How To Become a Master Networker

You gotta really take the time to analyze what success means to you today, because what success meant to you guys, I guarantee, five years ago, is completely different. Welcome to the Dean Graziosi Show. All success starts right here.

What's your take on marketing? Because I know now you're working with Russell Brunson, Tony Robbins, and a whole bunch of other folks in real estate. It's networking that's probably the big glue there. How do you, you know, trying to. What's. What's your approach with networking? And how do you view that first? And then we'll kind of expand from there, because that's the glue of everything we do. The podcast is kind of one of our ways we do that. I'm curious how that plays into your role as a human networking.

Networking with. Building relationships with other people in your space that you could have joint ventures or affiliates or.

That's right, yeah. Opportunities and. Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you the way most people screw it up, right? I'm an introvert. So, you know, the world is kind of shut down right now. And to me, that's fine because I usually stay home anyway. I don't like being around crowds. If I go to events, I hide. It's just, you know, people don't realize that, you know, they see on camera or see on stage and think, oh, this guy's such an extrovert. Like, I've never had a business card in my life. Like, I don't hand out business cards. I don't say, you should call me. We should network. Here's what I'll tell you how to do it wrong. Try to get someone to partner with you. JV with you, do an affiliate with you before you get to know them, before you understand them, or before you did something with them. And you just. You're everybody else. Do you know how many messages I get a week? Or DMs? We get a week. Hey, you should partner with me. You should promote my new thing. Hey, if you just sent one email to your list of 3 million people, we'd make millions together. Like, I don't. I swipe right and delete every single one of them, right? Because they're. They're trying to start a relationship by. Before we even know each other, before we've done anything. And I have to tell you, some of the most important relationships in my life. And this. Write this word down. It's reciprocity. Do something in advance for somebody and expect nothing in return. I don't know if that's the exact definition of reciprocity, but that's mine. Like, so many people will do something for someone and wait for it to come back. Like, don't just do things for the people that you'd love to build a relationship with selflessly. And God, karma, the universe, whatever you believe in rewards you. And I know that's a hard thing to really understand, but you must. I've. When I built my relationship with Tony Robbins, I reached out and did something for him and his company in advance. I was literally thanking him from the video, the audios I listened to a decade earlier. Right. I didn't expect to do business with him. I didn't want any. Wanted to say thank you, and here's an olive branch. And I did things for his company that I thought they were missing. And all of a sudden, later on, we met, and we were supposed to meet for a half hour. We met for a whole day. We became dear friends. And now for a decade, we talk every single day. I mean, right now, we talk every single day of our lives, right? But it didn't start with, hey, Tone, I got this real estate program that could make you millions. You should email for me. Like, that's how most people start it. A lot of people will start. I mean, I just got a letter two weeks ago, maybe a little bit longer than that. It's my wife, a client of my wife's husband. And he kept asking for my address. And I said, give him our address. I know he wants to send some. He sent me his book and a letter on how stupid I would be if I didn't promote this great book.

Oh, boy, that's a good approach.

And then a week later, he literally had his wife call my wife and say, hey, did Dean get that gift? Why isn't he calling? There's lots of money to be made. I'm like, are you effing kidding me? Like, just write a letter and say, hey, Dean, think what you're doing is awesome. Here's what I do. If there's anything I can do to help you ever, let me know. That's a completely different relationship. That's reciprocity. That's doing something for someone. So just know when it comes to networking, if you really want to build a relationship, if it's not just you meet. Two minutes. We should do something. You're doing research, and you know that if you two aligned, you could make money together. You could make impact together. You could help each other do the research, find out what they like, right? If they're having a baby, like, Send them a gift. Listen, I sent Michael Jordan. My era, Michael Jordan. I watched all the games. Right. He was the dude. Right.

He's my hero growing up, too.

Yep. Yeah. So I wanted to meet Air Jordan. And I knew he had one part of his charity back a decade ago. I sent him a laptop and I cleared off all the icons and I put one thing, click here. But I sent him, like the best laptop at the time. He clicked on, it was like a three minute video on how I thought I could help him. And I'd love to help him with his charity. And if there's anything I could do, let me know. 90 days later, I'm in Salt Lake City at his house having dinner, drinking a bottle of Pinot Noir, and he's telling me about Game 6 with the Utah Jazz, like my freaking dream come true. But I didn't go, hey, Michael, if you promote it, like, I did it in a way. And here's the thing, I wasn't doing it as a game. The guy gave me so much entertainment. Just like you're saying he did for you watching that guy, he revitalized basketball. He made it so cool. He let you see the underdog who got cut in high school and didn't make the team, could go on to be the best player in the world. I love the underdog star. It's why I wrote the book Underdog Advantage. Right. Like, he gave me so much. I wasn't looking for something. I was saying thank you. And then all of a sudden I was there. Right. And this was a decade ago. It wasn't like, I mean, I was still doing fairly well and out there, but he had never seen me before. He had never seen my stuff or. So just. Just remember the word reciprocity. It'll change the way you approach people.

Yeah, I think this is probably going to be on a similar vein with the response. But I'm curious, how do you decide which projects that you pursue? Because you've been involved in, like, over 13 businesses, you get these emails every day from people. How do you decide which ones are actually worth your time?

Yeah, I. Right off the bat, I'd say say no to most things. And there's this fine balance of things that can make that align with your heart and soul. Because we all push things harder, faster, stronger. And I wasn't always there because I was broke. I'd flip houses, I'd flip cars. I'd do anything in my power to keep moving forward. Right. But at this phase of my life, and I wish I started it even sooner, I really run through, does it match my values? Does it match my ethics? When this thing's a huge winner, am I going to feel good about it? And am I going to lose. If I lose sleep over how to try to make this work, will it be worth it? Right? We've all had relationships and partnerships where you're losing sleep and you're like, this shit ain't worth it, right? Because we didn't spend that time. So I would think, does it match your values to your core? If it got successful, would you be proud of it? And if you lost sleep over this, would it be worth it? And then make sure it can actually make you the money that you need to make to make it lucrative. And when those two match, that's when you get a yes, right? And then also sometimes, you know, there was times when I would die to have a $5,000 a week opportunity. Like, oh my God, this thing could generate five grand a week, and I'd work my tail off on it. But now our companies have grown. I'd go broke if I looked at $5,000 a week opportunities, right? I need 100,000, 200,000amillion dollar week opportunities, right? And that's not like bragging. That's just part of the evolution. But I remember a time where I obsessed if I could. If that was a $5,000 a week opportunity, holy crap. And I do everything in my power. But then after I said yes, it could make me five grand a week. But does it match my values? If I lose sleep over, am I going to be happy? Right? And would I love this? So that's my little filter.

I love that. No, it's a great filter, and I think it's extremely relevant to everyone listening. It's relevant to us, you know, it's relevant to, you know, people just going on podcasts, let's say, you know, because there's all these opportunities and everyone has a show and you get. I mean, these are just like little examples that we get. I mean, everyone, A lot of people listening feel the same about those. Was there a time where there was like a catalyst in your life where you did you figured out this filter, or you started to get a lot better at saying no. Was there a specific moment or a shift that happened?

Yeah, when you get burned enough when you, when you say yes to opportunities in the beginning, you're like, I shouldn't be doing this, but I think it can make me some money. Like, you do that enough. I've been on this earth a little longer. Right. I'm 52 in a couple of weeks. Like I've just been here a little longer. I've been self employed since forever. I've never worked for anybody in my entire life. So I just have more, I've navigated more territory than most. Right. Just a younger entrepreneur. So you realize that if those things don't line up, it never works out good. Never once have I compromised my values or my ethics, or never once has it been like, oh, I'm glad, like it never worked out. Because what happens is if you don't have the passion, you're not gonna push through when things go sideways. You're just gonna give up and go the other way. So I would say that probably started in my 30s, more concrete in my 40s, and a complete absolute must in my 50s.

Got it. Yeah. No, because I mean, we're what, we're both mid-30s, so it's like, it's kind of, well, your later 30s now. Sorry, Matt, I. Parker. But yeah, you're right. I mean, I feel like there is that there's these transitions or phases in all of our lives. And I guess it depends on what the needs are, you know, the externals that we feel like we, that we need to support or the value systems, how much we actually know what we want out of life. I think that's the bigger piece is having the filters, creating filters that are aligned with whatever we're trying to get out of life.

Yeah. And the other thing too is you have to. And I would even encourage you guys to both do this, right? As you're growing, as you're doing new things, you got to really take the time to analyze what success means to you today. Because what success meant to you guys, I guarantee five years ago is completely different. If you got married, if you had kids, don't have kids. If your kids are babies, if your kids are teens, success changes. And I should say this, you need to change what success means to you. So you're always motivated and inspired and you have a compelling future to move forward. Right. In my 20s, I joke like that, but I was broke and in my 20s, early 20s, when I started making money and I lived in upstate New York. I would fly on a Thursday down in Miami, Florida, and I'd party for two nights. Like I'd just have fun. Like, not just blow money or try to be cool. Like, I just never had any of that. And then to go down there and the Latin music and the energy and the sun and the beach and then go out at Night and dance. I was like, oh my God, this is success. I'd go until 4 or 5 o' clock in the morning and then get up at 7 and go take a jog and be happy. I would die if I did that. Right now it seems like the least exciting thing in the history of the world to me. That's the definition of failure. Right. But at one point it was kind of a definition of success. Right. And we just got to be honest with ourselves. And the more you can identify what success means to you, the more you'll say no to the wrong things and yes to the right things.

That's great. I love it. Yeah. And yeah, if anyone is feeling like, you know, they're just kind of, I don't know, there's always a time to change and really just getting clear on what it is you actually want to get because that's. Yeah, I think everyone can relate to that. Don't get stuck in the past or feel like that's something you got to live up to, maybe something you missed out on. I want to talk about a little bit more on the affiliate marketing route because that's a lot of the game that our folks play and we do too. How do you. Let's see, I'm assuming the opportunities like. So do you do a lot of promotions as an affiliate yourself or do you mainly. I know you have a ton of affiliates for the products and offers that you already have.

No, I don't. And affiliate marketing's not really one of our core competencies that we do on a regular basis. I love direct response marketing for me, but we did the biggest, probably the two biggest launches in Internet history. Because we had amazing affiliates. Correct. And because I don't reciprocate with a few people a year, that's it. But because I don't reciprocate like most people say, oh, you want to be an affiliate? It's like, well, you're going to promote me. Right. Because I knew we weren't going to be able to do that. It just didn't fit our model that I wanted to go overboard and over deliver to our affiliates in a huge way. So we knew that our conversions would be amazing, especially like the first year out of the gate. We knew our conversions would be great. We knew we created the greatest product in the world, so we were going to serve their clients at the highest level. We knew we paid out fast and quick. We supplied the greatest training. We just didn't say, oh, this is it. Like, we trained people long the way Tony and I pulled back the curtain to really help people. So the training they got pre event taught them how to take it and use it in their own business simultaneously. We gave away great prizes. We flew the top 10 to Fiji for a private mastermind. With Tony and I, the top hundred came to a celebration party in Las Vegas where we had a blast. An open bar and comedians and singers. And so for me, I took the revenue that they may have made for Reciprocals and said, let's give it back to them and, and really celebrate them. Because I know people work their asses off to build a list and build their own company. And for them to trust their list with us, that's a big deal. And I know it's a big deal and we didn't take it lightly. So there's a couple ways to go about it. If you're cool with Reciprocal, maybe you bring on four affiliates and you know you're going to promote them four and they're going to promote you. I have friends that do that. They've been doing that for two decades, right? They have a handful of people they all work with. They all promote each other. They all have, you know, five $15 million a year companies. It's amazing. And they help each other. That's a really great model. It's just not mine. I love direct response. And we decided we wanted the world to see our last product. We just reached out to a lot of people in that way. Hey, we're not doing Reciprocal, but there's the cool things. And then we sent everybody what we were delivering. And the really cool thing about obsessing on your product is when it serves people at the highest level, it's hard not to get behind it as a calling. So we created a course called the Knowledge Broker Blueprint. We call it kbb. We sent it to over, I don't know, a thousand, two thousand, three thousand affiliates. When they said yes, and the ones that went through it, their lives changed. It was like game in. Like this. Just my business has exponentially grown. I must give this to my following. And it was. The truth is, I have to tell you, when people say, how did you guys do the biggest launch in history? It's because people weren't doing it for the money. I know for a fact we didn't have people doing it for the money. I don't know if you remember when those launches happened, but it was. People went through the course and they were bought in. Like you need. If you're in business, you need what Tony and Dean Created. And that's a pretty cool thing. And sometimes that happens. Tony and I have been in business for 60 years, but you don't have to be in business 60 years to want to serve people. And people need to be served right now more than ever before. This is a crazy time in the world. I'm going to share with everybody. Double down on caring. Double down on your products and services. Double down on the love. Double down on service and listening to people, because people are scared and shifting. And those that serve at a higher level are going to be the ones that come out of this mess and thrive. If you think that. And just again, I'm not predicting the future, and I'm not a financial expert and I'm not a lawyer, so take this for what it's worth. But there's no way you could have 20 million and 10 million people without jobs and one out of five businesses failing right now because of COVID If you think that another government bailout is gonna keep this great, it's not. We are in for an awakening in 12, 18 months, I'm guessing. Guys, please. I'm not a financial specialist. I've just been on this earth for a long time. The shit's gonna hit the fan eventually. I don't know when that is. And even the decision of this electoral race could help make that go quicker or slower. But know it's going to happen. And those with that, double down on the love, those that shift their mindset, those that focus on marketing, that build affiliates, that network, they're going to thrive in these uncertain times, and a lot of people aren't going to make it. And that's just a true story.

Yeah, well. So this will probably feel like a giant pivot, but the last rabbit hole I kind of want to go down with you is the concept of monetizing your passions. I know this is something you've talked a lot about in the past, and one of the things that we hear a lot from people who listen to this is that they feel like they don't have anything to say or they don't feel like what the knowledge they have is important to other people. There's that imposter syndrome element. So I want to talk about that with you because I know that you've been on and talked about in the past. So let's go down that rabbit hole, and then we can wrap up after that.

Yeah, let's do it. You know, I get that, but. But I want to tell you right now you're wrong. Because sometimes your life Experience is what people need. I mean, I guess the best way to counterbalance that question or come back at that question is what would it be worth to you? If you're watching this online, put post it below. But if not, just think about what would it be worth to you if you could go back and spend a day with your 20 year old self right now you had five days to prepare, you had five days to prepare and then you had one full day with your 20 year old self. How valuable would that be? I know the answer. There's two answers people give. Priceless or millions. If I do this in a chat with 10,000 people, there's 10,000 comments. They're either priceless or millions. There is somebody starting off where you were. You're chapters ahead. There's people that are training people how to get through a divorce, more elegantly how to eat vegan. I mean this is what Tony and I do. We have people with 4,500 different niches who never thought in a million years people would want to paint with wolves or cut firewood better or be better at agriculture or better at hair extensions or being a barber. Like you've done something or been through a mess that other people are starting on and they either can learn on their from their own trial and error, they can either make lots of mistakes, they can go back to college for four years and that usually doesn't work, or they can come to you and you can help them start off where you left off. And that's the difference. Just think like there is something you know that someone needs so bad right now and in some cases you're doing them a disservice by not unpackaging it and sharing it.

I love that.

What's your recommended first step for somebody who's going to journey down this path of sharing their knowledge with the world? What would you say their first step is into that?

I feel like I'm going to give a shameless plug. Go watch Tony and I's training@deanstraining.com that's a shameless plug, but there's nothing better. Tony's got 42 years in this. I have 25 years in this and we created the greatest training on the planet. So go to deanstraining.com and register and watch that training. Well, hey, while you're at it places.

Go get the Underdog Advantage as well and go to deansbook.com I mean it's.

Yeah, start with the Underdog Advantage, my latest book and I'm not big on plugs. Guys, I'm here to serve. But when you ask me a question like that, I gotta deliver it the right way because there's some good stuff out there. There absolutely is. And I have some friends that teach it as well, and I think it's amazing. But there's also a lot of crap out there and people that don't care at the level Tony and I do. So if that's something you're interested in, go check that out. Or go to deansbook.com and you can get my Underdog Advantage. And you can also find a way to get to that training as well through the Underdog Advantage. If you like today's podcast, then you're going to love being a part of my texting community. What's that mean? You could text me right now at 480-400-9019 or it should be below right here. And it comes directly to my phone. Doesn't go to my team. It comes to me. I've been absolutely loving the interaction. I send out some cool things about once a week. I text nothing but things to get your week going, to get your mind thinking. And when we have new videos and things like that, I always text my community first. It has absolutely been a blast and I'd love for you to do it right now. Text me 480-40090-19. Do it. Text me.