#028: How Writer John Corcoran Networked His Way Into the Clinton White House

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business.

To a whole new level.

And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Well, well, well. Hello everyone and thanks for joining me for episode number 28 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters. So who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. As a reminder, you can find detailed show notes for this episode by going to b2b launcher.com episode 28 the number 28. You know, this whole networking thing is kind of an interesting topic. And when I talk to other writers and we discuss this idea of networking as a marketing strategy, you start getting people, people start getting really nervous. And it's obviously that it's something they don't enjoy doing. At least most writers do not. When you ask why, some of the answers I get are, well, I have no time. I can't seem to find the time. Other writers tell me that there's simply no good networking opportunities where they live. And many will admit to me that they put it off because they're shy and they're introverted and they don't like to network. It's not something they particularly enjoy. And I think these reasons all have a certain amount of truth and validity. But I've found that you can overcome any of these challenges when you follow a simple, proven framework. Many of you who've been following me for a while know I'm a big believer in following a system, at least when you're getting started. It's a great way to start developing competence and eventually mastery. Without a framework or a roadmap, it's just very difficult to navigate any sort of challenging task, especially networking. And that's very true if networking is something that you're afraid to do, that you don't particularly enjoy doing. My guest this week is going to talk about this topic. It's going to share some ideas and strategies on how you can make this work for you. His name is John Corcoran. He is a writer turned solo attorney who developed a simple framework for networking more effectively. His approach has worked so well that it landed him a staff writer position at the Clinton White house in the 90s and also got him a speechwriting gig in the California governor's office during the Davis administration. When I've talked to John about this, he attributes these achievements and many others that he's accomplished to his methodical and I say methodical, but it's also a very authentic approach to networking. And in this episode, in this interview, he details this approach and how you can use it yourself to network with greater confidence. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. I think regardless of how you feel about networking, you're really going to walk away with some valuable insights and some practical ideas. Hope you enjoy it. All right, so I am here with John Corcoran, and I'm really excited to be talking to John because John is. He's got some pretty amazing stories about what he's been able to accomplish through very smart, methodical, yet very authentic networking. We've addressed networking in this show before, but I wanted to bring John into the show because his story is quite remarkable, and I think it's very down to earth. I really like his approach, and I think this is something that anyone can implement. So, John, welcome.

Ed, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Absolutely. We just got to get this out of the way because you and I haven't been connected for very long. So I haven't heard the story, so I'm going to hear it for the first time here. I'm dying to know how, at 23 years old, you're able to network your way into becoming a writer for the Clinton White House. So you just got to spill the beans.

Spill the beans. Okay. Well, so, you know, it really started. There's a couple different stories behind it. But I was in college and I was interested in politics and I was interested in writing. I've always been a writer, going back to like, probably age 8, 9, 11. I knew I liked writing and I wanted to do something with it. And so in college, I was interested in politics, and I decided to apply to the White House internship program. Now, this was in 1997, so it was before White House intern had the connotation that it eventually developed the following year. Yeah. If you know what I mean. I'm sure you know what I mean. So it didn't really have that connotation. But the White House takes hundreds and hundreds of mostly college students to be interns. And so I applied to that, and one thing led to another. I ended up getting an internship in the White House speechwriting office. Now, there was one fortunate little thing. How I got that was my supervisor ended up being from Santa Barbara. I'd gone to UC Santa Barbara for college, and she was from Santa Barbara. So we had that connection. Her father actually at the time was a member of Congress and had been A professor at ucsb. So we had that connection. But other than that, I just got the position and I just worked my butt off when I was there, worked really hard for about three or four months. And not everyone who does an internship gets a job after the fact. So I ended up going back to college, graduating from college, and I just kept in touch over time with speechwriters and other people who I knew at the White House with really having the goal of wanting to get a job back there, even though I was 3,000 miles away. I was actually in Los Angeles at the time after graduating from college. And I eventually heard about a position that had opened up in the presidential letters and messages offices, which is really kind of like a second tier speechwriter. We're kind of like the second string speechwriters. You know, if a speechwriter pulls a hamstring or something, we step in, that kind of thing. So it was really keeping in touch with people methodically over time, in a subtle way, which I'm sure we can get into. Kind of more of the details of that that allowed me to come back. And one little anecdote I'll just tell real quick. This is kind of amusing because you and I were talking about the importance of preparation. Before we got on the line here, I had got contacted by one of the speechwriters saying that this position was open. And I knew that any day I'd probably get a call or an email from someone who was hiring for that position. And so right around that time, I was doing a lot of writing and different forums, and I get a call from this woman who eventually became my boss who said, I hear you're interested in this position. Can you send me any writing samples? And I said, sure. And actually, if you want to take a look at the New York Times today, I happen to have a letter to the editor in today's New York Times. It was a total coincidence, but I knew that I might be getting that call. And so I happened to have sent in a letter to the editor that happened to be published on the exact same day that she called me. And so it really goes to that phrase that you're saying, success happens when preparation means opportunity. Well, the opportunity came along, but I'd also prepared for it. I don't know if that's why I got the job, but it happened to be very good timing.

That's brilliant. That's brilliant. I think one great thing that happened here is you didn't get the job because your dad was a major fundraiser. You didn't Go to school with Chelsea Clinton or anything. This is just. You're in the right place at the right time. But you are also very methodical about the way you went about this. And I'm assuming, and we're going to get into this, I'm assuming you did it. Yes. Methodically, but not in a mechanical way. That just screamed, I have an agenda here. I'm following a system.

No, no, no. It was really more of keeping in touch with people you need to keep in touch with, but in the most helpful way possible. So what I did when I left the internship is every couple months or so. And this was back in the early days, really, kind of before email. Well, I guess we had email, but it wasn't as prevalent as it was back then. I'd clip out articles in the newspaper that I thought were helpful or anecdotes or something like that, and I'd mail them to the speechwriters saying, hey, look at this. That I found. I thought it would be interesting. And as email got more prevalent, maybe I'd find something online, find a story and email it to someone, one of the speechwriters or even someone who wasn't in the speechwriting office, someone else who was in another department. Just knowing that those relationships are really where they're going to pay dividends rather than just completely losing touch with them. Because when you don't keep in touch with someone, then you fall off their radar screen. And when an opportunity does come along, they're not going to think of you. It's really about being useful to them and keeping yourself top of mind so that they will contact you when some kind of opportunity comes along.

Yeah. I'm a huge believer, by the way, the love your idea by clipping articles. I actually think that that is starting to work again because so much communication has gone to email. People don't get that kind of personal, hand delivered, handcrafted mail anymore. You know, it's a lost art.

It really is. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I'm guilty of it as anyone. I don't really do it, but imagine the impact that that had, that that would have or that it. That it can have. If you were to like, say you're reading the New Yorker, you see some article that's just right on point, really helpful to someone. You clip it out, put it in an envelope, lick a stamp, mail it off to them. You know, imagine the impact that that would have. It's just tremendous.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, before, before we get into how you've done this and Kind of your steps that you. You follow. One question that I always have when, when the topic of networking comes up is, you know, what if I'm really shy, introverted? And I told myself that part of the reason I'm going to be a freelance writer is that I don't have to really get out of my house and go to networking events. What would you say to somebody like that?

That's a great question. A lot of people face that and they use it as an excuse for saying, well, I just don't like networking, or it doesn't apply to me, or I'll focus my efforts on something else. The truth is, you don't really need to be the world's greatest conversationalist in order to be a good networker. Networking is about nurturing relationships over time and remaining committed to a system that will allow you to nurture those relationships. Actually, if you're the world's greatest conversationalist, that might be more of a detriment. It's really better for you to be interested in other people, to ask questions of other people, to follow what they could use, how you can be helpful to them in order to be good at developing a broad network. There's a great book which I'm sure many of your listeners have heard of, called how to Win Friends and Influencer People by Dale Carnegie. It was Originally written in 1936. Incredibly, it still really holds true to this day. It's been revised a couple times. But there are some great anecdotes in that book about people who actually would go out to events and have great conversations with people where they didn't say a thing about themselves. They just asked questions of other people. And then afterwards, that person who they'd been asking questions of would turn around and say to the host, I had this great conversation with this other person who's so interesting, even though the person had not said very much about themselves. And the thing is that people really, most people really enjoy talking about themselves, about the things that they're passionate about, is that if you ask genuine questions about them, if you ask about their family or their hobbies or their interests, given the right context, if there's the right opening, people will really enjoy that and they will really appreciate you and they will think that you're a great conversationalist, even if you didn't say very much about yourself. So just having curiosity about other people, having interest in other people and what they do, and then following up on that is a great way to deal with that. If you are shy or you are introverted.

I couldn't agree more. In fact, I've noticed something about writers that I think as writers we have an advantage that other people don't have. Most writers I meet are naturally curious people. And I think if you can translate that or apply it in kind of a social setting. And of course, networking isn't about all social networking events. We'll talk about that. But I think you have an advantage a lot of people don't have because you are just naturally, as a writer, interested and curious in other people. What they do, how they got there, all the intricacies about their business, their life and how things work. I don't know. At least that's been my observation.

That's so true. Research is the bedrock of good writing. And so if you meet someone new who's got some kind of different background, interesting history, maybe they had an interesting job or lived in an interesting place, ask more follow up questions about it. Try and extract as much as you can about that person and then hold on to some of those nuggets in your head so that you are able to use them later. Because you might find some other person you meet, some other person who has a shared passion towards that particular breed of dog that they breed or something like that, and then you can make a connection between those people. But yeah, I absolutely agree, it is just developing that interest in people, nurturing interest in people, and finding out as much as you can about things that other people are passionate about. It's a great way for you to endear yourself with that person and it's a great way for you as a writer to find new nuggets of information that you might be able to apply in the future.

So you've developed a seven step plan or system, if you will, for networking. If you don't mind, I'd really like to go through that. Maybe you can give us the steps first and we can talk a little bit about each one.

Yeah, sure, absolutely. I'd love to. And I can kind of give you the overview here. But the reason I developed this was basically because I'd been doing this for a long time and I never really thought it was that valuable until I had some friends and colleagues who basically said you really ought to write this all down because you seem to have a system for it and other people don't. I think a lot of people understand the importance of networking. They understand the importance of developing relationships for their business or their career or their freelancing or whatever, but they don't really have A system for doing it. As a result, people just do it random and scattershot. There isn't really any system to it. This is a basic seven step system. You start off with, number one, have the right mindset. Rather than going out and thinking what can others do? For me really it's about turning it around and thinking, what can I do for others? The more you can do that, the more you will find that your networking will pay off for you. Step two is about creating target lists. We can dive into this, but basically I think that taking the time to literally write out a list of people that you would like to develop and nurture a relationship with, as well as events that you're interested in and organizations that you're interested in, can be really helpful to creating a system for networking. Step three is about taking all of that and putting it into a schedule, like a 12 month schedule where over time you can establish a pattern of going to regular events and organizations that will help you achieve your goals on a business or a career trajectory. Step four is about mastering face to face networking. I do not believe that you can rely entirely on hiding behind your keyboard. You really have to get out in today's day and age and do some face to face networking at events. It's just no better way to make connections with people. Step five is about creating a follow up system. This is really kind of, I call it the low hanging fruit of networking because so many people don't do it. If you actually do follow up with people, it can actually minimize the amount of time you have to spend on networking. Step six is about using social media, which is kind of the flip side of the coin to face to face networking, but also doing it in a time efficient way so you're not spending hours and hours every day just completely lost in Facebook. Then finally, step five is about measure. Sorry, Step seven is about measuring your results and adapting your system so that you see what's working, see what's not working and make changes over time.

Very simple. I mean none of this sounds scary to me, but. But let's dive a little bit into each area.

Great. So number one, adopting the right mindset. You know, so often I see people go out to networking events and when they meet someone, immediately when they meet someone, they're immediately thinking, is this person useful to me? What can I get out of this person? What can they do for me? You know, and first of all, if you have that approach, it's just a disaster. It's just the wrong approach to have. And secondly, you're not going to know how that person's going to be helped. Helpful to you. Maybe not right away, maybe not for weeks, maybe not for months. Really, it's more about having a mindset of what can I do for others? Whether it's something large or related to my profession, or whether it's something small and unrelated to my profession. If you're talking to someone and they happen to mention that they're about to go on vacation to Kauai, maybe you can say, oh, I went to Kauai once on vacation. It turns out I went to this great restaurant, I'd highly recommend it. Or this great little hideaway beach. You should definitely go to it. And then afterwards you follow up with an email that says, hey, here's the directions to that beach that I told you about. If you do something like that, you will find that not only will you be more financially rewarded, but people will react so positively to it. So people who you maybe thought would never be helpful to you, they will find that you are so useful that they will find ways to be useful to you in your career or your business. So that's really about step one is just having that right philosophy, that right mindset from the get go.

Man, I couldn't agree more with you. I've noticed in myself I've fallen into this trap, by the way. You go into it with this agenda and this goal and there's people actually who preach this, go in there with a goal, get so many business cards. When my first job out of college, I was mentored into doing some of this, by the way. I'm ashamed to even admit it, but you know, go in there, make it a goal to get, you know, walk away with 20 business cards or more. And it was a contest. It was just kind of, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. There's old school mindset and it never worked. People could smell it, you know, they could smell the fear, they could smell the agenda. And that's. I still think the majority of people approach networking that way. And I. So I couldn't agree more with you. It just doesn't work. And you know what, Actually I think it helps you in a way when you're kind of the anti that person because other people are expecting wolves in the room. And when you come across as someone who's just out there just looking to help some people and make some meaningful connections, gosh, what a breath of fresh air, right?

Yeah, that's true. I will say though, that I don't disagree with the idea of making the most of an opportunity. Like, let's say that you're at. At a networking event for some group that is really aligned with your goals, whatever it is, you know that this is an organization that is a room full of people that you really like and enjoy and that can help you achieve your goals. Maybe people who can hire you or something like that. I don't see anything wrong with trying to meet as many of those people as possible as long as you do it in a genuine way, and as long as you're not. Your eyes aren't darting around the room like you're looking for the next big person to talk to or some better person to talk to, it is a wasted opportunity. If you go to a networking event and you're kind of stuck in the corner talking to one person for an hour and 45 minutes because all of our time is limited. And you're probably better off meeting as many people as you can within reason, without making it seem like you're rude, but doing it in a way that's genuine and in a way that. That you seek to help other people.

Yeah, agreed. Agreed. All right, so step number two, I think it was create your target list.

That's right. So I talk about this more in the ebook that I put together, but I define it as there are three different types of target lists that I suggest people do. Now, don't be intimidated by the idea of it because it can be very simple. But basically, just if you're listening to this right now, you can do it as you're listening to the podcast, pull out a piece of paper, blank piece of paper, and draw a couple of vertical lines. And we're going to start with, I call it a conversations list. And you're going to write down, for starters, about 50 plus people who you want to develop and nurture a conversation with. And the reason I call it a conversations list is because, first of all, target list sounds kind of sinister when it comes to people that you want to target. But really it's about just deepening a conversation with people who you're interested in or who are aligned with your career or business goals. And these 50 people, there's a lot of different ways of coming up with this list, but it could be people that are current clients or customers of yours. It could be friends or friends of friends, or it could be people you've never met before, people you'd really like to meet or get to know, an ideal client that you'd love to work for one day, but write it down. Create this list, and over time, you're going to add more people to the list. But I guarantee you, by creating this list, it's something you can always go back to and you can think about are the things that I'm doing to try and nurture my business, to develop my client base, are they really aligned with this list of people that I want to get to know? And of course, you meet people all the time. So you're going to be adding more people to the list. But you should also be focusing on how am I going to deepen the relationships with the people who I already know on my list and how am I going to. To find opportunities to meet people who are on my list who I've never met before. And then the other two types of target lists are an organization target list and an events target list. What I find, I was just writing an article on this today. What I find is that people join too many groups these days. We're all members of groups on LinkedIn, on Facebook, in person, whatever. Rather than doing that, I think we're a lot better off to focus, really go a lot deeper with a handful of groups or events, annual events or monthly events, quarterly events, whatever that we know are right for us, that are a lot deeper and a lot more valuable for us, and to go and join the board, join a subcommittee, help organize an event, Just get a lot deeper in a handful, maybe two or three organizations or groups that we know are really useful to us and really kind of jettison the rest because we can't spread ourselves too thin and be members of too many organizations. It's just not a useful use of our time. That's kind of the concept behind creating target lists.

Yeah. And it's basically all about quality over quantity. I couldn't agree more. That's been one of my secrets to networking. You're right. Just to be as focused as possible. Spend the next six months finding the organizations that really make sense, because you have to go to some of their meetings, check them out, meet the people, and then really narrow it down. So shortlist it, you know, down to two or three, and then just pick one, maybe two at least. It's, you know, that's kind of my philosophy. And, man, go deep in that organization, you know, get involved. That's where the real benefits come from.

Yeah. If you can be a member of the board or be someone who's in charge of organizing one event, that gives you such a great excuse to meet other people and to deepen your involvement, get to know more people within that group just by being on the board or being head of some subcommittee or something like that, rather than just being one of 500 members who goes to an event and you're just one of 500 people who is just struggling like everyone else to try and meet as many of those other people as possible. In step seven, we'll talk a little bit more about this, about how to decide which organizations are right for you. That's step number two. You want to hop into step three?

Yeah, let's do that.

Yeah. So step three is about creating a networking schedule based on everything that comes in step two. So what I find is that we miss opportunities all the time because we don't know them. They're not on our radar screen. So what you can do is after you've created a conversations list, after you created your target list for organizations and in person events, is transfer over onto your regular daily calendar, whatever it is you use, transfer over all of the events that you're going to be focusing on. And for the organizations that you're focusing on, make sure that you look regularly and see what events are coming up. And it's on your calendar so that you know it's coming up so you're not missing these opportunities so that in advance you can plan on going to their quarterly meetings or their weekly meetings or whatever it is. You're not missing those opportunities. A lot of times people just don't know they're happening or we get busy with life or whatever, and so we just missed them. Making sure that you have them on your regular daily calendar, not on some other calendar, ensures that you will know that they're happening in advance and try and make a priority to make it out to those events.

Gosh, that's smart. I mean, such a simple solution to this. But I find I can't even visualize more than kind of a month in advance or a few weeks in advance. So, yeah, definitely see the value of that.

Yeah, yeah. And if, you know, if it's. If we don't transfer those things over to our main calendar, then we know that it's on another calendar somewhere. It's some organization that we belong to and we know that they have a calendar and we can just go check it from time to time and see what's coming up. But the fact is we don't all that often. So frequently these events go by and really just opportunities go by. It's really a tragedy if you can just transfer these things in advance. So you know that they're coming up, then you're much more likely to participate in them.

Okay, so what's the next step?

Okay, so next is about face to face networking. And I'm a big proponent of face to face networking. I find that these days a lot of people try and get out of it or they think that they can just substitute social media for face to face networking. And really there's no substitute for it. Just the larger point, we touched on it a little bit earlier when we were talking about if you're shy or introverted, how to deal with that. The larger point is just really about making the time to go out to events, but making sure that the ones that you actually do go to are higher priority, are ones that you know that you're going to be getting greater bang for your buck. And also, if you're connecting with people online, if you're connecting with people through like let's say LinkedIn or Facebook or something like that, if there's someone on your conversation list who you really want to meet and get to know, maybe it's someone famous in your industry or high level in your industry that you're going out to events, maybe where they're speaking, or going to industry events where you know that the type of people that you're trying to connect with are going to be making sure that you're doing that. That's really got to be a high priority in your networking strategy.

Yeah, you mentioned something there that I think it's very important for people who are kind of out in the middle of nowhere or in a rural area where they don't have access to a lot of these networking opportunities. I believe that these industry events, conferences and so forth, I think it's even more important that you make it a point to attend as many of those as you can. I'm not talking about one every month, but gosh, a couple of these events a year, you budget for that, you plan for it, could be huge. And what I found is many times those events are like the equivalent of going to six typical networking events an organization would have every month.

Month. That's so true. Yeah. As long as you can hone in on what are the ones that are most useful for you. Because oftentimes I talk to people and they say that they're frustrated by their networking efforts because it doesn't seem to pay off. Or when they're talking to people at certain events, it doesn't feel like they're meeting the right people. Oftentimes here's the critical mistake that they make is they're going to the wrong types of events. It's not the person they're talking to, and it's not that they are not thinking about enough questions to ask or having difficulty with the actual conversation. It's that they're at the wrong type of event to begin with. So if you're picking the right types of events to go to, the ones that are going to be filled with the types of people who are going to help you to achieve your business or professional goals, then everything else will fall into line. So really defining in advance what types of events you want to go to will really make that face to face networking a lot easier.

Yeah. And I would add to that, make sure that there's a good mix of, of course, depending on your goals. But you want people who are potential clients there and not just other peers. So, you know, don't. Because I've seen a lot of those where it's, you know, 95% freelancers and 5% potential clients or even 5% other. And that's great as long as. Well, that was your intention anyway. That is your intention. You know, that you have a reason for networking with peers and colleagues, that's fine. But if your intention was really mostly kind of developing some conversations with potential future clients, then that might not be the best use of your time and money.

And that's a perfect example because let's say you're a freelance writer and your goal is to move further into the health and fitness niche. That's what you want to write more about, but you're just going to other events with other writers. You're not going to help move your career along. You're not going to meet more of the health and fitness types of clients who are going to hire you to give you more of that type of business. Unless you're going to the health and fitness events filled with that type of potential client. I think there definitely is a role for going to peer events because in most industries you're going to be able to develop some kind of referral basis where if some other writer gets a referral of a potential piece of business that has to do with health and fitness and they're not interested in it, they might refer it over to you and vice versa. There is a role for that, but it's definitely just one piece of the puzzle. You can't let it be 100% entirely what you do.

Agreed? Agreed. All right, so tell us a little bit about step five and following up.

Okay, so here's the low hanging fruit because so many people don't do this. So often people go out to events and they rather be at home with their family or their kids and hanging out, but instead they haul themselves out in the evening to some cocktail networking mixer or whatever and they're not happy that they have to do it, but they go anyways and then maybe they have some good conversations with a couple of different people and then afterwards what happens? Nothing. I mean, so often no follow up whatsoever. If you're lucky, maybe you connect on LinkedIn but so often there's no follow up email, there's no attempt to nurture a relationship beyond that. And this is so critical. I mean you're just dooming yourself to be stuck on the marketing hamster wheel if you don't follow up with people. Conversely, if you do follow up with people, then you are not going to have to haul yourself out to another networking event as frequently because you are making a lot better use of your time. Whatever your follow up system is, you got to develop some kind of system. There are different offerings out there on the marketplace. I've used one that's called Contactually, there's one called yesware. Salesforce has, has different systems. It used to be that it was only domain of salespeople who had. They're called CRM system, Customer relationship management systems where they would monitor and track their relationships with people. But these days there's some very affordable options online that are very cool. They'll sync up with your email accounts and with your LinkedIn or your Facebook profiles and then they'll merge profiles for people across these different platforms and they'll track your follow up. Really cool, innovative stuff. But it will help you manage your follow ups over time so that you continue to nurture those relationships with people so that you send messages out to them and continue to develop those relationships and that's. It really makes such a big difference because how often I'm sure you've experienced this, Ed, do you get an email out of the blue from someone you haven't heard from from six months or a year or something like that, and then they send you an email saying oh hey, how you doing? Just checking in with you by the way, I just lost my job. You can help me get a job, you know, and it's like I feel bad for you, but where you been? You know, I mean you really, you're clearly just reaching out to me because you need something and you just kind of feel kind of used about that versus if that person had connected with me every once in a while over time, then I would feel so much more inclined to help them out. So really, it's. That's what it's about. It's just, you know, developing and nurturing a relationship over time. So it's not just once a year or once every two years. Years. Every three years when you need something.

Yeah, I call it. And I heard a local thought leader here in Atlanta who's got a whole practice around this, but there's a relationship bank account, and basically, if you're not making those deposits over time, you're going to be overdrawn immediately the day you reach out. So not that that should be your only motive. It needs to be sincere. But, yeah, you can't expect much if that were to happen. So I'm with you. You.

That's a great metaphor. Yeah, you got to put a lot more deposits in before you can take anything out.

Yeah. Okay, so moving on to step number six. And now this is the social media piece.

Yes. So I do think that social media provides some great opportunities these days. But here's the major critical mistake that I see people make. And this really applies to every different platform. Whether you're networking, using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, you name it. The key is make your time really useful and engage. This is. You know, so often I see people who don't engage. You know, they'll. They'll spend a half an hour a day on Facebook looking through people's travel photos, but not commenting, not liking any photos, and just looking and then not doing anything. And if you do that, it's. It's really an apple, analogous to if you go out to a cocktail party, there's a group of people in the middle of the room talking, and you're there. You go and walk around and circle the room for half an hour, observing everyone, but not talking to anyone. And then at the end, you leave, and everyone who is in the middle of the room is like, who is that guy? I have no idea who that guy was. Social media is similar, but for some reason, we tend to do it. We don't engage with people. And if you dispense with that approach and you. You determine, make a commitment to yourself to engage with people, no matter what platform you're on, then you're going to do a lot better, and you can be a lot more efficient in the amount of time that you spend with it. We can talk a little bit more about some of the individual tools out there, and the tools will always change. If you're listening to this podcast, five years from now, you might be like, what was Twitter or what was Facebook or something like that. But the truth is that, that the lesson of engaging will not. That will always be important because that's what we do in real life and in the online world. We need to do it as well.

You know, you make a really good point there. I would also add that I think too many people get caught up in the tools themselves and forget about the fundamental reason for using them. I see too many people asking too many questions about the tips and tricks and the techniques and this and that. The thing with that is those things are always changing, but the fundamentals never do, which is being authentic, humanizing yourself, putting yourself out there, interacting, engaging. As you said, that will never, never, ever, ever stop. That will always be important, regardless of the platform.

That's right. That's so true. Yeah. No matter how much the platforms will change in the future, and I'm sure they will, there'll be new tools that come along. But just remember to engage with people, to give people credit, to mention people, to talk about other people, to give feedback on their ideas, to engage with whatever it is that they're sharing. I mean, I've been there. Like, you share something on Facebook, a picture or something like that, or you share something on LinkedIn and then you check back later and no one's responded to it. It just kind of makes you feel like, oh, why didn't someone do that? If you're on the flip side of that, if you share something someone else has shared or you comment on it and you say, hey, I really enjoyed that, or hey, cute picture of your son or whatever. People really appreciate that. And it's a great way to develop a nurture relationship with someone. There have been people that I've met face to face, and then afterwards we connect on social media. And it's. The great value of social media is that you can continue to develop and nurture that relationship with someone that maybe you met at a conference once, but over time, you're commenting on their photos or you're sharing things that they do with your audience, and as a result, they become grateful to you and you get to develop and know each other even better.

So true. So true. All right, so then the final step, measure and adapt. Tell us about that.

Yeah, this is really what. It can be, really valuable. What would be helpful, I think, for your audience is if you're a freelance writer or you're a designer or just some kind of freelancer, no matter what Your industry is, it starts with tracking everything that comes in. This can be very simple and I actually advocate making it as simple as possible because if it's too complex, you're not going to do it. So just creating a simple spreadsheet type of document, however you do it, in Excel, Google Docs, whatever, or maybe it's just a paper that you have on your desk somewhere. And every new piece of business that comes in, whether it's referral, whether it turns into actual business or not, whether it's a referral, new client, new customer, someone buying something, if you can try and track every single one and where it came from, over time you'll be able to see patterns emerge, not right away, but over time. And so what I've seen just in my practice as an attorney is that I'll get a bunch of referrals from someone over a short period of time, let's say like two or three months, and then I'll track everything that goes on. And I've looked back at this document and looked at it and seen, you know, that person who referred three clients to me over a three month period hasn't referred anything to me in nine months. And the reason is because they haven't heard from me. I haven't reached out to them, we haven't gotten lunch or coffee. I haven't sent them anything of value to them. And so it really helps you see where your impacts are coming from. You also see what groups and organization, what events are most valuable for you. If you see that you've gotten a bunch of clients out of one particular event you went to, well then you know that that was a good use of your time. You know, you need to go back and deepen your involvement with the organization or make sure that you go back to the event again when it occurs again. So it's really about seeing the impact of your results and then adapting and making changes. And you may find that there is some particular organization that you've been really deep in involvement with, maybe you're a board member for some particular organization, but you look back at the last six months and you haven't gotten a single referral as a result of that. Well, that's fine to be involved with organizations, but it's really more of a hobby. It's not actually helping your business move forward. And you need to be clear about that. It's actually a hobby, it's not actually helping you with your business moving forward. And it'll allow you to make changes and decide how you're Going to prioritize your time going forward.

Yeah, man, I love that. And I'm big into keeping things extremely simple, especially when it comes to tracking because I get overwhelmed very easily. And I agree, just a very simple spreadsheet can work wonders in this area. It doesn't need to be very complicated.

Absolutely.

So great advice there, man. I really love what you've done here because this is, I mean, really, when you look at these steps, this is so simple. But you've kind of covered all the key areas to making this work and you've simplified them in a way that, gosh, I mean, anyone can do this. In fact, you mentioned this a little bit earlier, but you wrote an ebook that you just give away. You don't even need to register for it or anything that covers these steps in more detail. So tell us where we can get a copy of that.

Right? Yeah. So I packaged this all up into an ebook. It's about 52 pages or so, but it's a quick read. You can get through it pretty quickly. And we've got some graphics and images in there so it makes a little more fun to read. It's called how to Create youe Personal Networking Plan. And what I'll just do for your readers is I'll just set up a welcome page for all your readers and listeners. If you go to my blog, smartbusinessrevolution.com, we'll call it smartbusinessrevolution.com Ed you can just grab it there. You do have to opt in with your email address, but you can of course unsubscribe at any time. But I do send follow up helpful tips on how to improve your networking over time. I hope that people will find it valuable. People have asked me why I, I put it all together and it really kind of goes with my philosophy. If you put value out into the world, if you're helpful to people, that good things will come from it. I just hope that everyone who's listening to this finds it valuable and they're able to really take some action and implement at least some of these ideas if you do. I think that it will really make a big impact and I'd love it if you download the ebook and then shoot me an email afterwards and say what you thought of it. I'd love to hear that.

Yeah, that would be awesome. We can give John some feedback and I'd also love it if you'd leave a quick comment or maybe a little bit of feedback as to what's worked for you what resonated with you here? What's worked for you? Has there been one little secret that you have that just consistently. I suspect that if it's worked consistently for you, that it's grounded on some fundamental principles that just never change. So love to hear from you in the comments section here on the Show Notes page. By the way, we'll include links to all of this here in the Show Notes, so don't worry about this if you're in the car or out in the gym or running a marathon right now. John, thanks so much for coming on today. Really enjoyed this talk.

Thank you, Ed. I really enjoyed it as well. I just want to say I'd love to see those comments on your site. I'd love to see what has worked for people because because I always say I never have a monopoly on good ideas. I think there are lots of great ideas out there, so I'd love to see what people come up with.

Absolutely. All right, man. Well listen, again, thanks for coming on and hey, let's do this again soon.

Great. My pleasure. Thanks Ed.

Well folks, I hope you enjoyed that interview. And again, I know it might sound silly to have an actual range written process for something is organic as networking, but I found that having a written, methodical process takes much of the emotion out of this whole, you know, networking thing. So I urge you to try this out and I encourage you to check out John's ebook. I've gone through it myself, it's free and it goes into a lot more detail in each of these seven steps. It really is worth the read, so check it out. You can grab detailed show notes to this episode by going to b2b launcher.com episode 28 the number 28 and again, these are detailed show notes that make great reference material, especially if you're somewhere right now where you just can't take notes. But you want to reference some of these ideas later. Also, if you haven't registered yet for tomorrow's live training on my five step system for closing more deals, make sure to do that today. That class is tomorrow at 11am Eastern Time and it's free. But as I've mentioned before, I have very limited seating with GoToWebinars, so even if you do register, make sure to show up about 10 minutes early before the system actually reaches reaches max capacity and locks you out. Once I reach my limit with GoToWebinar, nobody else can log on to the class and I'll still send out a replay if you can't make it live. But I can only send that out if you register. So even if you can't make it live, or if you're not sure you can make it register@closingmore deals.com you'll save your seat there and you'll ensure that you get the replay when it's available. Finally, if you're enjoying the show and getting value from it, it would really mean a lot to me if you give me a quick star rating or a sentence or two in iTunes. Best way to do that is to go to b2b launcher.com forward/itunes and I wanted to give a special thank you to some of the recent reviewers, Preacher2nc and Shelly K. I really, really appreciate you taking the time to give me a star rating and a quick review means a ton to me. So that brings us to the end of the episode. I am your host, Ed Gandia. Thanks so much for listening and I hope you have an awesome day.

The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher. Learn more@b2b launcher.com document however you do it in Excel, Google Docs, whatever. Or maybe it's just a paper that you have on your desk somewhere. And every new piece of business that comes in, whether it's referral, whether it turns into actual business or not, whether it's a referral, new client, new customer, someone buying something, if you can try and track every single one and where it came from, over time you'll be able to see patterns emerge. Not right away, but over time. What I've seen just in my practice as an attorney is that I'll get a bunch of referrals from someone over a short period of time, let's say like two or three months. And then I'll track everything that goes on. And I've looked back at this document and looked at it and seen that person who referred three clients to me over a three month period hasn't referred anything to me in nine months. And the reason is because they haven't heard from me. I haven't reached out to them. We haven't gotten lunch or coffee. I haven't sent them anything of value to them. It really helps you see where your impacts are coming from. You also see what groups and organization, what events are most valuable for you. If you see that you've gotten a bunch of clients out of one particular event you went to, well then you know that that was a good use of your time. You know, you need to to go back and deepen your involvement with the organization or make sure that you Go back to the event again, when it occurs again. It's really about seeing the impact of your results and then adapting and making changes. You may find that there is some particular organization that you've been really deep in involvement with. Maybe you're a board member for some particular organization, but you look back at the last six months and you haven't gotten a single referral as a result of that. That. Well, that's fine to be involved with organizations, but it's really more of a hobby. It's not actually helping your business move forward. And you need to be clear about that. It's actually a hobby. It's not actually helping you with your business moving forward. And it'll allow you to make changes and decide how you're going to prioritize your time going forward.

Yeah, man, I love that. And I'm big into keeping things extremely simple, especially when it comes to tracking, because I get overwhelmed very easily. And I agree, just a very simple spreadsheet can work wonders in this area. It doesn't need to be very complicated.

Absolutely.

So great advice there, man. I really love what you've done here because this is really. When you look at these steps, this is so simple. But you've kind of covered all the key areas to this work and you've simplified them in a way that, gosh, I mean, anyone can do this. In fact, you mentioned this a little bit earlier, but you wrote an ebook that you just give away. You don't even need to register for it or anything that covers these steps in more detail. Tell us where we can get a copy of that.

Right? Yeah. So I packaged this all up into an ebook. It's about 52 pages or so, but it's a quick read. You can get through it pretty quickly. And we've got some graphics and images in there, so it makes a little more fun to read. It's called how to Create youe Personal Networking Plan. And what I'll just do for your readers is I'll just set up a welcome page.