John Corcoran — Get Comfortable Connecting With New People

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What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flow chart podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear.

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Welcome back for another lovely episode of the Hustle and Podcast.

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Today we have a very interesting guy. He has a colorful background, and it's very, very unique. And he's got into every position he's in, or maybe most positions in very unique ways. So it's super cool. His name is John Corcoran, and he literally was one of Bill Clinton's writers in the White house at age 23.

He was one of the first people to work at DreamWorks when Steven Spielberg was starting that company up.

He did a lot of Hollywood stuff, lived that life.

Lawyer for a bit.

Lawyer.

I mean, whole fun of a bunch of cool stuff. Holds events all over the place. Fact of the matter is, he's going to get you thinking bigger. He's going to get you thinking different. We're going to debunk Matt and his introvertedness.

Well, okay, so a big point of this conversation is we're going to talk about how to be a better networker when you go to live events like Traffic Inversion Summit and things like that. And he gives a lot of tips for how to connect with people and follow up with people and stay connected with people. And that's kind of the main point of the conversation. And he's going to debunk my introversion, I guess you could say.

True version. All right, so let's get into it. All right, John, thanks for hopping on the show here with us.

Thanks, guys. Happy to be here.

Cool, man. Well, we had the pleasure to attend one of your events last year in San Diego at Traffic and Conversion, but your event is called Rise25. I don't know if that was the event name, but that's your company name. It was a great event. I mean, you pulled out.

Thank you, sir.

It was like 200 people or plus, maybe no more than that.

Yeah, it was crazy. It started as just like a dinner party, and then one thing led to another. It combined with a couple other groups, and pretty soon we had 300 people, a hotel ballroom, and, you know, half the speakers from the conference. It was really cool.

Yeah. Was that the first year you did it around the Traffic and Conversion Summit?

Absolutely. First year. Yeah. But you know what I mean, it's actually achievable. It might sound crazy if you're Listening to this, thinking like, oh, I couldn't just go to a conference for the first time and throw a party for 300 people. But it's actually more achievable than you think. And even if you don't want to do something like that, everyone goes to conferences. And one of the best things you can do is just bringing people together. It could be three people over coffee, or it could be five people over beers or over dinner one night. And it's just a way to take an experience like going to a conference and take it a lot further. So I'm a big fan of doing that sort of.

Well, and isn't it true, too, the one who brings people together is then seen as the authority, or at least the connector.

You're the hub.

Yeah. And so opportunities are just abundant, even if you're brand new to the scene.

Yeah. I mean, the joke is, it's like, you know, you can organize a party that you wouldn't even merit an invitation to. You know, if you. If you work hard enough at it, you know, you become the connector of bringing people together. And actually, I've gone to conferences where we organize a dinner, like the night before a conference happens, and that's a great night to do it because a lot of times there's nothing going on, but people are already in town and they're waiting for the thing to start. They're looking for something to do. You can even get some of the other speakers to come. So speakers that you wouldn't get, you know, much time with if you came up after they spoke and spoke to them then, but, you know, contacting them in Vance and inviting them to something where they can connect with other speakers. It's not just about you, but it's about connecting with other speakers and other, you know, people who are coming to the conference, maybe even other people in the local community. And you can get a lot more face time with some of the key players than you would otherwise.

Love it. Yeah, I mean, we actually put on events, what, maybe two or three times a year here in San Diego. So we're definitely gonna circle back around to that and chat about the event stuff. But before we dive too much into that kind of stuff, I actually want to talk about your background a little bit because we read some of your bio before we jumped on here, and it kind of feels like you've lived multiple lifetimes already with sort of the stuff you've done. I mean, you've worked in the White House, you've worked at DreamWorks. You were a lawyer. I mean, can you kind of give us the real quick brief, like, timeline here?

Yeah. The short version is I just have ADD and I have to jump from one thing to the next before I get bored. But no, I mean, I started my career in the entertainment industry and in politics. So I grew up in la, where the entertainment industry is kind of. Everyone's in the industry. And I was an early employee of DreamWorks, working on one of the early TV shows that they did, working for Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen, which was really cool. It's kind of like the Tesla of its. It was the hot startup at the time and kind of parlayed. I made a career of parlaying one thing into the other. And the great lesson to that is oftentimes people try and keep their head low and just kind of fit in with the crowd. But oftentimes when you stand out and you do something different, you leverage the thing that's memorable about you, and that will create great opportunities for you. So when I was applying to be, you mentioned as a writer in the. In the Clinton White House. Yeah. I was 23 years old. I had a BA in English from a party school. I hadn't gone to Harvard. I didn't have a law degree or anything like that at that point in time. And so I wouldn't have really stood out, especially if I was like someone applying from Capitol Hill. But I was this guy who was coming from DreamWorks in Los Angeles. And so by parlaying one thing into a completely different industry, I had that kind of cachet, and it ended up opening the door to that opportunity. So I say that to people all the time, is like, you know, embrace what is memorable about you, because there's a lot of people in this world. There's 8,9 billion people in this world. Embrace what is memorable, and people are more likely to think of you when it comes time for opportunities.

That's interesting. What's a good exercise? And then I want to ask little specifics about how you parlay things together too. But how would you teach someone, or at least prompt someone to figure out what that quality is for them?

What's memorable about them?

Exactly.

Yeah, you know, a great exercise is just simply going around and asking your friends, your clients.

You know, asking them what is most memorable about you. Googling yourself is another good one, too. Or, you know, just testing it as you. As you meet people. You know, we're constantly having to do some version of our elevator pitch and tell people about, you know, what Our background is so, you know, just testing it from time to time and telling people what, you know, different little tidbits about our background and seeing what, just reading people's faces and seeing what kind of resonates with them. You know, for example, I kind of, for many years I've jokingly referred to myself as I was a writer in the, in presidential letters and messages. And I'll just say, you know, I'm kind of like a second tier speechwriter, or I'll say kind of like a second string speechwriter. If one of the speechwriters pulled a hamstring, then we'd step in, you're the bench warmer. And I'd say things like that, you know, and, and I remember once I was at a party and I, and I described myself in that way and then like a half an hour, an hour later or something, some other person was like introducing me to someone I'd already met. And that other guy I'd already met was like, oh yeah, yeah, he's like the second string speechwriter.

That's cool.

And it was funny because it was self deprecating, which is a good thing. You know, one thing you, if you have something that's considered an accomplishment and you want to be memorable for it, you also want to make sure that it's not intimidating to people. You know, like it's a blessing and a curse to have gone to Harvard. Have you ever noticed someone who goes to Harvard? It's like you ever get to get into a conversation with them, you're like, hey, so where'd you go to college? They're like, oh, in Massachusetts.

Yeah.

Oh really? Where? Oh, just, you know, outside Boston.

Oh really?

Where? Oh, you know, in Cambridge. I know where you went. I know you went to Harvard, dude.

You know, stop lying.

Yeah, it's good to have something that's a little bit self defense deprecating when you have something that's also an accomplishment. Because if you, if you state it, sometimes even just stating it, like Harvard can be seen as well, isn't he conceited? It's a fact he went to Harvard, you know.

Yeah, I mean it's kind of like, like Tim Ferriss, his whole thing was he used to tell people he sold drugs on the Internet because he sold.

He sold supplements and things.

That would always start off a conversation, I guess. But no, I mean that's, that's great advice because I think one thing that I know, I personally do is when somebody asks me, so what do you do? I tend to say, well, that's a tough question. And then proceed to give them a 15 minute explanation of all the various things that I do in my business. And then by the time the conversation's over, they have a glazed over look in their eyes and they're like, okay, I'm gonna go talk to somebody else now.

Because like. Right, right, Yeah. I mean, it's like now, I mean, I say I'm a recovering lawyer and a lot of times people are kind of like, ah, what does that mean? Like, what do you actually do? You know, but at least it's memorable, you know?

Right. And that's, I guess that's what you're looking for. It doesn't need to be a list of things, just find that hook. What's that one thing to just kind of step out of the crowd and, you know, look different.

I met a woman at a conference a couple years ago who told me she said something to the effect of I'm a dream catcher or I'm a dream hunter or something like that. And she was basically like a life coach or like a business coach. But she helped her clients to achieve some really big dream like going on an eight week vacation with their kids or taking six month around the world journey or something like that. And I love the way that she just positioned that and it was really cool.

Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so I'm curious though, going back really quick to the White house thing, being 23 years old, you didn't have your joke as being a recovering lawyer or second string scriptwriter. How did you land that gig out of the whole, you know, out of the sea of people probably trying to apply?

Sure. Yeah. So I had been an intern in the speechwriting office while I was in college. And there are thousands of interns, at least back then there was. There still are thousands of interns that work in the White House. They, the White House depends on a lot of labor from, from interns. And you come through a college program, which is what I did, and you do an internship for three or four months and then you go home. And the thing is, you know, lots of them would like to get a job at the White House, but not many of them do, or not a lot of them do. And so the question was, how do you parlay that into an actual job? And for me, it was trying to just deliver value as much as possible to the key people that I had built relationships with. So it starts with doing a good job. You got to do a good job, you got to impress them with your work ethic and your abilities, and then beyond that, what can you do to go above and beyond? And so when I went back to college, it's not like I just completely forgot about them. I was looking for opportunities to remain top of mind with the speechwriters. And I would see speeches that I would copy or I would send to them, or I would see different articles that I thought were relevant or a poem or a bit of scripture or something like that that I thought that they can integrate to make their lives easier, and I would send them back. And because of that, when an opportunity came along, it was one of the speechwriters, his name's Lowell Weiss, heard about a writing position, and he contacted me and said, hey, I heard about this position, and I was top of mind. And I continued to remain in touch with them, and that's how the opportunity came along.

Love it. Yeah. And being top of mind is so damn important. I mean, for anything. It's just like I do a little, little trick. Anytime a good friend of mine has a birthday, or even maybe it's a client or just some colleague, instead of going on Facebook and saying happy Birthday, I sent him a text, you know, and get a little bit more personable. You get out of the clutter, but you're more like, you know, they're obviously going to respond to you.

Yeah. And, you know, it's a great point. I mean, some people will say, like, oh, you should write a card or personal note or something like that. Most people these days don't even that. I say do whatever is most accessible to you and that you're actually going to do. So if you're actually going to send a text, then send a text. You know, it's better than not doing anything at all. There's one more really interesting lesson about how I got the White House job that's, I think, a good lesson for your listeners is I had heard from Lowell. He told me that there was this position. He said that the person who was hiring for it might give me a call any day now. And so the person ended up giving me a call about three or four days later. And when she gave me a call, she said, you know, hey, I want to get a copy of your resume. I want to hear about, you know, your background. I want to get some writing samples, you know, just all these sorts of things. And I said, okay, Gregor, great. I can send all that stuff to you. And actually, you know what? If you don't mind, if you want a writing sample, you can open up today's New York Times. If you look at the op ed page, I have a letter to the editor that was published today.

Perfect.

It was a little bit of a coincidental timing, but I'd sent that letter in a couple of days earlier, knowing that I might be getting this call and knowing that I might just nail it on the timing. You know, it might come happen just around, around the time that she contacted me and happened to work out that way. If she called me the next day, it probably would have been in our, you know, a letter to the editor in Akron newspaper or something like that. But it happened to be the New York Times, which worked out really well. So my point behind that is if you have some kind of big opportunity coming along to you, don't just lay down and let it happen to you. Take control, take action. What, what can you do in order to position yourself for ultimate success in what it is you want to happen for you?

Very cool. Now I have a sort of follow up question to the same discussion. When it comes to opportunities, I'll tell you that one of the things that Joe and I struggle with in our own business is an abundance of opportunities. I think there's probably some people listening to it going, oh, that sounds like a real tough problem to have. But we have literally like people contacting us on almost a daily basis with opportunities of things they want us to get involved with with them. And I'm curious because I imagine with the sort of life you have and the networking and all the stuff that you do, you have something similar where there's just an abundance of opportunities flowing your way. Do you have any sort of filters or any way of saying no, figuring out which ones are the ones to go with and saying no to the ones that are, you know what I mean?

I was, I was literally having the. I've had this conversation probably five times in the last three days. So this is absolutely relevant. You know, this is something that you, you have to deal with. And you know, someone might be listening to this and thinking, boo hoo, here's the world's smallest violin. You know, I don't have all those opportunities. I can't even relate to this. Click. I'm going to listen to another podcast. But the truth is, you know what, this happens at every level where you have distractions. I remember when I was graduating from law school, I was graduating from law school and I had no real business to speak of at that time. Didn't have a job or anything like that. And I would go, and I would go to like to like these nonprofit organizations that I was kind of interested in getting involved in, and they would ask, they would invite me to join the board. And it was because there was this guy who just graduated from law school, and how useful would it be to have a lawyer on our board? And it was very tempting, but it was distracting ultimately from what I wanted to do. And that happens for all of us where there are distractions, opportunities that come along, and it's not aligned with what our ultimate goals are. What I think is tremendously helpful is having good templates that you can use that are polite, that you've written in advance, that you can use over and over again, that allow you to release a little bit of that guilt that you have from turning people down, but. But in a very nice, polite way. And I've got a couple of those that I use. And actually, if any of your listeners want to just email me, I'm happy to share them. I don't have them set up on a landing page or anything like that. JohnMartBusiness Revolution. They can email me and I'll send it to you. Cool. But I use those, and that helps tremendously, is just being able to.

Turn someone down in a polite way. The other thing that I do, which takes a little bit more effort, is what can you. And actually, this can be a real win, win. How can you then pay that forward? Because, you know, the opportunity that you don't want to take advantage of, someone else might. Right. So, you know, for example, I get a lot of invitations to be part of, like, let's say a virtual summit or something like that. And I right now, with all the commitments that I have, I turn them down. But on the other hand, there are other people, clients of mine, friends, colleagues, peers, who would be happy to take advantage of that because they would like to use it. And then maybe they're gonna leverage it in a really smart way that I'm not set up to do right now. So who else can you introduce that person to where, rather than just saying no, you actually help them out? And they will really appreciate that, really appreciate that. I mean, I've had people that years later, come up to me at conference or something, and they say, you know what? I invited to be, you know, to do whatever. And, you know, you turned me down, but you introduced me to this other person. We really hit it off. It was a great fit, you know, and so that makes a big difference.

Yeah. And that's being the connector. And, you know, that's almost more important than actually being in the role itself, you know, Exactly.

How do you decide what opportunities you will go with? You know, I think there's always that kind of, like, slight fear, too, of like, I'm gonna turn something down, and then two years later, it will have turned out to be Uber that I turned down. You know what I mean?

Right, Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a tough one, right? I mean, my current business partner, Jeremy Weiss, and I, we. You know, he contacted me in 2015. We were both going to the same conference, and he was coming into town a couple of days earlier and said, hey, would you organize a little small group mastermind with me? About a dozen people? And at that point in time, most of the time, I would turn that sort of thing down. It was just, you know, it was something that would be time consuming for whatever reason. I said yes. I just thought, okay, this isn't too much of a time commitment. This seems like a good guy. I didn't know him that well at the time, and I said yes. So sometimes you do have to have those opportunities that come along. On the other hand, I'm a big believer in goal setting. So setting clear goals for yourself and constantly judging any opportunity that comes along through that filter. Is this opportunity going to help me with the goals that I've set myself, or is it going to take time and energy away from achieving those goals and actually prevent me from actually hitting those goals? If you're still hitting your goals and these opportunities are coming along and they're helping you to hit those goals that you set for yourself that you've determined in advance, then by all means, do it. If not, then you got to give them polite decline.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. We've had this discussion, Joe and I, so many times, about the concept of a North Star goal, of this one sort of thing, and the sort of example we always give is someone like Gary Vaynerchuk, whose goal is to one day own the New York jets, or Bill Gates, whose goal is to eradicate diseases off the face of the planet.

Elon Musk populates Mars.

That's another one that we always reference. It's like they have these giant, massive goals that they're shooting for. And so now every little thing that comes up, they can put through the filter of, does this get me closer to that or farther away from that?

Exactly right. And, I mean, I would even argue if you compare those, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk looks a little petty, but.

It doesn't. And does that really inspire people around you? You know, I mean, I don't want to diss the guy that I'm on my podcast. He's. He's a nice guy and everything, and he's charismatic, and people are drawn to him as it is. But, you know, let's say the goal is a little bit different. You know, I mean, Tony Robbins, his goal is to feed off, provide 100 million meals or something like that. The hungry people, you know, that rallies people around you. Elon Musk, too, is. He's not a great boss. He's a tough guy to work for. And he's not charming, charismatic in person. I've met him once. He's not that charming, charismatic at all in person. But he gets people to buy into his vision, you know, this big vision that he has. And so, yeah, I think it's tremendously powerful to have a North Star like that.

Yeah, and that's. It's ironic because we know what the North Star is, but it's like, how do we figure out our North Star? I mean, we. We definitely have done a ton of goal setting, and this is. This is definitely going down our own rabbit hole, so we won't have to go here.

But I think it's relevant for your listeners too, though, too, because everyone struggles with that. You know, what is the big goal? And it might change. I mean, you know, if you're struggling right now to get clients in the door, you gotta focus on that, you know?

Exactly.

Having that bigger vision is not gonna detract from getting clients in the door. Having that bigger vision is gonna get more people in the door, 100%. We had a guy who came to one of our Rise 25 events, and one of his big priorities was helping. You know, he had immigrated to this country at age 15 on his own and come and live with a relative. Didn't even go to high school at the time, and he was kind of a younger guy, didn't go to high school, and he actually worked as a janitor for like three or four years until he could get his butt in school and then go to school at nights while still working. I mean, what a great story. And then he turned it around, and he was committed to helping foster kids and helping young impoverished kids and teenagers and getting them on the right path. And that mission, though, was not really integral to the business that he ran. And so we encouraged him to make that a part of it because let everyone else rally around that and let even people who refer business to you think, I'm supporting this guy who supports this organization. And that makes me feel even better that he's doing that.

I can connect with that one because I do foster a kid right now. So that is good for you. There we go. So that lead to a North Star.

That's a great North Star. I mean we can't all be, you know, yesterday, as we're recording this yesterday, SpaceX just landed there, launched their, their Falcon Heavy rocket, the, the most powerful rocket in over 40 years. And I couldn't even concentrate yesterday. I was so excited. Yeah.

It'S amazing. But we can't all do that, right? I mean, you know, part of me this morning, as I was biking to work, I biked my kids to work and I was thinking.

Man, I feel like crap. Elon Musk is doing these amazing things in the world. We can't all do that. But we can have an impact on our local community. We can foster a kid, we can support another family or someone who's doing good work. I live up near wine country, north of San Francisco. My wife works up in wine country. She had her school, she works at a community college. 600 kids, students lost their homes, about five dozen colleagues lost their homes. And rather than like having it be overwhelming, she just focused on three other families and helping them to rebuild. And then others in our community were able to donate, you know, material, furniture, clothing, which we collected and then she gave to those three families. So that's one small concrete thing that you can do.

I love it. No, that's great. So everybody can have a North Star and it can evolve over time. Yeah. Depending on where you're at. Well, cool. Let's chat about, because prior to this call we had a little chat with Matt. Because you hold Rise 25 your events, let's quickly actually discuss about what Rise 25 is kind of the things you're trying to serve there. I know it's the one to many approach to professionals. And then I want to kind of debunk Matt really quick in his networking abilities here.

Sure, sure, yeah. So Rise 25 kind of originated out of. Jeremy and I, as I mentioned earlier, did a small group event together before conference. It was about a dozen people. We really liked it, we got feedback from the people who came, we found ways we could improve it and we kept going and we just really enjoyed doing it. And they've gotten bigger and bigger. And as you mentioned, the VIP reception we had at Traffic Conversion Summit Conference last year had about 300 people. We expect about 3, 3, 300, 400 people this year and we continue doing them. And Our market has kind of evolved. We kind of have two markets right now, right now, which generally advise everyone against doing right. But the primary market is professional services. People like, you know, I'm a recovering attorney, so people who are trading hours for dollars, who want to get away from that and want to leverage their time better and do something one to many. Then we also are also working with E commerce founders too, which sounds a little bit different, but they have similar types of challenges. And we're holding an event in Las Vegas in March in conjunction with the Prosper show conference where we're doing VIP days for their highest level attendees. Those are the primary things we do.

Got it. The main reason for the event.

Is it for you guys to network and meet more of these types of people that can potentially become clients. Is it to just bring people together? I mean, what's the motive from a business standpoint to put these events on everything?

You know, whenever I've thought too much or focused too much on me, me, me, what I can get out of anything, that's when things have failed. When I just focus on helping other people, bringing other people together, making connections, connecting people so that they can have some time together, then the benefits will flow from that. And so that's just what we focus on. You know, for years I wrote a blog and a podcast, Smart Business Revolution, where I talked about strategies for building better relationships in business. And now just what started with doing small little dinners and events has grown and become bigger and bigger and do larger events where we're just doing the same thing. We're just trying to connect people together, introduce them to one another and foster great relationships so people can go off and do great things in the world together.

I love it. I mean, that's all the reason why we should hold events of any kind, you know?

Exactly.

Because Matt and I actually run an event and, you know, and there was a purpose behind it originally, but then kind of recently the purpose has changed. So we're just like, okay, so what? But exactly what you said. It's bringing people together and it's people we enjoy. They bring their friends, new opportunities or people, you know, meet each other.

Yeah.

Just get.

Good things happen.

Yeah. So a little bit about our event, just real quickly is we, we put on these events. I mean, we don't really consistent, consistent schedule, but we shoot for once a quarter. But basically we're. We're sort of beer nerds. San Diego has a very thriving brewery scene and we've always loved craft beer, and we're sort of Nerd. We nerd out about brewing. So we actually go around to different breweries in San Diego.

Oh, my God, I'm in love.

And we put on business networking events in the breweries. The breweries love to have us do it.

Where do I sign up? Serious.

You know, we're. We're.

Well, we brew on their system.

We brew on their system. So we actually go in and make a unique beer with them just for our event. So we do this about two weeks before the event. We make a unique beer with them, and then we market the event, and then we bring a bunch of business owners out to their brewery. So the brewery gets more exposure, the business owners get to network. The brewery's making money off it. I mean, we.

And you're drinking beer.

And we're drinking beer.

Yeah.

I mean, we literally have no twist.

Twist my arm.

You know, there's no financial gain from it for us whatsoever, other than we're helping out breweries and we're meeting new people. But it's always. It's kind of funny because I did sort of hint earlier, and I think we talked about this before we hit record, was that I'm ultra, ultra introverted. So I have to. You know, it usually takes me like, two beers before I, like, I even open my mouth at a networking.

And it's really ironic because Matt's the one that really loves to talk a lot.

Well, when it comes to the podcast and stuff like that, you can't shut me up. But when I'm face to face with people, it's a different story.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes that means, you know, adapt your business so that it plays to your strengths. Right. You know, I mean, I often say to people, People say to me, like, should I start a podcast? Well, that depends. Do you like talking to people? Do you like interviewing people? If you don't, then don't do it. Right, Right. You know, or find a way that you can use your strengths. If you're really chatty and talkative and doing a podcast, then maybe that's a good strength for you.

Yeah, it's interesting. The podcasting actually started out as sort of a challenge to myself because I didn't really make an effort to network and meet new people and, you know, go out and expand my business contacts. And so this was a sort of exercise in getting out of my comfort zone. I just need to get out there and talk to people, and this is my way of doing it from still being sort of in my own safety bubble. And, you know, over Time, I obviously just got more and more comfortable with it. But, yeah, I mean, as far as the events go, still to this day, even when we put on our own events, I'm very not in my comfort zone.

Yeah. You know, and that's fine. That happens. You know, I think that what you do is just find ways that you can adapt. And sometimes the problem, you know, people will say, I'm introverted. I don't like going to networking events. Sometimes. The problem is, and I don't know if it's the case with you, but with other people maybe, is they're going. They haven't really figured out what the larger picture is here, and the events they're going to are not really aligned with what they ultimately want to do. Maybe they're going to conferences that are for their current employer, for their current job, and it doesn't really light them up anymore. So you really got to take a couple steps backwards and get really clear on what's the ultimate goal here. What do you want to do? If you have your own business, does it need to evolve in some way so you're not really lit up? And oftentimes the reason that we are not excited about going to an event or not excited about meeting people is because of we're not meeting. We're not in the right room full of people. Right. And then once you get in that room full of people, then that can improve a lot, make it a lot less painful in order to connect with those people. The other thing I'll say is that some of the best people out there who I know out there building relationships for their business are introverted. And I'll take an introverted person who follows up and who's consistent and who develops relationships and put a system in place over an extroverted person who doesn't do any of those things any day of the week. Because you have some people that are, like, big and boisterous, and they're at a party and, you know, they're slapping people on the back and other people are laughing, and it's all this kind of stuff. And they're making a big impression right then and there, but then they don't follow up at all, you know, and that's not gonna get them anywhere, you know, and then when they do need something, then they come around a year, two years later, and that's when they're asking when they haven't done anything to build or nurture the relationship. Whereas, like, the, you know, an introvert maybe is totally cool with after the Fact, sending an email and following up to someone that they met with, met at an event and saying, hey, really enjoyed meeting you. And then maybe finding some way that they can further that relationship. Maybe it's. I'm a big fan of interviews, what we're doing right here now. It's a great way to further a relationship. So, you know, doing a podcast interview or interviewing someone and profiling them in some way on a blog or an article or something like that is another way to further the relationship. But look for those opportunities and then be consistent about following up. And that will often overcome what we consider limitations from introversion.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the podcast really was our sort of way to systematize networking, so to speak. You know, it was our system to once a month make sure we're reaching out and talking to new people we've never talked to before. And I mean, that is legitimately one of the top, like three reasons we created the podcast.

Oh, yeah.

Was for that. Now when you do so at networking events, I guess everybody's going to have like a different strategy to it. But are you more of like a work the room type of guy or do you go and find one or two people that you want to just kind of hone in? These two people are the people I'm probably gonna, you know, I'm here to meet these two people for this specific goal. Or do you try to like work the room and talk to as many people as possible when you're at networking events?

Well, it depends. If there is a list of attendees that's published in advance, then I'll try and find that and look at who's coming so I can strategize a little bit. The people that I really want to talk to. If I don't know at all in advance who's going to be there, then you might try and contact someone when you get there and find out who's there. I'm a big fan of sometimes going to an event and trying to help out. Like checking people in at the door is a great way to get to know every single person in that room. And that can help with some of the anxiety because you've met everyone, you're not going into a room where you don't know anyone and you can just go back up to the people that you checked in and have a conversation with them. You know, beyond that, the thing is sometimes you don't know where a relationship is going to lead. You know that you've met someone and you don't know what the long term potential is with it, you know, and so you kind of got to let these things shake out a little bit further into the future, you know, it might, it might turns out that there are other opportunities. That's why I'm a big fan of going afterwards and finding some way of following up with them, doing an interview or something. Because then you can get them to know them in a deeper way. Oftentimes at these, you know, networking events in person, you've got, you know, hundreds of people in the room. Maybe it's really loud, maybe that's kind of intimidating and you talk to someone for a couple of minutes, that's it. It's hard to really get to know them in a deeper way. So if you can find some way to follow up with them, then you can get to know them in a deeper way and figure out if there is some opportunity for collaboration. Because there's not going to be collaboration opportunities with everyone. Right? I mean it's a big world so we're not going to be able to collaborate with everyone. So just look for that excuse. The other thing I'll say is that look for some way that you can follow up. So when I'm talking to someone, I'm looking for, okay, what does this person need? What could they use help with right now? Is it a recommendation, is it an introduction or something like that? So that I have an excuse to follow up. So I have an excuse to say, hey, what's your contact info? What's your email address? I'll follow up and I'll send you that resource that we just discussed.

I think that's what you just said there. I guess I've always kind of done unconsciously because that was how I grew. So Matt and I, we used to go to events all the time to grab grow our business. Initially that's I had a service business. So it was all very one on one clients, you know, and I'm more the extrovert rather than that, you know, doing a lot of the work online. But yeah, in my head I always thought of like how, how can I help this person in some way? But the reasoning was to follow up or have a further conversation, get to know them on a one on one scale. Maybe you're at a party, you can only get a few words in with them, but you're like this person seems very interesting. I don't know if something develops immediately, but maybe a year down the line something can happen.

Yeah, you never know. I mean, how many people have you met at something and it doesn't lead to an opportunity right then and there, or six months or a year or two, three years later until some opportunity comes along. But what helps a lot is getting to know more about that person because you never know what's going on. It might be that their spouse needs help with something and you can help out that spouse in a professional capacity. But I often urge people to not try and jump to the professional capacity first. So, you know, you'll see someone who's like, they're a photographer or they are a CPA or something like that, and they're immediately looking for, okay, how can I deliver value? How can I get them into a conversation about what it is I do professionally? And when you try and get into that too quickly, then that's when people are kind of off put, you know, so sometimes you want to slow that down and see, like, hey, where, how else can I deliver value to this person? You know, can I give them a recommendation or resources, something? One I love is just, you know, find out, like, what are they, where are they traveling to this year? And if someone mentions they're going on vacation to Puerto Rico, you know, oh, do I know someone in Puerto Rico I can introduce them to, you know, or they, they're going on vacation somewhere else. I mean, maybe I've been there before and I can give them recommendations of places where they should go and eat restaurants. It's just such a small little thing, but allows you to connect on a more personal level.

Yeah, no, I mean, my least favorite question when I'm at networking events is what do you do? Because like I said earlier, I usually am pretty good at getting people to get their eyes to glaze over when I start explaining what I do. Because I'm an entrepreneur, at any given time, I'm involved in five or six businesses. It's a complicated question to answer, and I absolutely hate answering that question. But if somebody was to come up to me, I mean, I have a buddy that comes to mind. He may be a mutual friend. I'm not sure. His name is Ori Bengal.

Yeah, he came to one of our events two months ago.

Yeah, everybody knows him. He's one of the most well, networked people I know. That's why I assume probably everybody knew him. But the way he introduces himself to people is he comes up to random people he doesn't know and just tells a joke. And a lot of times they're just dirty jokes and people are caught off guard, like, whoa, did he just say that?

Yes, he did.

But instant Rapport. You just had a laugh over something together and, and it wasn't starting off with so what do you do in business? You know?

Yeah, right. Yeah, I hate that question too. You know, it's nice if you can wait for a while before getting to that.

Yeah, I'm curious.

It's fine to know, you know, to get into that discussion, but not right away.

Right. Yeah. What are your. Since you've held so many dang events now, what are some of the like the worst networking things you've seen people do? I mean, I could imagine the first one is like shove a business card in someone's face too fast.

Yeah, that's pretty much the worst is trying to get someone into a sales conversation too quickly, you know, or you know, have a discussion about one of the third rails of conversation like religion or politics or something like that too quickly. You know, you never know where people are coming from. You know, those are the main ones. Or just not being open to a conversation, you know.

It'S hard to know because sometimes people are, they're introverted as well. So they have. Have trouble opening up to other people and that can often be perceived by others as the person being conceited or not interested in having a discussion with someone. So I try and give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to, you know, in a networking event or something like that where people are a little bit uncomfortable, but you want to be cognizant of that, of the image that you put off to other people because you might be intimidating, you might be putting off a really negative image to people.

Because of that. It's like people talk about people's resting face, like having an angry resting face.

You might have an angry resting face and other people are like, oh, she's a bitch. Yeah.

So how are you with names? Because obviously that's a big thing with networking is people say I'm bad with names. And obviously there's a self fulfilling prophecy element to that. But that is actually one thing that I've personally always struggled with is somebody will tell me their name and three minutes later I'm in my head going, all right, I just need to say, all right, it was good talking to you, bud. Because I can't remember their name.

Yeah, I am not great with names.

We meet so many people and I generally, it's like I need to hear someone's name a couple of times before I'm going to remember it. But you know, with anything like that, you know, everyone has some thing that they're insecure about or they feel like it's gonna hold them back. And it doesn't, it doesn't need to hold you back. Most of these things are in our head. You know, I mean, I get emails from people on a daily, weekly basis and people are talking about every different way they think that they have something that's holding them back. And one person saying, oh, you know what, it's because I'm a woman or it's because I'm a man or because I'm old, it's because I'm young, it's because I'm disabled. You know, people have every different reason to believe that there is something holding them back. And that does not need to be the case. You know, you look at, you know, there are motivational speakers who have suffered horrible burns or who are disabled or in a wheelchair and you know, they just, they, they have a way of tapping in and realizing that it is the psychology in our head that holds us back. When I was 23 years old and I had a BA in English from a party school and I was interviewing for a job to write the President's words, if I'd let that hold me back, I would have said, what the heck am I doing here? I do not belong. I just said, you know what? I have confidence in my abilities. I know that I can perform up to the task and I can do this job. And that's what we all need to do. And rather than dwelling or fixating on negatives or inabilities, focus more on your abilities and laugh it off. Okay, I forgot someone's name. Or find some other way to figure out what that person's name is and you'll get past it.

Yeah, no, that's great advice. So there's sort of one last small rabbit hole I want to go down with you real quick and then we can go ahead and wrap it up. Unless there's something else Joe wanted to go into. But when it comes to the event, the Rise 25 events. As far as like the logistics and actually putting on event, what, what sort of things have you found to be the most difficult about putting on event? Actually, I'll just, I'll stop at that question, then I'll have a follow up question.

You know, far and away getting people there, getting people to come, you know, inviting people, getting people to buy tickets is always the hardest. But in most events there's kind of a tipping point and there are things that you can do in order to make it easier for yourself. Like if you're organizing a big conference. Then a lot of times they try and get that marquee speaker to lined up, you know, and that name will draw a bunch of other people. Doesn't that's not always the case. Doesn't always happen that way. Sometimes you hear disastrous stories, but you try and do that. Or if it's even like a dinner, like a dinner at a conference where you're trying to get a couple of people together, getting those first couple of people to commit to say yes. Often you start with your friends or people that know like and trust you get those to say yes and then getting others after that.

Got it? Yeah. I mean my follow up question was going to be and you kind of already sort of answered it, but what would be the best advice you would give somebody who's thinking about going and putting on their own events? You know, what sort of things would they think to, to keep in mind or should be thinking about before they go do it?

Sure.

One I would think about how are you gonna make this profitable? Because anything that you do, if it's not profitable, you're not gonna be able to do it for long. And if you can't do it, then you can't have a bigger impact in the world. You know, it's like I was, I was just earlier today I was talking to a stand up comedian and he had organized a couple of small comedy shows and he told me that he'd done a couple of them and he lost like $10,000 on it. He kind of like laughed it off. And I said, look man, you need to make these things profitable because you do an amazing thing. You bring humor to the world, you make people laugh. And in today's day and age, more people need to laugh because these are very serious times we live in. And if you go losing money on all these events, you're not going to be able to continue to do it. So how can we figure out a way to make that profitable for you? So I'd say the same thing with people. Look, if you want to do live events, if you want to do some kind of event, whether it's small with 5, 10 people or whether it's a larger one, start with something smaller, work your way up, but find a way to make it profitable. And that might mean that you need to charge enough in order to make it profitable for you, or at least break even, but preferably profitable. Or you have some way to make it profitable on the back end, but find some way to make that work, even if that means that you're going to get a bunch of people saying no, you know, you're going to get a lower success rate. You charge $9 and yeah, you might get a 90% say yes success rate. You charge $100, $200. It's going to be harder to get as many yeses. But look, you're going to make it profitable and that's going to allow you to continue to do the things you do and to have the impact in this world. So that's what I would say.

That's great advice. One thing that's interesting too is if you charge too cheap for it, people don't value it as much and may just not show up. We've noticed that with some of our events where we've charged $5 a head to get in and people just buy tickets in advance and then say, I'll decide if I want to go later. And we actually struggle getting people to show up when they paid so little for their ticket. So it's another.

That's a big factor. That's a big factor. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'll even use that as a selling point with people. I'll say, look, this is not a cheap ticket to come to this thing. What does that mean? That means you're going to get other people that are committed coming to it. And that means you're going to get people that are serious, that are running more significant businesses. And it also means that you're gonna take it seriously. I mean, I went to a conference a couple of years ago, a number of years ago, where I'd never dropped this kind of coin before. It was like $7,000 for two days. And I guarantee you I took it seriously. I showed up early, I made sure I met people, I followed up with people, I made sure I got ROI out of it. If it had been a hundred dollar event, I wouldn't have treated it the same way. Just to be quite honest about my own personality. And most people are like that.

Right?

That's, I mean, that's exactly. It's kind of ironic. That's how we shifted our business model. So instead of selling all these minute, you know, $100, $500 products, we're selling well, it's only free or we're selling very high end consulting or some kind of partnership equity deal. So it's, we've seen massive improvements in the quality of work, it's more enjoyable and we're making more money.

Hey, hey, that's a good thing.

That advice definitely does not go for only events. I mean, I've Hired consultants and coaches and, you know, the, the, the most I've ever paid for a coach was $6,000. But, you know, as soon as I paid that money, I got on the call with him and I, and I followed everything he told me to the letter because I knew I needed to get an ROI on this or my wife was going to kick my ass, you know, so. Right, that, that's definitely great advice. That applies to pretty much anything in business.

That's right.

Yeah, it does. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, putting that kind of money down, you just take it so much more seriously. You know, you're gonna, you're gonna follow through on that stuff and, and make sure that you get an ROI out of it.

Right on.

Absolutely.

Well, I think we're gonna wrap it up, but I guess a couple questions. I'm just curious if there's something that maybe that, that you think would be beneficial to the audience here that we haven't asked. Maybe there's, there's a question that you think that should, that should pop up. I don't want to stop you, though.

You know, this is a longer discussion, but we haven't talked. I don't think about time, you know, time. This is the number one objection you hear from people whether, no matter what we're talking about, but how do I get all this stuff done? I don't have enough time to get everything done as it is.

Sure.

And you can talk about tools and hacks and all that productivity, all that kind of stuff, you know, but bottom line, it boils down to priorities. You know, what are your priorities? And it gets back to that goals discussion we were talking about there. What are the, what's the. The North Star? And then everything needs to flow down from the North Star to the other goals that you have for yourself on a yearly and a quarterly basis and even down to a weekly or daily basis. What are you going to get accomplished in this day? And this time they're going to have. Help you to achieve the larger goals and everything else you can peel away because it's not really in service of that thing. So that's a big one. I just thought maybe we could address because of that.

I love it. Yeah. No, time is. Time is crucial, and I think that would be a long discussion.

Do you have any, like, quick.

I don't have the time for that discussion.

I'm sorry, I was going to say, do you have any, like, real quick, Real quick tips that you can give? I know one of them is you have, I believe you have an assistant? Because I think we've been emailing back and forth with your assistant. So I know that's, that's at least going to be one of them. But do you have, do you have any more, like, just real quick tips for people that struggle with. I don't have enough time.

Yeah. So one that I often mention is, especially if you feel like you can't afford an assistant yet, is to use what's called a CRM software, Customer Relationship management. Not everyone does. A lot of people, you ask them what's their customer relationship management software like? Do you mean my phone or do you mean my Gmail? No, like we have communication now with people across so many different platforms. Facebook, messenger, email, LinkedIn, text message, phone. There's all these different platforms. And using any one of them as our organized centralized CRM does not work. And, you know, most of them out there, the ones that are worth their snuff, you got to pay for. Okay, so it's gonna be 30 or 50 bucks a month, so that we're talking 600 bucks a year. If you can't get ROI out of that, you're either not using it or you're doing something wrong.

Right.

So one of the strongest things I recommend for people is have a CRM that you can use to organize all the relationships in your life. We've got thousands of relationships in our lives now. You don't need to organize all them. You need to practice an 8020 approach and really focus on the ones that are most important. But use something like that. So I use one religiously now. It doesn't take a ton of time to do, and it will save you a ton of time. So a time like this, when I'm organizing my event, my party in a couple of weeks in San Diego, I can just look up. I can look up in my CRM and just sort it by people in San Diego or Los Angeles. And I can see, send an email, fire an email off to everyone in, you know who's close by. And it comes out as an individualized, personalized individual message. Doesn't look like a big spam message that's sent to a bunch of other people inviting them to the party. So that is a huge, huge time saver right there. So I'm a big fan of that. And what's that tool called for me? I use contactually.

Okay, I've used that.

Others. You know, there are other ones out there that you might use, but contextually is the one that I've been using.

Very cool.

No, that's a, that's an amazing use. And I feel like, yeah, there's just so many platforms and messaging going on just all over the world. Everything's so segmented these days. It feels like they're all competing against each other for attention. But then inherently you might miss a super important connection or meeting or, sorry, a message from someone who maybe has a cool opportunity or just wants to meet up for coffee. So. Yeah, good stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool.

And I guess a wrap up question. We always like to ask folks what their go to books are. Maybe there's something that they just really love to read, you know, yearly something that you just recommend to other people.

The one that I frequently recommend is Give and Take by Adam Grant. And he's one of the youngest professors at Wharton. He, you know, for the longest time in my own life, I felt like if you go out and you do good in the world, that the reward, the world will reward you. Well, what Adam Grant did is he went out there and he's really a great writer and he tells all these great stories, but he backs that up with social science research. And he found that basically if you are a giver rather than a taker, that is, you go out there and you try and help other people rather than just try and take, dictate, take and get whatever you can, you are much more likely to rise to the top of the success ladder. And he gives examples across all kinds of different industries of how that plays out. And it's really engaging, readable book. So I'm a big fan of that book.

Love it. Yeah, that's a new one to me. So I'm going to definitely pick that one up. All right, so the Rise 25 event, what's the date of it? I'm going to do my best to get this episode out before that happens. So what's the date of the next rise 25, the Traffic and Conversion Summit one.

Yeah, great. So it is Sunday, February 25th, as we're recording this on the 7th. About 20 days away, 18 days away or something like that. And it's, it's a VIP reception we're gonna have. Last year we had about half the speakers there. If anyone's interested, email me again johnmartbusinessrevolution.com and we'll see what we can do. Depends on capacity issues, depending on when this is published.

Very cool, very cool. And then where would you want people to go after listening to this episode? You know, what website do you want to check out? Do you want them to follow you on social media. What do you want to do next?

Yeah, people always like getting freebies. So what people often like to grab is I've got some free email templates for connecting with the influencers and VIPs in your world. Actually, come to think of it, I could even add into that email template the polite decline templates that we were just talking about. I think I'll add that in there. So if you go to smartbusiness revolution.com it'll have a page there where you can opt in to get my magic email template. So go there, download that, and then rise25.com is the other business. So the two are my two homes on the web. Sweet.

Good stuff. I definitely want to see those templates. So I'll be opting in myself for sure.

Thank you, sir.

Awesome. John. No, thank you. And this has been a good time and hope to see you. And definitely we'll try to make it out there in a couple of weeks here.

All right, thanks, guys.

Bye.

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