition, even if they have no idea who you or I mostly do know you from the podcast. But if they have no idea who we are, there’s at least a little bit there before we even have to make the awkward face to face. I think that’s the key. I personally believe that you should never fanboy anybody. Right.

08:31
as soon as you fanboy someone that instantly puts you on a lower tier and they pretty much look at you differently, I feel like from then on out, And the other thing too to think about, and this is sort of a male female dynamic is that if you’re a dude and you’re fanboying a female, then they’re on the defensive with you usually, right? So there’s that. female? Yeah.

08:52
So there’s also that like you want to feel you want to always make it feel like there’s an equal playing field because I honestly believe it is a equal playing field. They might be an expert in whatever they’re talking about, but you’re an expert in something too. So it is equal. You’re just equal on different fields. Yeah. And I feel like also like the way you joke around, like I always try to joke around with someone and I don’t know. Maybe this is just my personality, but I always just like ripping on people right away. It’s kind of risky, right? It’s very, I, you’re, it’s risky.

09:22
I don’t recommend your technique all the time. don’t. Yeah. You actually, you always like give me the eye roll or something when I go straight to the Rippage, right? But I think it, I think it works for the most part. I guess it just depends on, you have to like seed all this stuff, right? I always actually try to be make fun of first and then, and then I’m like, okay, oh, it’s on. But I think the way you do it, and we’re talking about live events here, but if you’re not,

09:50
interacting with someone in a live event scenario, I think you want to just pop in here and there. Like, let’s say you did this remotely. So maybe leave a comment on a post that they’ve written or tweet out one of their posts or share one of their posts on Facebook. Just kind of over time. Yeah, not all at once. Right. Not all the same day. Just do it, you know, every time they publish something and just continue this for maybe like a month, let’s say any content creator.

10:19
will notice these things. I notice anyone who posts a comment on my post. I notice anyone who mentions my podcast or leaves a comment on one of my YouTube videos, especially right now since I’m trying to grow my channel. And if you see this person’s name enough times, if they do end up emailing you, you’ll recognize their name and you’re going to be much more open to talking to that person. And I think it’s really important because I feel like, especially right now, people aren’t going to events very often. your first interaction with these people

10:48
almost 99 % of the time is going to be on the web. It’s gonna be on a social channel, on their website, something like that. And I think the important thing to do is when you’re doing this technique where you’re sharing their content, commenting, you can’t do the, which I’m very guilty of this when I’m lazy, is great post. Love your content. Where it looks like someone in India has been hired to go and write on the content, right, or the comments. And I think it’s important to, if you’re gonna leave a comment,

11:18
actually reply to something that the person said in the blog post. You can even disagree. Hey, that’s interesting to me. I actually think X, Y, Z. And taking the time, if someone’s gonna leave me two paragraphs on a blog post, I’m definitely gonna remember them because most people will just comment, great post or nice, love it. Same thing with social media. If you’re gonna share a piece of content on social media, take the time to say, hey, I really enjoy this website. This article was interesting because X, Y, Z, even if it’s one or two sentences,

11:47
That’s just going to be more impactful on the creator when they see that you’re sharing their stuff. Let’s expand upon that. So one thing that I’ve done in the past that’s worked great is someone might post a tactic or talk about it on the podcast. I will actually use that tactic that they suggested on my own stuff and then tell them that it worked or, you know, I’ll report on the real results or write, I’ll write a blog post on it say, Hey, you know, I tried what you taught us in that lesson and it worked. This is actually how I got on Amy Porterfield’s podcast. Incidentally.

12:17
I tried some of her webinar techniques and I told her and she was like, oh my God, oh my God, a success story, right? And then so I had her on mine and then she had me on hers and then that’s, she actually used me in some of her presentations as well. Oh, humble brag, humble brag. Well, no, I’m just saying it works, right? No, it absolutely works. And it doesn’t have to be for someone in the business thing like Amy Porterfield. If you want to meet like a famous food blogger,

12:44
Go on Facebook Live making their recipe, link back, give them full credit, right? Don’t take their recipe. You can do this in any single niche. It works. And I think the more you do that, I mean, that’s a huge way to get someone’s attention. And it’s actually a good way to get on their blog or their podcast if they have something like that. It’s exactly what happened to you. People love to see, I love it if someone makes one of my recipes and sends me a photo. I’ll post it on the, I’ll add it to the blog post.

13:08
And if they have a site, I’ll link back to them because I want people to see like, hey, isn’t just a recipe that I say is good. Other people have made it and it’s good. Yeah. And so this goes back to the comment too. I mean, you can’t just say great post or whatever. Anything that you can cite about your own experiences, maybe using that tactic or being a little bit more critical sometimes, like don’t bash their ideas, obviously, but if you’re a little bit more critical and to make that person think about it a little bit, then that just kind of just naturally causes conversation. And that’s how you get to know people.

13:36
So I would say step one in interacting with influencers is to comment on their content or share their content. start out very, it’s very non-threatening. It makes the influencer feel good, right? They’re excited that someone’s sharing their content and it’s starting to give that name recognition so that if you do email them and maybe you want them on your podcast or you wanna see if you can write a guest post, you’re not just one of the probably hundreds of emails they get every day.

14:06
requesting the same thing. Which medium do you use? mean, do you still use Twitter anymore or? I don’t reach out to people a whole lot anymore. But when I got started and when I was doing this initially, I was always using Twitter. And I think that’s what Twitter is good for these days. People talk about, is it even worth it to be on Twitter? I do think it is to have those conversations because that’s where a lot of those conversations happen these days. And that’s where people are, I feel like.

14:31
feel like they almost have their guard down a little bit. Like they’re willing to chat with you on Twitter because it’s very, it doesn’t feel invasive, right? It’s just like a platform. They don’t know where you live. They don’t know much about you. It’s fine. And I think so Twitter is still really valuable for connecting with other influencers and actually even brands too, but that’s a whole other podcast. mean, I think my go-to is to get someone on my podcast. Uh, gives me the opportunity to talk to them for an hour, maybe longer. Usually the best conversations actually happens after the recording is over.

15:00
But I guess there’s also a chicken and egg problem there, right? In order to get someone prominent on your podcast, you kind of have to convince them. Right, so when you first got started podcasting, I know you already had a pretty successful website. following. So this is what I did, basically. I started out with my friends and colleagues in the area. once I had a decent following, so I’m just kind of referencing Noah Kagan here, because I remember when I first asked him, he said no, flat out.

15:29
And I was like, okay, this guy, he’s playing hard to get. So I have to, so what I did is I emailed him next time and I kind of told him a little about the audience and the nature of the audience. And then I talked about, you know, how the products that he was developing for sumo.com were kind of relevant to my audience and that I could probably drive him some sales. And that’s ultimately what got him to come on. Okay. But what if you couldn’t drive him sales?

15:56
If I couldn’t drive him sales, I mean, I’ve gotten other people through various techniques. I mean, you have to kind of work your way up, right? You can’t just go after that big fish right away. And I’m like flattering Noah here talking. Noah’s I know, but we should use a different example. come on. I hope he doesn’t listen to this. You have to work your way up, right? So what I would like to do is just find friends of friends, maybe to give an intro. And if you don’t have any friends of friends,

16:23
You you just got to work your way up. So maybe pick less prominent people who are on his friends list and get them on the podcast first. Someone who’s much more likely to come on. And then if you go up to him again, you say, hey, I had this person on this person on this person. You know all these people. Why don’t you come on the podcast? Kind of like a me too type of thing. Yeah, it’s funny when I want to say this is 2009 and there was a company that I had met the founder of at some blogging event and

16:51
They were launching this company and they needed to connect with bloggers basically. But they only knew two bloggers. It was me and Rachel Miller, who, know, Facebook Rachel Miller. And we were the two bloggers that we had somehow connected with them at some point. And I remember showing up at a blog conference and the vice president of the company or whatever she, I don’t remember her title, she said, hey, can you give me like 15 minutes of your time? And I said, you know, sure. So we sat down in the lobby of this hotel and she had a spreadsheet of every blogger she wanted to meet.

17:19
Not only did she have a spreadsheet of every blogger she wanted to meet, she had all their social properties, right? So she had their Facebook and their Twitter, and then she had who they knew. So she knew that this blogger was friends with this person who was friends with this person. And she basically created this matrix of, because if she could meet blogger A, eventually she could meet blogger D because it would lead her down the path of these relationships, right? And maybe blogger A was a little bit.

17:42
more accessible, right? Because they weren’t quite as big. you knew that Blogger A had partnered with Blogger B. it was, when I saw that spreadsheet, it was like sort of this, whoa, moment of, wait a second, this is so doable. It’s so doable to get to Blogger F if you can get to Blogger A, right? Or Content Creator A or Podcaster A. You can get to that final person by just…

18:04
working your way through the list of people and building up your own credibility because she had to build trust and credibility for these bloggers to want to even talk to her. Just seeing that written down was crazy for me because I was like, wait, this is like a whole strategy. This is a whole thing that anyone can do because they didn’t have any clout. They didn’t have any credibility back then. And they ended up building a huge company, just sold it like two years ago. Yes, it was a tap influence people. The big stuff. Yeah. Facebook is your friend, right? You can immediately figure out who people are connected to who.

18:33
and you just got to go for the lowest common denominator first and work your way up. In all that, important thing, there’s a couple of like really key qualities. And the first one is that genuineness. You can’t go into blogger A with the blogger F goal or the content creator A. You have to really be interested in content creator A. You can’t just feel like it’s a stepping stone. You have to actually build a relationship with blogger A because when you have that relationship, then that’s what’s going to transfer. It’s not about

19:02
who can I use and step on to get to the next person. And let’s talk about outreach for a little bit. Like do not use anyone’s template. Very obvious. Below this podcast, we’re going to have seven original templates that you can copy and paste. Yes, they just do not work. You have to be original with every email and don’t make it too long. Like when I receive an email that goes extends below the fold, I typically don’t even read it at all. I don’t know how you are.

19:28
Here’s a tip for Steve, if y’all are trying to get on his podcast and you’re listening to this, put everything in the subject line. That is where I put, I don’t even have text in my email. I put like a period or a punctuation, some sort of punctuation, just so the email goes through. I put everything in the subject line. So he reads it. Yeah. If the email is too long, then most people I would say are not going to read it because it just takes too much. If, especially if it’s from a stranger, be very concise. Like that first sentence or two should

19:58
I wouldn’t even introduce myself. I would talk about how I could help the person that I’m contacting first and then maybe give a one sentence intro at most. And that’s it, like three sentences. Here’s what you have to remember too is people, these content creators, they’re getting 50 to a hundred emails a day, maybe more. They’re probably not reading any of them. They probably have someone who’s actually parsing through their email for them. So you need to be very…

20:23
like you said, concise and getting to the point. I think you made up, you brought up a great point of what are you going to do for them? Not what do you want them to do for you? If you want them to do something for you, they’re not going to even, this is going be deleted immediately. mean, I also like to use what I call the Chufusion ambush technique. So once you have everyone’s Facebook, are you wondering what that is? Do you know what it is already? I’m afraid. Go on. Once you have their Facebook friends,

20:52
And let’s see, you know, some of them, right? So this is how I got Ryan Dice on the podcast. I had I think five or six friends of his who I actually just knew. And I had them all reach out to him at the same time, like within one or two days, saying, Hey, you know, I think you’d be a great guest on Steve’s podcast. And so he got like five or six emails all at the same time. And then I emailed him like two days later. And then he said, that I know, I know you do that, that

21:21
That one’s always been a little iffy for me. I’m curious if someone did it to you, it would feel a little bit spammy, but then guess if they were my good friends, I wouldn’t feel that they were my friends, they don’t have to be good friends, but it would probably work. I would certainly reply to that email. Get your friends off me. What Ryan said was like,

21:45
Oh my God, like I got all these emails from you. And then later on, he said it was actually quite effective on the podcast when I had him on. I mean, I can definitely see that for sure. It just seems that seems very overwhelming. I don’t think I would do that for you. I guess it’s on a case by case basis. For you, I would just open with like some NBA quote. Thank you. Or something like that. If you want to, if anyone ever wants to pitch me, please start with an NBA quote or fun fact, and I will probably respond to your email with a, with a GIF.

22:14
But that takes knowledge of who you are, I guess. you know, if you do… think that’s important. I it’s important to know the person. I think… But that’s… It’s so funny. I feel like all of this is a very tricky balance between being a very effective networker to being an absolute creep. The line is very thin. I mean, if you think about it, it’s kind of like dating, right? And maybe you’re a female, you don’t do the pursuing most of the time. But for guys, you know, you have to be prepared, do the research and stuff.

22:43
It’s only creepy if the person doesn’t want to have anything to do with you, right? Like a million years ago, we had this friend and he, he worked with my husband and he, he had like zero social ability. And there are a lot of people out there like that. And he liked this female and he, guess they had talked a little bit, but very, very surface, right? There was no relationship there at all. And this was before like email and texting and all this stuff. And he decided to bake a cake and leave it on her doorstep.

23:12
Okay, well that’s borderline creepy. That’s creepy, right? But I feel like a Was it a cake of a dead rabbit? It was an actual cake, but I don’t know if he could bake, so who knows if it was any good. All that to say there’s that fine line between is what you’re doing a normal level of networking versus you approach somebody, because we’ve both had this happen to us. I’ve seen it happen to you at events where someone approaches you and they know really weird details about your life. Yes.

23:40
that they would only know from looking at every single Instagram post you’ve ever put up. So that’s where for me and probably a lot of females, your creep radar goes off. I think it’s I think for this is like one of those podcasts where I feel like this is going to be so sexist at the end of the day. But I feel like if you go up to a dude and you know a lot of facts about them, they’re probably flattered. Right. Right. But if you do it to a female, she’s like holding her cover. don’t that sexist. I think it’s just an inherent fear. Right. I mean, yeah, sure. Yeah.

24:08
But I do think- love how you go to Starbucks at 9.30 a.m. every morning. love how you get your mocha frappuccino grande. I like how you started using your sexy voice on the mic. Right, exactly. Then you’re running to the bathroom as fast as you can. So I do think that stuff matters. do think knowing who you’re approaching and knowing a little bit about them is very important. The other thing, and this is totally an in-person event thing, and I think at one point we’ll get to those again.

24:36
When you do get your opportunity to meet somebody that you’ve been trying to meet, and this is really hard to do at events, you cannot be darting around the room. Your eyes cannot be darting around the room. You cannot be trying to, you have to be so focused on the person you’re talking to and you have to be not talking a whole lot. You have to let them talk to you. So don’t go up to them and just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

25:05
and you can’t be doing the whole dart around the room, looking uninterested, talking a lot about yourself. interesting because we have different tactics in this regard. yeah, so I think that’s very important. I you’re usually in bed when we do this. So the way I operate is I think all the networking happens at night at the bar, right? So I’ll just freely buy people drinks that I want to meet and then I’ll just go up to them and just start talking to them.

25:34
and asking questions. So same thing there. I don’t talk about myself at all. I literally just ask them questions the entire time. And then once I get an idea of what their personality is, that’s when I start busting on them lightly, see what they can take. I guess by the end, we don’t even talk about business at all. My go-to is actually our kids and relationships. Those are my go-to topics. If they’re single, that’s even more fun, right?

26:03
Because then I just talk about, you know, once the alcohol starts flowing, like they start revealing some stuff about like their personal lives and that’s how it get connected. And then later on, you know, they’ll remember the conversation and that’s when you can hit them up for anything or any ask. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I don’t go to bed at six. Come on. I mean, I at least make it till eight thirty. You do. Yeah, that’s true. the drinks haven’t flown enough for that to work for me. Yeah. You know, people aren’t hopefully they’re not drunk by eight o’clock. You never know.

26:32
Depends on what event you’re at. Startup Bros, that was probably the case. But I will say about your tactic, which I agree with 99.9 % of the time, because I feel like one, you shouldn’t be talking about business initially. You want to get to know the person. You want to make them feel at ease and comfortable. But I do remember my second event with you, which was ECF. we, do you remember this? We had breakfast with Drew Sinaki and some other like massive e-commerce seller, both of whom were speakers at the event.

27:02
Do you remember this breakfast? probably don’t. don’t actually, but refresh my memory. I had no idea who they were. I mean, you introduce them as Drew and Charles or whatever. don’t remember the other guy’s name. You introduce them and we spent the entire breakfast talking about how hard it was to find a good nanny in New York City, which was fine. But it was your tactic of like talking about family. was already friends with them. So there was no tactics that time. I was already friends with both of them. Yeah. Yes, that’s true.

27:27
So then we have breakfast and I’m like, oh, this is good. Like networking, meeting people, knowing about their lives, whatever. But then what happened was we sit down in the speaker hall, whatever, the auditorium, and they both get up and do these like blow you away presentations. And I’m thinking, I just had breakfast with this guy that’s like a genius about marketing, email marketing. And I talked about nanny problems. Like I would have like five seconds to talk about email marketing. He could have talked the whole time, I would listened.

27:53
But I was so irritated that we didn’t talk at all about business because I felt like I had this golden opportunity to talk to a true expert and we talked about nannies. No, but then he spoke at our conference. You could ask him whatever you want. you get him on. I but I didn’t. You don’t know if you’re ever going to have that opportunity. I mean, we’re fortunate. We run an event, right? So we can always have that second chance. But that might be your only chance to talk to somebody in if you have a podcast, it’s definitely not your only chance. Right. So the moral of the story is start a podcast. Well, no, that too. I mean. Yeah.

28:22
It’s still, even if you have a blog or YouTube channel, that’s definitely not the end either. You can get them on your YouTube channel. A blog post, you can do a feature on them, Right. So it’s never the end. say, sometimes there’s too much social. I know there’s not for you, but for me, at some point I have to get to like some sort of business conversation. Really? Okay. I feel like once it goes into business, here, here’s another thing I like to do. I try to go to topics that the other person doesn’t know as much about as I do.

28:50
So if you talk about their core competency, like this example that you said with email or whatever it was, you talk about email, like they’re the superior person in that respect, right? But let’s say that person is really into ping pong. I’m being really racist now. And they’re really into ping pong, but I know a lot more about ping pong than that person. And then all of a sudden I become the authority in their eyes. Right? I like that. That’s good. I try to stay away from their core competency. And again,

29:19
When I’m doing this, I’m just trying to get to know the person. I’m just kind of seating it for later on, right? It’s always like a long-term game. And in a lot of cases, I don’t ask for anything for months, even years. I think relationships need time to just kind of sink in a little bit. I totally agree with that. I think that’s a great point is that you have to play the long game on this. is not about, this is not a one night stand.

29:41
That’s to use the dating analogy. mean, it dating is what it is, really. It is. It really is. But you have to be in it for the long haul or it’s not going to be beneficial for either person. And I think, too, you never know how those relationships are going to affect you five years from now. Right. You could be at a point where you have grown to be more successful than the person you wanted to meet, especially if you’re just starting out. Right. I mean, let’s just take you and I for a little bit.

30:10
I think in the beginning I didn’t have any intentions of working with you or whatnot. And then I found that you were doing events and then you, you think you planted the seed and then I don’t know how we kept in touch. Yeah. We didn’t really have a reason. I came on your podcast to talk about like productivity and that sort of Yeah. I don’t know how it’s straight to conferences, but I think you just casually asked about it or you, mentioned it or something like that. Cause we were at taking your course.

30:39
Yes, that’s right. You took the course. Actually, my memory is kind of really fuzzy because it’s been so long now. Here’s what happened. You came up to me and you said, I heard you were the most amazing person in the world. I knew this was coming. So maybe later, but initially you were like, oh my God, let’s tweet this guy. Wait, he’s not on Twitter. Oh no. He’s not on Twitter. He’s not on Instagram. He’s nowhere. How can I talk to him? No, but I think that’s a really good point is that when we met each other, we met because we had a mutual friend. Neither of us knew who the other person was at all.

31:07
But we actually had multiple mutual friends. But we met because of the mutual friend. And we kept in touch for probably a year, I would say, off and on, before we ever discussed anything working together-wise or even. I think it was like two years, actually. Yeah. I I came on the podcast, but that was it. There wasn’t any other like. I I think we would. But it was the same thing, though. We joked with the. When I see my Facebook memories, we were joking with each other on Facebook.

31:36
you know, making snarky comments on pictures that weren’t like super offensive, but just just a little bit, you know, to get to get attention and not that either of us were really trying to get the other person’s attention. But I think there was just like a back and forth over time that then ended up we became friends and ended up working together. I mean, that’s kind of my M.O. So I like to use Photoshop. I’m kind of like a jokester. So I’ll make fun of people that way. I have to make sure that they can take it first. You have offended. I have offended people, which is fine.

32:05
because that means we’re never gonna be friends. Like if you can’t take a little joke, then I don’t care how big you are. We’re just not gonna be on that personal level. Maybe you’re good to get on the podcast, because you know your stuff, but we probably won’t be close friends. So I’ve done this with a lot of people. It just works out in the long run, because you can always go back to that moment and kind of just joke about it and laugh about it. It’s something that stands out in the I totally agree.

32:32
For me, and I say this a lot in all the stuff that we do, and I know whether it’s teaching a course or doing an event, that for me, the networking is probably one of the reasons why I’ve had success. It’s the main reason why I’ve had success in business is that that was really for me, I built relationships really early on in the blog world. I actually formed a group of other bloggers, and then from that, it spawned my event that I started from that group because I knew somebody who knew somebody.

33:02
And it’s basically how I met you. I met you because I had an event where I had met JD Roth. JD Roth was like the linchpin in all of this. But I think for me, the relationships that I built have basically led to almost every opportunity and everything I’ve ever done was because of a relationship. And it wasn’t necessarily because someone did something for me, but if I hadn’t met you, I would have never gotten into e-commerce because I didn’t know anything about e-commerce. I didn’t even know that people could sell on Amazon.

33:30
So just the fact of meeting you and just being exposed to that world of e-commerce was another opportunity for me to build a business and grow a business. And it wasn’t because I used you for anything. It’s just that I got introduced to something that I didn’t understand. And then because of our relationship, I was able to do that. So I feel like when I look through everything that I’ve started and done, it’s always because of a relationship that I had with somebody that either pushed me to do something or taught me about something or made me see that there was an opportunity that I might not have seen.

34:00
by myself. I mean, this is that lesson that you just gave is is actually what’s taking me the longest to learn. Because I’m an engineer at heart. And I just want to be behind a computer. Most of the time. I think we I told you about this recently. I think the bulk of my week these days is actually getting on zoom calls and talking to people. Yeah, You said last week, you said I spent all week on zoom. Yeah, exactly. And it’s these relationships with people that actually want to to get to know better.

34:28
And it’s totally true. It’s like the people you know that will propel you in business. mean, the work that you do is obviously still important, but just getting it like you could do the, you could do really good work. And if it’s on par with everyone else, you’ll just kind of blend in with the crowd. But it’s the people who you know that will help propel you higher. Like my business didn’t actually start growing until I started going to events. Yeah. So it’s hard thing to say right now when there’s no events, but I know virtual events are, mean,

34:56
to be honest with you, they’re just not the same. No, I agree. They’re a good way to learn, I think, but they’re not a great way to network. Which I think is why having a network is, that’s why I think having a network is so important. People in our lives have helped us get to where we are in a variety of different ways, right? We’ve also worked really hard. But I also think about just like friendships and relationships that I’ve built over my years. And I think about, have a mutual friend that went through a medical issue over the summer and I was on a text thread.

35:25
when she went in for surgery. And so we were getting text updates about how she was doing. Well, I ended up looking at like, I was trying to say like, who’s on this text thread, right? Cause there were a bunch of numbers. And when I looked on him, two people on the text thread were local. Everyone else in the text thread was people she had met through building her online business. Her closest friends and confidants were people that we were all over the country, but we were all together because we all have this mutual friend in this person. And I feel like eventually it extends way outside of your business, right?

35:52
it’s great to make these contacts. It’s great to find people to have on the podcast or YouTube. But at the end of the day, a lot of these people end up being your friends. Yeah, actually, I easily talk to my, I guess, quote unquote, internet friends more than my than my local friends. Yeah, I think of it. Yeah. And here’s what I like. I feel like I can travel almost anywhere in the world and be able to just send out an email saying, Hey, does anyone want to hang out? Yeah. And, you know, I’ll have something to do wherever I go. And

36:21
That’s just really powerful to me. Yeah, and I think too, you have to think about when you’re in this online business world. I mean, you’ve told me before, some of the people that you went to college with, like, do not have any idea what you do, right? Doesn’t make sense to them. It does not not make sense, but they’re like, you sell hankies? What? You know, or when you get, when you start making these friendships and develop these relationships with people that are in your same industry, you have, you finally have that group of people where you could make

36:48
very strange comments to a regular person that doesn’t live in this world and they get you. And I think that’s really important to building your business is having people that get you so that you can say things that would seem absurd to other people, but you have a network of people that understand it. And I think that’s really critical to having success because

37:07
working in this business is lonely and you work by yourself a lot and it’s hard and you have days where everything sucks or you have a Google update and it crashes your site and to have those people that you can sort of go back to and talk about these things is really important to keeping you going when things are not going well for you. Let’s summarize everything that we’ve talked about because we’ve gone off on a lot of different tangents here. Ultimately you want to get the attention of someone. Let’s say you want to get the attention of someone.

37:37
So your tactic before was to tweet about them, comment on their blogs, just basically drop subtle things on their properties that just let them know that you exist, which kind of frames the future event when you actually meet in person. And then when you actually do meet them, what I like to do, and I actually didn’t get to hear what your tactic was. Well, I don’t get them drunk. Well, you don’t get them drunk. Yes, you don’t get them drunk. Yeah.

38:03
I like to just talk about topics that I’m strong in that they’re not that they’re interested in. I don’t fanboy and I basically talk about relationships and kids or whatever any commonality that we might have. It could be the NBA, could be volleyball, it could be math. It’s interesting because my tactic is then the opposite, right? I let them talk about themselves the whole time. Well, yeah, you ask questions, but if they’re interested about something that you just happen to be good at, then I steer the conversation that way. Yeah, I try not to. get way too excited. Yeah.

38:33
Well, that’s why when you meet Tony, actually, you’ll find that you reveal everything and you end up not knowing anything about her. Yes, that’s exactly correct. You don’t want to get me started on the NBA. We’ll be talking until five in the morning. But I think the important part in all of that is there has to be a level of genuine friendship there.

38:54
It cannot be, you cannot be doing this for your own personal gain. You have to go into all of this thinking, how can I benefit the other person? What do I have to offer? And as long as you’re approaching it from that angle, you’re going to have much more success than if you’re viewing this as a true strategy to benefit yourself. And I will also add that you shouldn’t ask for anything right away. Like if that’s your intention, I would wait, wait a little bit. I would say six months or so.

39:22
And so that’s why you got to kind of plan ahead and see everything and see the relationship. If you guys hit it off totally in person, then of course you can probably make the ask right away. I’ll do that right then and there usually. Ask them to come on the podcast and then have a deeper conversation on the podcast. And then if you guys are brave enough, you can try the Chiffusion ambush technique, which Tony does not condone or recommend, but it has been effective. I don’t condone your technique, but I do.

39:48
Endorse the technique of a mutual friend introduction. Yes. Yeah mutual friend introduction is always better It’s like that’s like you’re like a DEF CON 5 level with the email spam I’m probably like a DEF CON 2, you know, I have a friend of a friend I’m also a little riskier than you are too, right? Because yeah, I’m less worried about offending someone Whereas you’re very careful about not offending anyone. So we have different person. I’m the one who ends up offending people I don’t know how that works. Is that true?

40:16
Who have you offended? What? Well, we’ll talk about it later. occasion. that’s a whole, that’s a therapy session, that’s not a podcast. I don’t really see you offending anyone. You never say anything really that’s offensive. Because it’s like a ticker tape in my head as I’m talking, because I have in the past said very, very offensive things not on purpose. I see. So now, in fact, it’s actually a networking horror story really quick. It was my own event. We were at a wine tasting.

40:46
and one of the attendees actually hosted it at her house, because she lived by the conference center. And so there was probably a handful of people who had come in like a day early for the conference. So there’s probably like 15 people there. And the girl that was hosting her house, I thought was wonderful. And she was kind of being self-deprecating, right? She’s like, oh, well, you know, we’re still in the middle of the reno and whatever. And I was like, it’s not like you’re living in a trailer. Well, of course, the lady next to me lived in a trailer.

41:12
So super offensive and I was absolutely horrified because she literally just called me out right then and I mean I I know you’re envisioning my face when that happened because I wanted to die turned all red Absolutely, totally red. Anyway, so because of that that moment I have just that’s why you don’t see me offend people because that’s all I can think about is maybe it’s better than a trailer and that’s all I think about when I talk to people now Okay, so just for the audience like that’s not the way I’m talking about like ripping on people

41:45
So an example of ripping on people is like I might bust on like the magic if I were with you for example. Some light-hearted. personal. You don’t rip on a personal. I wasn’t trying to rip on anybody. Just to clarify if you live in a trailer I love you. Did you call that person trailer trash? you? I was, as you know, was horrified. Yes.

42:05
Anyway, so that’s I am very, very cautious about offending people, but I think being able to find something that you can joke about that’s not personally offensive to them is really important, like a sports team or, you know, or something. Yeah. I mean, I can’t come up with the top of my head. Their shoes. I rip on your shoes all the time. true. What’s wrong with Crocs and Sox? Super stylish. But yeah, I think the biggest takeaway in all of this is be genuine. Go in with.

42:32
trying to give more than you’ll ever receive. think if you can keep that at the forefront of your mind, you’re going to have success in meeting people. Yeah, I agree. Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. Now, for more information about this episode, go to profitableaudience.com slash podcast, where we list all of the tools and resources mentioned in our show notes. And if you enjoyed listening to this episode, please go to Apple podcasts and leave us a review.

42:57
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43:27
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43:56
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