Larry Benet Reveals How To Connect With Influential People

All right. Welcome back to the show. This is Brad Costanzo. Very excited to have today's guest. On Today, we're going to be talking about a topic that's near and dear to my heart. It's two of the words that I think have played one of the biggest roles in my personal success. And I see them being underutilized in a lot of people's lives. And that's the words of access and influence. I firmly believe that the relationships that we build and the partnerships that we're able to go into, whether they are loose or very tight, are some of the highest leverage activities that you can be doing as a business owner, as a person, I've always first thought when I'm trying to solve a problem, who else has what I need and who else needs what I have? And I always look first to what relationships can I leverage. So that's why I'm really excited to welcome today's guest, Larry Benet. So Larry has achieved a great deal of success by harnessing the power of connectivity for businesses, professional speakers, authors and world class thought leaders. Forbes magazine considers him the top one or at least one of the top networkers in the world. And Inc. Has called him the most connected, one of the most connected business people in the world. He's also the founder of Sang S A N G which stands for the Speakers and Authors Networking Group. It's a tightly knit group of over a thousand professional speakers, authors, entrepreneurs, C level executives and folks such as Tony Robbins, Jay Abraham, Tony Hsieh and many, many others have graced the stage. And Larry is proud to call them very close friends. His passion is really helping homeless and military vets get back on their feet. And I'm just really happy to have him on the show today because we're gonna dive into this topic a little bit more, hearing from one of the biggest thought leaders in it. So, Larry, without any further ado, welcome to the show.

Well, thank you. I appreciate being here. That's a tough bio to live up to, but we'll see if we can't give your listeners some valuable tips that they can apply to their life and business and have some better results.

Absolutely. So I want to go into a little bit of the backstory because I don't do this with every single one of my guests because sometimes the backstory isn't super pertinent to, you know, what they're talking about and doing now, but I think yours absolutely is. Where did you kind of get started and what role has has getting access and building influence you know, really had in your life.

Yeah, you know, it's. It's been everything from all the setbacks that I've had over the course of my career to reaching, you know, the success that I have. I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, I've been selectively outsourced actually four times in my life. That's a nice way of saying I was fired or let go. And as a matter of fact, I remember in the early days in the mid-1990s, I try to make the transition actually from the financial circle industry into the technology industry. And I literally had attempted to buy an airline and I'm not kidding you, and like I wasn't paying attention to the maybe financial signals. I had some challenges at the time in the financial industry and literally I went from losing it ever losing it all, basically eventually declared bankruptcy. But the reason I bring this up, there was one man at that one point in my time or my career who is a leadership coach. His name was Christopher White. He took an interest in me and because of him, he introduced me to a guy named Charlie Paparelli, who was a venture capitalist in Atlanta's tech circles. And Charlie introduced me to some people and that one connection led to a. One connection led me to an opportunity which I eventually got a role with a company called the Gartner Group, many later in that year. But I literally had like no connections or no relationships at that time into the tech industry. And what I found myself after being in the financial services, when I try to make the transition in, in the late 1990s, it was so frustrating because at that moment in time I realized I had more contacts than I did connections, more acquaintances and true relationships. And I said, you know what, I'm never gonna let that happen ever again. And then when I got into the technology industry, I built some relationships with a lot of the who's who, some of the fast growth CEOs of Atlanta and southeast tech community. And I've built, you know, I've kept those relationships even to this day, many years later. And if I look at, you know, in the thought leader world, you know, we've had some of the greatest thought leaders of our generation, some of the greatest entrepreneurs you mentioned Tony Robbins, or we've had Peter Guber, owner of the Golden State warriors, or Tony Hsieh of Zappos. And for the most part, most of those, it's been one relationship at a time, adding value to those individuals so that they would want to attend one of our saying conferences, you know, as in Building a peer to peer relationship and them learning best practices from each other. But so connections at every stage, from the bottom to the top have allowed. As a matter of fact, literally this morning I reached out to someone who used to be the 23rd wealthiest man in America. And he's been a mentor and a friend, as a matter of fact, part of my seng network for many years. And you know, I was reaching out to him for some, for some advice on scaling and growing my company. So to me, connections and access is everything.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Now, are you, are you kind of considered a natural introvert or extrovert?

A little bit of both. I would say. I have tendencies of both. I mean, there's sometimes I go to these conferences and I'm tired, I'm exhausted, or if I'm on a plane, I might not say a whole lot to somebody. But at the same token, I can get on a stage and speak to 3,000 people. So I've learned how to hone these skills. Go ahead.

I was going to say, what about like growing up and when you were a lot younger? I mean, was it a natural thing to build a lot of connections or were you sometimes a little shy? I mean, and I ask this because a lot of people. Sorry to interrupt. I was just going to say a lot of people have. Some people, like I have a natural outgoing tendency, so it's easy for me to make connections, but a lot of people don't. And they have to be really strategic and tactical about what they're doing.

Well. So two things I have learned over the years on how to be outgoing and how to. And I literally think depending on your identity or. And listen, there are people that are shy and are introverted, but at the same token, those same shy, introverted people, they probably, when they're around friends. I was just listening to Jeff Walker. He did a video talking about how he just, you know, did one of his trainings to like 800 or a thousand people. And he said he's normally shy and introverted, yet when he's around his friends and his family, it's much easier for him to open up. So I think everyone, whether they're extroverted, probably has some shy introverted tendencies. A whole group of strangers and vice versa. If you're shy, introverted, you're around amongst the friends. If you're around your best friends, if you've known them for years, chances are you're gonna be more engaged, more outgoing. So then it becomes, what skills can you muster up the single. Do you know the single easiest way to influence someone else?

Hypnosis. No, I'm joking. What's that?

Well, I mean, you could hypnotize someone, but literally, actually, you know, the reality is if you were to smile at 100 people and, you know, you look them straight in the eye for 10 seconds or longer, about 80, 85% of people will smile back. And.

Yeah, you know.

Yeah. And you know, right now, as we're doing this live, we're still in the middle of a presidential election. The last 10 presidents, you can look at their smile indexes and smile scores. The ones who have the biggest smiles tend to have won President 10 out of 10 times. What I'm saying is. Yeah, it does not, unfortunately for him. Having said all that, I was actually talking one of his friends yesterday and saying, listen, if you talk to Donald, tell him he needs to be smiling more. But you know, when it comes to, there's people at any event, at a party, at a dinner party, at a charity event or whatever, they walk into the room and they're like magnetic, they're charismatic. You know, people tend to are drawn to them. And so, like, there's little things I think anyone can do, but I think the biggest thing anyone can do, the reality is if you, whether you're shy or introverted or extroverted, it doesn't even matter. Do you need to take that? No, I'm kidding.

That's supposed to be on mute, folks.

That's okay. But, you know, by adding value to other people, by connecting and learning what's most important to them personally or professionally will allow someone to plant the seeds of a relationship. So typically I'm trying to find out things like what are they most passionate about in life. I'm trying to figure out what's most important to them in business or professionally. Or I'll ask them what's their story? Or I'll ask them what are they most excited about in life. These are the typical questions that I'll ask, typically within a first two minute conversation with someone, and then if I'm able to engage someone and they're telling me, you know, what my top business objective is, X, Y and Z. Or my favorite charity is the Boys and Girls Club. You know, this morning, for example, I texted Daymond John from Shark Tank congratulating him because he's being honored tonight for an award by the Boys and Girls Club. Now, in my case, I also mentioned I was going to make a contribution or a charitable contribution in his honor. You know, he texted Back thanking me or whatever. But the point is like that was something that I had noticed in the news or like in one of the publications I read. But most people read something but they don't connect the dots. So I read something, I stopped what I was doing. I, you know, sent him a time sensitive mention message. And I call these things trigger events. So a trigger event is something that goes on in their lives personally. So in this case, he's getting an honor from a charity to be going through divorce. As a matter of fact, a month ago I texted him again or I emailed him again, I can't remember one of the two. But basically he got engaged. So I said, hey, congratulations, mazel tov. I noticed you just got engaged. So as a matter of fact, tomorrow. I met a guy two weeks ago, CEO of the fastest growing cloud based computing software company in the world, according to Forbes, had an hour long conversation with him. One of the things he told me he was getting ready, him and his wife to have a baby. I reached out to him yesterday telling him how much it was a pleasure meeting him. And then I said, hey, what are the next steps as a follow up? He says, hey, let me get past, you know, me and my wife having the baby. So then I said, hey, when are you guys having the baby? And he told me the date and the date happens to be tomorrow. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to look for his Facebook and sometime next week I'm going to copy the Facebook picture of him and the baby and the wife or whatever and I'm going to send like an oversized greeting card to the baby, talking about how smart the baby is for picking such amazing parents and how adorable the baby is and. But all I'm saying is this, how can I be timely in my commentary? How can I be timely and add value? So if I notice someone is running a publicly traded company and they have bad earnings results, maybe I could share something that might be of value to them. But I'm just constantly doing those kind of things and I just think, you know, I have a friend, he was going through divorce. I said, hey, is it possible I can. Would you be open if I introduced you to my friend that runs the Divorce Dads network? I had another friend. I was the opening keynote speaker for the largest social media conference in the world two out of the last four years. And at the time, the lady who is the head of marketing for Infusionsoft, Kathy Sachs, is a couple years ago she wanted, she's like she didn't see me speak, but she saw the Twitter sphere blow up with comments about my speech. She's like, I want you to do what you did for Social media Marketing World for us.

She's like, whatever it is you said, do that again.

Yeah, whatever you said, just do that again. So the day came, we're supposed to have a meeting and a conversation. She's like, hey, really bad timing. My mom's got leukemia. And what most people would do is either would try to press on about what their agenda is. And I'm like, you know what? Obviously it's not the best time to talk. Why don't we set another time? But more importantly, can I connect you to somebody that has been a caretaker with someone that has, you know, leukemia? So my former business partner had leukemia. I connected her, Kathy, to her daughter, Amanda Holmes. And she told me after the fact, it was probably the single most valuable call of the year for her due to the fact that's what was important to her at that time. So, again, whether it's personal or professional, depending on what's going on in their lives, if I could be relevant and timely with whether it's an article, something of interest, or whatever. Tony Hsieh of Zappos, for example, a couple years ago came out with a great book called Delivering Happiness. And I don't know, like, it was like a year later. Yeah, Time magazine had a whole article on the science of happiness. So all I did is I sent him the article and a bunch of other people that I know that I thought would find this article around happiness very relevant. Well, he wrote a book called Delivering Happiness. Do you think that's a relevant article? Absolutely, yeah. Now, listen, he's. I don't know. He sold his company for a billion plus dollars. He's doing okay, but that was of high value. So it's just constantly trying to be value. And just one last idea in terms of access and connections and stuff. Tony, years ago, introduced me to the CEO of a private jet company called Jet Suite, I think it is the name of it. And. And I said. I met with the CEO and I said, hey, let me ask you a question. Do your salespeople, when they book people to go to Vegas on your jets, do they volunteer to offer a free tour at Zappos? They're like, no, not really. Not that I'm aware of. And I'm like, well, isn't Tony one of your investors? They're like, yeah. I'm like, well, it doesn't cost any money. Why don't the sales guys offer that up because they've got such a great culture at Zappos. If they're an entrepreneur, they might want to learn.

Yeah.

And it's just. It's just about connecting the dots. It's all about adding value. Yeah. It doesn't cost them any money.

Yeah, you couple really profound things there. One of them is like just the connecting the dots. And I've said this for a long time. People go, what are you? I was like, I'm a dot connector.

And.

And I. So many people are walking around, they've just got their own dot, and they see the other dots out there, they just never, ever connect them. And I've. I did a podcast episode on this a while back, and I was. It was kind of like, you know, obviously a lot of people have heard of the law of attraction, and I said, that's kind of. I don't really agree with it. I think it's more of the law of attention. And as you pay attention, most people are too busy paying attention to themselves. They're not paying attention to what other people are saying to. They're not paying attention to remembering what people have said in the past. And you obviously do. I know I do. Where it's. I mean, if. If I meet somebody and I'm asking them those pertinent questions, just like you said you did. Like, hey, what are you most excited about? What are you working on? You're trying to find something to kind of grab onto so that it may be six months down the road. You talk to somebody else. You're like, hey, man, I've got somebody you need to meet. And I know that in my life that has paid such huge dividends. And I love the fact that you said that because it's. It is what true connectors do. It's the way you provide value. It's the way you deepen those relationships. And that was the other really profound thing you said. It wasn't about the quantity of people you knew in your Rolodex. It was how. How deep they were.

Right.

So how do you. How else do you deepen relationships? Like, after you make a great connection with somebody? I mean, and maybe you just said it, which is you stay in contact with them, you think of them, you're proactive. Is there anything else you do to kind of help deepen those bonds with the people that you want to remain close with?

Yeah. You know, I think the key is understanding what's important to other people. And if you're able to understand I'll give you a perfect example. I had someone that came in one of my events not that long ago, so less than two months ago.

Okay.

Person is very successful, used to be the chief marketing officer to one of the biggest hotel brands in the world, is married to an iconic business mogul, very successful lady. Anyway, so I'd never met her before. She was invited to my conference.

Someone I want to meet, or I met her, obviously someone I wanted to deepen a relationship with. So, you know, one time we were sitting down and I was going to be meeting with the lady that runs a bank, a very successful entrepreneur. And I said, hey, you know what? I know you and I are going to meet today, but can we meet a little earlier? Because I want to introduce you to this amazing, remarkable lady who I think you should meet, who runs a bank. Very philanthropic, very socially conscious. So I took time out of my meeting with the lady that runs the bank, which was an important meeting to me, to carve out time so those two can connect. And those two hit it off.

Then there was another time I had another meeting with her, and she made a comment because, again, it's about paying attention, like you said.

And she mentioned something that she wants to start a clothing line and give some of the proceeds to nonprofits for at risk youth. And I said, hey, I've got contacts that run the largest swimwear manufacturing company in the world. They're huge in fashion. Let me connect you. And I'm like, so I did that. And it's just a constant thinking of other people. And that's how you deepen relationships. Like I said, whether it's calling them on their birthdays or reaching out on their anniversaries, if you see them in the news, sending them a hey, you know, mazel tov, a congratulations, you know, that a boy, or, you know, whatever the situation is. So I think it's. It's a combination of all of those things. Staying relevant, staying top of mind, having empathy, understanding, you know, what's important to them, and following up, that's the other thing most people say, say things very few people follow up, stay in touch, and do the right things.

Well. And I'm sure that the more successfully connected you become, the more people you're meeting. I mean, you're. Right now you're probably meeting really highly influential people a lot more frequently than you did 10, 15, 20 years ago. So it gets hard. I'm sure it gets a little bit more challenging to keep up with everybody, unless you've kind of got a system. So do you, I mean do you have any kind of like a systematized process, like a personal CRM and thing that you use to kind of stay on it?

Actually I do. So a couple things I'll share some of the. So by the way, if someone wants to learn some of my systems and they can just go learn for free, I think if they go to LarryBenet like.comforward/like ebook. I think it's LarryBenet.comforward/ebook. It talks about some of the systems that I use on how I stay organized so they can go learn more about it there. But let me tell you what I do or so two things as you have a bigger and bigger network. Number one, you have to be very organized. So for example, I live in Los Angeles. So if I wanted to host a dinner party or I wanted to bring have a gathering of just authors come together or entrepreneurs or nonprofits or whatever the scenario is, I could literally go into my phone, I can go into my back office of my CRM system and the way we have things tagged and labeled. So for example, just using you, maybe the way I've tagged you might be entrepreneur or coffee or you know, where did I meet you? I met you at an event, I believe. Kelly Fadell's event.

Or just whatever it is, I would put as much you're an Internet marketer, I would try to classify you in as many different categories as I could. So if I'm hosting an event or if I'm bringing people together or if I want to bring together a certain kind of people, I can do that. Also. As your network grows, I find it's best. There's time and place for one on one meetings. There's also time and place to bring your network together.

Great connectors tend to know how to facilitate introductions via email, via through. Like a lot of times I'll get a phone call and then there'll be another person calling me. I'm like, you know what? These two people need to know each other. I will only merge the two phone calls right away. But again, I mean I did this two weeks ago at like 6 or 6:30 in the morning on like a Sunday.

One guy was calling me from New York, the other guy was calling me from Florida. But I knew what both of their needs were. So it was very easy to make the strategic connection. Now let's just say you're just starting out and you're in the beginning part of your career. You know, how do you go do that? Well, you got to Know where to. You know, first of all, you got to go know how to go fishing. You know, most people are very focused on themselves, their goals, their needs. And to me, I think it's much better to focus on other people. Focus on their goals, their needs, their dreams, their hopes, their aspirations. Not your product, not your service. Now, as you get a chance to build a relationship, I'm sure if you're asking someone, hey, Brad, what do you. Let you and me role play for a second? Brad, I know we're just meeting for the first time, so tell me what you're most excited about right now. From a business standpoint, what would you say?

I'm most excited about some of the new opportunities that are coming my way in a. In a. You know, new potential clients in an industry that I haven't really worked in. But, you know, I'm excited to. So a lot of new deal flow is coming in.

Awesome. All right, good. So.

You thought when you and I met, we. Well, no, that's okay. Because, you know, when you and I talked, you were telling me about some of the interesting opportunities with the coffee or whatever. But anyway, whatever someone says, I'm just taking inventory. Then what great connectors do great master relationship builds. Whatever you're saying to me, I am. I'm putting this information in my smartphone or I'm putting it in my CRM system so I can get more. I can get smarter each and every single time I talk to you. So let me ask you this. What's your favorite charity and cause and why?

So my favorite charity has been. And it's funny, the why is right now, violence against. It's. It helps defend violence against women. Because of the coffee business that my wife and I started, Stiletto Coffee. We've been really kind of going to that, and I see there's a big. There's a big need for that.

Okay, very cool. That's awesome. And, like, all I'm saying is when I see stuff on people's Facebook pages, I think a lot of people see it. All I'm saying is very few people put that information somewhere. So if they're talking about their kids or whatever, it's just easy things as a better way of following up with people. So the other thing that I try to do is when some people zig, I try to zag. So I'll give an example. If everyone has a birthday and the person gets 300 plus messages on their Facebook, the odds of you breaking through the clutter are not very good. So I'll do A couple things. I will either call them directly. I'll sing them Happy Birthday. I'll record a video. I'll send the video direct message them.

You'll pop yourself out of a cake.

Pop yourself out of a cake. I'll send you out of a cake. Whatever it takes to get their attention.

I love that. Yeah, you're right. And it's so. Not only is it so hard to break through and be remembered, it's so easy if somebody did not see your happy birthday wish on Facebook. Now, because you get any of us.

You get so many. Yeah. So anyway, like I said, literally, I'll zig when everyone else eggs. Here's another example. Christmas. Let me ask you this. Do you remember how many Christmas. Can you tell me everyone that sent you a Christmas card last year if you're being honest and truthful? No. Let me ask you another question. Do you, did you get any Thanksgiving cards last year by chance?

Nope. Not a one.

No. What would have made more sense if I sent you a Thanksgiving card. Now, we didn't know each other at the time, but let's just say I sent you a Thanksgiving card versus a Christmas card. You got zero Thanksgiving cards. And you probably got a bunch of Christmas cards.

Yeah. One of them is going to stand out way more. And it's even if you ever, if you did one on a, like, hey, it's a December 1st card. Like, why December 1st? Why not? Right? It's. I see exactly where, where you're going there, it's saved when others are sagging.

Be different, stand out. You know, I'll give you another example. Peter Diamande started the X Prize. So one of the things that I did about two years ago, he spoke at my same conference a couple years ago. And it's not like I'm buddy buddy with Peter. I'm not. But, you know, we stay in touch. And one of the things I noticed, he was on Fortune magazine's 50 Greatest Leaders magazine cover. Excuse me, included in the 50 Greatest Leaders in the world. Bill Clinton was on the COVID And I cropped out Bill Clinton's face. I put Peters. And then I sent a giant greeting card congratulating him to his office. And the day, the day it came out, I texted him and I took a photo of what we did. And anyway, he texted me back in five minutes. Again, being different, being timely, leveraging a trigger event. I teach a lot of this stuff in my Connection Mastery home study classes. I teach a lot of this stuff when we, when we drill down at our live Events where I literally walk people through. Like, how do you organize your phone? You know, how are you tagging people? How are, you know, what things should people look for? You know, what are, you know, like I said, there's certain things I look for. You know, what is. You know, what are people's passions? What are. What school do they go to? So, like, I went to Florida State, and so one of the things I'll do is if someone went to Florida State, when I'm watching a football game, start texting a bunch of people that went to Florida State. Or if you want to take it to the next level, put everyone in a text message thing. Of all my friends that went to Florida State. So now it's one text to maybe 30 or 40 people at one time. And that's what, you know, you're like, you're able to do like. I. I was at the T mobile store literally this past week. I bumped into some guy. I haven't seen him in a couple months, but you know what he said to me? He goes, thank you for sending me the note. So he's Jewish, I'm Jewish. And on rush, on Yom Kippur, which is the holiest day for the Jewish people, I sent out a message to some of my Jewish friends with a very special message, just wishing him a happy and healthy new year. And whatever the message said. And literally that was the first thing he said to me when I walked in to the T mobile store.

That's awesome. I love that. The key is as well is understanding. It's the long game and that you're making. You're doing these little things for people without expectation of immediate. There's nothing that you want. You just know, look, I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Human things, people love to be reached out to. People love to know that somebody else is thinking about them. And maybe it pays off down the road, maybe it. It never tangibly does, but I know, I've noticed.

Can I just tell you one thing? Yeah.

I, you know, I am convinced it is a universal law. If you put out good stuff in the universe, like, you know, I might help you and I may help, you know, I might help five or 10 other people, you know, and Grant, you don't want to keep score, but chances are pretty good. If I'm adding value to your life and helping other people, chances are probably pretty good. It's going to come back. I mean, I was at the Whole Foods place about a month ago. There was a lady who was really disheveled And I didn't know if she was homeless or what the situation was. I tried to start a conversation with her three times. It turned out she was 85 years old. And then eventually I started smiling at her really large. I looked at her, finally made eye contact. We started to engage in some conversation. She was kind of bitching, to be honest, about how bad things were or whatever. And I said to her, hey, what's one thing you're grateful for? Trying to change your state. Okay.

Yeah.

And keep mine. At the time I went to Whole Foods, I just wanted to stay there and work because I was so busy. And she says to me, larry, I'm so glad I didn't get married to the man. Lady's 85 years old. I almost pissed my pants. It was so funny the way she said it. But the thing is, I went and asked her two other things. I'm like, what's one other thing you're grateful for? What's another thing you're grateful for? Anyway, I finished talking to slave for about 15 minutes. I'm getting ready to sit down and do some work. And then I swear to God, some other lady, turns out she's 73 years old. She said, excuse me, do you know how to send photos on Facebook? And I thought I was on candid camera or something. That just can't be happening. And I spent another 15 plus 20 minutes with her, teaching her how to use Facebook Live, how to message, how to send photos. And I connected with her mother, her daughter. I connected her to one of her relatives in England. There's nothing I'm trying to get out of meeting someone who's 74 years old or 85 years old or whatever. But I just think if you go living your life every single day by making deposits, giving first, serving first, making a difference, adding value, serving other people, I am telling you.

Good things will come your way. I guarantee it.

I absolutely couldn't agree more. There's been so many times where people have, you know, come back to me with one thing or another, whether it's an opportunity and they. They remember, man, I. I've just always, you know, I've just always really liked you. I've always appreciated what you did for me way back then. And I kind of wanted to bring this to you first. I mean, I can't tell you how many times things like that exact same thing has happened to me. A couple things. Other things I want to touch on.

Just quick little, and let me just share. I just want to share one thing now that's, that's at the lowest denominator that we just talked about. Let me just talk about at the highest levels of business about two years ago, or whenever it was I had saw on Facebook or it was Twitter, actually, I saw one of the guys that I loosely knew. He used to be the president of one of the companies that I used to work for back in the late 1990s. Today he is the CEO, the second largest software company the world.

Wow.

At that moment in time, two years ago, I noticed that he had a new book that had come out. It was a long time since I had communicated with him. I sent him an email at that moment in time, and I said, hey, congratulations on your book. I've got a really influential network. I'd love to support you. And the first thing I. And look, by the way, I got on his calendar four days after reaching out to them, and then when I was on the phone with him to help him on his book, the first question I asked him was, I said, if I can introduce you to some big influencers that have big reach, is that of value or interest to you? He said, yes. And I went and introduced them to some big influencers in the media who wrote stories on them as well as big social media influencers. So fast forward like a year, year and a half goes by, and.

I reached out to him and I said, hey, thinking of you, by the way. And I. And literally this happened just recently. I met one of his employees, but a guy like this has a gazillion employees, you know, but this employee happened to. Her direct report was him. She was his chief relationship officer. So I opened the email saying, I just want you to know she did such an amazing job representing your company, you'd be proud. And oh, by the way, I found an opportunity for your company at Davos at the World Economic Forum. I just wanted to pass it along to you. He responded back. He responded back in five minutes, put us in touch with some of his top, you know, people to have a conversation, but was all because I wanted to think about him. But I also think the main reason he also responded back was, you know, I was very helpful to him a while ago. So it's those kind of things. It's all about making an impact with people, making everyone's lives just a little better than you left it, you know, beforehand.

Yeah, it really is more tactically something you said earlier, and it just kind of jumped back up into my brain. So when you are first meeting somebody.

And maybe it's not A real quiet one on one me, right? Like it's, there's people around and you, you get introduced to somebody who's pretty influential and that you know that this is somebody you, you, you want to work with or I mean, you know, connect with and you don't have a heck of a lot of time. Are there any ways that you, because you said you went deep, you'll, you may ask some questions like what are some of the most important things going on in your life? Like is there a transition that you do from quick nice to meet you. Small talk into those questions that are able to elicit the responses you want. Because I would imagine that some people feel a little bit weird if they met somebody really big and influential. Like going deep, like, so tell me, what are you most excited about? But maybe not.

Listen, you got to have situational awareness.

Yeah.

Gary Vaynerchuk likes to talk about situational awareness. So you can't go up to someone super successful, don't even know them, and walk up and go, what's the most important project? Or you know, if you have rapport, if it's in the right scenario. It's kind of like for example, there's sometimes I'm with a very influential or successful person and if it's appropriate, I might ask for a photo. There's other times I would never ask for a photo because it's not appropriate. You know what I'm saying? It just really totally depends. But when I do, after I have a. For the one question I will ask is I will ask them.

What is the most important project or goal that you're currently working on in case I, my network can help you. See, I love that that's a million dollar phrase because that will literally most people will say one or two things and that is a great question. Or man, I haven't thought about that. Or wow, I really appreciate you asking me that. And then whatever they tell me, they tell me. And it could be professionally, it could be business, personally or business, it just doesn't matter. And then I just take down and again it all comes down. Let me ask you a question, Brad. Why do robbers rob banks?

That's where the money is.

Why do you think? The top entrepreneurs, the top thought leaders, the top master relationship builders, the top connectors, the reason they stay in touch and follow up and connect the dots because that is where all the money is. You're right. I'll show you any industry leader charity. Most charitable donations come from personal relationships. If people are going to write a big Check for a political party. A lot of times it's coming down to some kind of personal relationship. If someone's trying to get access to a hard to reach decision maker and they have to go get it from someone else, like a referral or, you know, to get in, it's coming off as someone else's personal relationship. If someone's trying to raise money for their company, more often than not, they're tapping some kind of connection in their network to open the door. And. And I just think what everyone does, it can happen quicker, faster, better, through having more relationship capital, having more connection currency. You know, if someone's trying to get their son or daughter into the school of choice or whatever it is, or. Here's another perfect example. I literally just posted this on my Facebook. If they're not following me, they can. I think it's just Larry Benet or Larry K. Benet on Facebook. But I posted something on my Facebook wall this morning. Six years ago, I was in. I think I was at Blog World or something, and my friend Jeff Hazlett had just finished speaking, and he wanted to go have steak. It was a Saturday night, and he had to catch a plane back to New York. And he's like, I want to go to Delmonico's. And there was no reservations. It's a Saturday night, it's packed. It's like all these mega conferences are in town, so you normally need reservations. He literally calls places. One phone call to the manager because he has a relationship with the guy. I swear to God. No reservation. We went from no reservations to no reservations at the place where, boom, they not only give us a reservation, we walk in, five minutes later, we're seated. Our food is like, the first thing is on there. A few minutes after we sit down, 10 minutes later, our steak arrives. It was unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it. And that was all off a really powerful connection that Jeff obviously had nurtured over time.

Yeah, it definitely pays dividends. You know, your question that you said you'll ask somebody is what I love about that is it's. And my listeners who have heard other shows will recognize my version of that. I call it my nutcracking session. But I just say at the end of a conversation, like of a podcast, I typically ask my guests, so, Larry, what's a nut you're trying to crack right now? And I'll follow it up. I say it very specifically, specifically for that reason, too. I go, what's a nut you're trying to crack right now? Whether it's, you know, a person you're trying to meet, something you're trying to learn, a challenge you're trying to overcome, or just something you're. You're kind of going after as a goal so that myself and my listeners can potentially help you. So I loved it when you said that. The reason I call it a nutcracking session is I want that immediate visual. It's almost the pattern interrupt of, like, nut. What's a nut? I'm trying to crack. And a lot of people, like, zig and zag, right. A lot of people will say, so how can I support you? And that's such a broad question. It doesn't really jog somebody's brain. But, like, what you said. What you said is, yeah, what's a big challenge or a big project you're working on so that my network or myself could support you? It's very specific, and it can get them thinking like, oh, well, you know, thanks for asking. Here's. Here's how you could potentially help. So, yeah. And I can't tell you how many times people show legitimate.

Gratitude for say, you know, thank you for that. I actually really appreciate you asking me that, because, yeah, there is a way you can help, and it. It goes really far. So a couple of the things I wanted, I want to make sure that I got from you.

We're gonna. And we're gonna have to wrap. We're gonna have to wrap because I only have a few split seconds, so. Cool.

So we will wrap them. But this is. This has been awesome. I think it's amazing what you've done, both in just building up your personal Rolodex as well as building up saying. And saying has been going on now for how long?

I think we started saying in, I want to say, 2007.

Nice. And it's 2016. Still going strong.

That's what they tell me. We just had an event in Beverly Hills probably about two past months ago, and we had, as a matter of fact, a lot of my mentors and friends, everyone from Jay Abraham to Harvey McKay to Michael Gerber, Keith Farazi to a number of billionaires were there too. So it was a lot of fun. And I think probably the greatest testimonial that I got was from someone that said, you know, they go to a lot of events, but they have not been to an event where everyone was so successful, but more importantly, so nice, kind, generous, vulnerable, authentic, and willing to help each other. So I tried ourselves when I pride ourselves when we do events that we bring socially conscious business leaders and world renowned thought leaders together and investors to kind of come together, not only learn from each other, but truly help each other connect the dots like we talked about. So that's what it's all about.

I love it. Well, how can we crack your nuts or connect your dots? How can we help you in anything you're trying to achieve right now? What's, what's the way that we can.

I probably have them go up and follow me on Facebook. I mean we. At the time, this is a live thing. I mean we. I have my upcoming connection, you know, mastery event. This would be like the first time I've ever pulled back the curtain in a public setting. Teaching everyone how to get whatever goals that they want to handle faster. You know, they want to raise money, show you how to do it faster. I become a best selling authority. You know, Tim Ferriss always talks about it's, it's the relationship with the influencers and how to make it all happen. So whatever someone wants or needs, you know, to get to that next level, like you know, partner, you and I have been talking about partnerships or joint ventures to get the coffee company off to the, to the next level. And so that upcoming event will, you know, be coming up pretty soon, but they can either go to our Facebook page or they can go to the, maybe the LarryBenet.com forward/ebook. They can download a free ebook or something like that. And yeah, by the way, I would love, if you post this, I would love to hear the feedback from your listeners either on my Facebook or hit your Facebook and tag me so I can see some of the comments. And more importantly than anything, what I would love for everyone to do is try, not try, implement, take action on the ideas and take the 30 day connection challenge. So go and do.

Three people a day, three to five people a day. Show appreciation, appreciation marketing and add value to three people a day. Because over the course of 30 days, that's 90 people in your Rolodex. Chances are if you do it right, these are 90 of the most important relationships that you have. And if you did it again and again and again, you can either do it for more people or the same hundred. And you just rinse and repeat, you add a lot of value to your most valuable network. I promise you you're going to see quicker, better results faster and yeah, so that's what I would encourage people to do. I love it, would love to see the, love to see the results.

I love it. Well, thank you very much, Larry for all your time here today with us sharing your insights. And for my listeners, I definitely encourage you to go check out and follow Larry. He's always up to some really cool stuff. LarryBenet b e n e t.com and you can check out all of his other links that he talked about from that site. Everything will be in the show notes. And at any point if you want to pay us back both for Larry taking the time on the show today, the best way to pay this back beside, you know, listening is to share it on social media. Tag Larry, tag myself and let us know what you think, let us know what you need help with because that's what we're here to do. All right, Larry, thank you very much, brother for stopping by the show and I will be looking forward to talking to you soon.

Appreciate you and chat with you soon. Have an amazing day, everybody.

Thank you. And guys, I will see you on the next episode.