Easy Ways to Expand Your Business Network!

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm gonna answer a question from one of my newsletter readers, Caroline, who runs a divorce coaching program and is trying to increase her networking skills and meet the right people to help her grow her business. So specifically, she's targeting 2 groups: family mediators, family mediators and lawyers. So she's trying to get in front of these 2 groups. And so just to start off, Caroline, it's great to meet you, thank you for the question. And it's really good that you know the exact type of business you run and the exact type of people you need to be introduced to, to be able to grow your business. So a lot of entrepreneurs haven't really made that step yet, so congrats on that. In terms of being introduced to these people, you mentioned that you're going to meetup events and you're going to Board of Trade events. I'd try to think and see, are these people going to those events? And if you look at meetup events, you know, lawyers are usually pretty busy, especially family lawyers, and I don't see them a lot at these types of events. And family mediators is a really specific type of person, and the odds of you meeting somebody at one of these events is probably pretty low. So what I would do, instead of just hitting up events and hoping to meet somebody, I would proactively seek these guys out. So seek them out. And what I would do is do a quick Google search, try to find anybody who is, you know, family lawyers or family mediators, and introduce yourself. You know, try to go out there, set up a coffee meeting, Go for coffee, introduce yourself, see if there's a way that you might be able to help each other with your business. And you know, you can also potentially give them some business as well. And so if you position it as learning about each other and potentially passing business to each other, a lot of these guys would be open to being able to do that meeting and would want to come and meet with you. Because these guys, they want to grow their business as well. As long as you're not just pitching them and there's value that you could potentially bring to the table as well, then most of the time they'd be willing to come and take a meeting. So I would do a Google search and also look for Google News. If you sign up for Google News Alerts, you could type in certain keywords. You can type in, you know, family mediator or family lawyer, followed by— I think you said you were in Toronto or Richmond Hill— put those keywords in, and anytime somebody's mentioned in the news and that they're a family mediator or family lawyer, you'll get an email. And that's a great way to be able to quickly introduce yourself to say, hey, I saw that you were featured in the Toronto Star, congrats on a great article. I have this great coaching program and I think, you know, we might be able to help each other out. I'd love to take you out for coffee and introduce myself and learn a little bit more about your business as well. So that would be my first approach. Go out and target them. I think you'd have a much better success rate than just going to meetup events or Board of Trade events and hoping that your ideal connector is there. If you're finding that it's really hard to get in front of these people and they're saying no and they're too busy and they don't wanna just network with you, the next thing you can do is try to interview them. So, interview them. And what you can do is put together a guide of advice from the top family lawyers in Toronto. And you can say, I'm creating this guide I'm gonna be promoting of the top family lawyers in Toronto and their advice, and I'd love to interview you. It'll take half an hour and get your tips and opinions on what's happening with family law and, you know, why somebody should sign up and buy from you. So there you're offering a lot of value to somebody and you actually have to go through and, you know, create this publication. But it could just be an online ebook that you promote from your website. And people are generally flattered by it and they want the exposure and publicity and attention, so it's a lot easier to get that meeting. And of course then they become curious about what you're doing and how you're gonna promote it and what your business is all about. So it's a great way to get that introduction. When I had one of my first software companies, we were trying to sell into salespeople, insurance brokers, financial advisors, and at the time we weren't a known quantity and, you know, we were young entrepreneurs. So what we did was we partnered up with a whole bunch of highly famous and successful writers like Zig Ziglar and Tom Peters, and we created a guide to professional success. And we emailed all of them and said, we'd love to interview you or take one of your articles about professional success and put it together in a guide. And I also wrote my own article too, and I contributed to it. So now I'm an author with all these great authors, and we publish it and release it on, on our website. And that was a great way to get that first introduction to a lot of these expert authors who otherwise wouldn't have paid any attention to us. And we were just a startup company, nobody really knew who we were, but they all said yes. So that could be a great way to introduce yourself to some of these companies if you're finding that they don't want to meet with you for coffee to discuss each other's businesses. So that's what I would do. I think you'd have a much better hit rate. I think people would be open to meeting with you, and if enough people learn about what you're doing, then when they see that their clients have a need, then they're much more likely to refer them to you because they know you, they like you, they've met you, they like what your business is all about. They see that you're a friendly person and they think you can help their clients. So hopefully that helps, Caroline. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up below, and I'd also love to hear what you have to think if you want to leave a comment under the video. And stay tuned for the next episode.