How you can expand your network without being a spammy d*ck with Danny Clarke S6E7

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Okay, so welcome to the Boost Hospitality Podcast, season six, episode seven. Today we are going to be talking about how to network without being a spammy dick. And we've already done a podcast episode this series where we spoke, talked about podcasting, we talked about networking and we had Elaine Watt on, which was fantastic when we're talking about how she got a podcast going and how that helped her service accommodation business. But tonight I wanted to get on Danny Clark of the VIP Life. Danny's going to introduce himself in a second, he's going to tell a little bit more about him. But when it comes to building a network, when it comes to starting from scratch and getting more people and eyes on your business, there's a lot of ways that you can do it. There's a lot of right and wrong ways. And Danny is probably one of the best that I know in how to do this the right way. And he talks about it so clearly and so understanding. And Danny's background is more mlm, so network marketing. And obviously this whole podcast series is all about serviced accommodation. But the similarities, and we'll go through these in this podcast episode a very, very, very, very close. So we're going to get Danny on. I'm going to let him introduce himself now. So Danny, thank you very much for joining us. If you could please spend a couple of minutes letting everybody know a little bit more about you.

Hey, how's it going everyone? So, yes, as Mark kindly said, my name is Danny Clark. I'm a founder of a company called the VIP Life, which launched in April of 2017. Previous to that, spent a 10 year career in the profession of financial services, mortgage advisor, pensions, investments, that kind of stuff. We then moved into network marketing very simply because my wife and I, we had big dreams that we wanted to achieve, which included basically being able to go skiing in the winter and surfing in the summer. Very simple kind of idea, but it was a concept that's really one that allowed us to do what we want, when we want, with who we want. Right. Which is kind of the dream for a lot of people. So we went about it, had a ton of success in the network marketing industry. We then quit the company was with to be able to kind of follow our own path. And since then we've had a pretty meteoric rise really over the last two years. Some of it's been good fortune, you got to have a bit of look about on the way, right place and right time in certain circumstances. But we've just been pretty strategic and just relentless with the work that we've been doing. And yeah, it's pretty cool. Like, it's just allowed me to get asked by, you know, people like Mark to jump on a podcast.

Amazing. So tonight, like I say, we're going to talk about how to network the right way. The reason why I really want to do this episode is that you all know what it's like and Danny will have experienced this. We're going to talk about this in a second. But when you're in whatever it's MLM or service accommodation, you find that your Facebook just gets bombarded with, with friend requests and there's no rhyme or reason. They just do it because that's what they get told to when they go to these training weekends on how to get started in service accommodation. Now, my aim of this podcast episode is just to show people that there is another way. And I think, Danny, from when you started out in MLM all those years ago, there's a load of things that you will have noticed how people went about spreading the word of their startup business, of their franchise business. Now, what did you, what did you do? Particularly if you remember it, what was the process and why did you try and do things a little bit differently from what everybody else was doing?

Well, I mean, the main, the main thing that I realized, like even back in the day is if you ever put a picture up on social media, you know, I'd been out with the family, you know, I'd gone to the cinema or I'd been to the beach or I don't know, whatever, right? We were just chilling at home or whatever, just normal stuff. Whenever I posted that, it always get a ton of engagement, hundreds of likes, loads of comments. And then as soon as I ever mentioned my business and it didn't matter what the business was, whether I was still in financial services or network marketing, even these days, with the coaching comparative to when we put an offer out, a pitch post compared to a normal post post, like it's chalk and cheese in terms of the level of engagement. So I thought, well, there's obviously something there. You know, people like to buy, but they don't necessarily like to be sold to. But the challenge was that there wasn't anyone else out there that we could find who could tell us, well, how do you kind of go for engagement? Because we hear it all the time. Well, likes and comments, they don't pay the bills. Well, in actual fact, they kind of do because it's that first stepping block into somebody becoming a paying customer for you. Because once you've got engagement with somebody, well then you can actually have the opportunity to have a conversation. And that conversation then gives the opportunity to sell or pitch or promote your products. So in actual fact, engagement is super important. And the one thing that we've always kind of done is we've always held the bottom of any industry that we're in. Like, rather than helping, like high level leadership, it's always been the people that have been struggling, people that are struggling, they tend to say the same things, which is, you know, I don't know what to say, I don't know how to say it. I don't like these things that I'm having to do. I don't like selling and pitching and all these kind of, all the time, but they don't know how to do anything else. And so that was what it was really for, is we just thought to ourselves, well, let's just kind of think about this. If I was to meet somebody in the street and I was to say hello to them for the first time, what would I do? Well, I would just say hello or I'd shake their hand or give them a kiss on the cheek or a hug or whatever was the kind of acceptable way to interact with that person at the time. And then I'd have some small talk. And then if they said some things to me, you know, it's like, oh, bloody hell, I could help them. Then I would tell them about it because it seemed like a really normal, obvious recommendation to make. But then when I told them about it, I'd have to check in with them first. I need to make sure I've got permission because it's a bit weird if I just start turning into a business conversation and they don't want it to be there. So I'd make sure it's all right to do so, or I'd arrange another time in the future to discuss it. And then when you're actually speaking to somebody about buying something, well, you know, 90% of buying decisions are emotional. You know, people don't need the detail at first. They just want to get excited about the thing. So, okay, well, let's talk about that stuff first of all. And then people do need the detail because otherwise they talk themselves out of it and then you just ask someone to buy it. And I thought, well, bloody hell, there's actually a pattern here, isn't there? And I thought, well, all right, well, let's just now try applying that into a business process. Let's try applying that to social media and see what happens. And we first started to figure this out when we was doing network marketing and we was like a struggling network marketer. And we were told that we had to do these. Just all these things that we didn't want to do, like you've got to do these parties and you've got to do these coffee days. And we just didn't want to do the thing. So we just thought to ourselves, well, screw it, we're going to do this new way that we think is right. And we did it. And our business revenue went from $3,000 a month, and in six months it went to 56,000. And it was simply because we'd cracked this system and it was simple enough that other people could also do it. And that is what really started to help us to think, oh, actually, maybe we could coach and teach people this stuff because it's so simple and easy for us to do. We're getting results, but also lots of other people are getting results who aren't as good or who aren't as experienced as us yet at achieving the same sort of thing.

I like that. And it's something as simplistic as just telling your story, documenting your story, talking about what you're doing, but at the same time, it's just as bringing it back to old school where imagine going to, say, a business event and you can spot them a mile off. You go to a business event and you see somebody and the first thing they do is they just try and give you a business card without any conversation, without any sort of back chat or anything like that. They're just automatically trying to pitch you what they're doing. It's the exact same process. What you talked about meeting somebody on the street as being online, whether it's offline or online, Facebook or wherever, there's definitely a big takeaway there. Now, obviously you're talking about a network marketing sort of background, but if you sort of flip that to service accommodation, for example, just to fill in anybody who doesn't know what service accommodation is. When you start out, there's either two ways that you go down is you. You go straight in it with your own money and you plow it into getting hold of these properties, doing it up and then getting people rented. Or you need to network to find people that are going to come on board and be investors with you. And this is what a lot of people do. They go down the second route because maybe the funds aren't there. When you're first starting out and you see it so many My inbox is just full of it now. Just saying, hey, I'm looking to connect. I see you're in the service, accommodation groups or whatever. Find out more. And it's just straight into it where if you just sort of take a step back, try and have a conversation, see if you get along and then like you say, find out what the problems are. And if you can honestly match the problems of a need, you'll do so well. Okay, so you've obviously done this for a long, long time. Like you say you're now coaching people on how to do this. What would you say is the one biggest mistake that you see people make time and time and time again when they're looking to get out, launch the business and build a network?

What is the thing that people get wrong? It's difficult because people do get things wrong, but they kind of need to as well. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes like, as long as you're doing something, especially in the beginning. You know, certainly my experience like making the mistakes, getting things wrong have helped me. As long as there's periods in your business where you kind of take the time to kind of reflect and see and, you know, kind of ask yourself the question, is this working? Is this not if it's working, okay, cool, let's do more of that. It's not working. All right, well, let's stop doing that. Let's try and, you know, find another way to win. So there's nothing wrong with making mistakes, but the challenge really when getting started in any business is that the longer and longer this industry, and when I say this industry, it doesn't matter whether it's service, accommodation, doesn't matter whether you're a coach or an entrepreneur, traditional business, it doesn't matter. It's all moving in the same direction, which is playing the long game. And the reason why it's just sticking around that long term approach is because, well, so many people are now doing it. And by long term, what that means is people are giving so much upfront value and content and freebies and marketing and help and advice, and it's all free, free, free, free, free to eventually get the payoff. Well, a lot of people then struggle because they can't survive long enough to actually reap the benefit. So that's why you get a lot of people doing that now, because you can kill a lot of your competition by just outweighing them. You know, you get, you get companies like Netflix, they don't even turn a profit for years and years and years and years. They Just take huge losses because they know at year 10 that they're going to bank because everyone else has crumbled and died. So how do you kind of like figure out this beginning bit? Like if people are making mistakes and stuff, like what's the key thing to do? You need to have a balance between building long term relationships but also getting short term wins. And my wife Liz, she thinks I'm crazy. Like our business is doing really well. Like revenue again, we're up about 40% on last year. Almost like things are great. However, we're still in survival mode. There's still every opportunity. If we hit three months where it was bad or something went wrong, we'd be in the shit and we'd be having to make big changes to survive. We still aren't in a position where we're not surviving. The mistake that people make is one of two things. Number one, they're too short sighted to be able to see what can happen and the opportunity that's available to them long term. Then the flip of that, they're too long sighted to actually start making those necessary small victories and wins that they need to survive. And I think how I would address that is a lot of people in the beginning, they value their time too much. And what I mean by that is they, they think, you know what, I'm not prepared to spend an extra 20 minutes with that person. I don't need to do that, or I'm not prepared to jump on that phone call or I'm not going to go to the extra networking meeting or whatever. Right. You know, we've all kind of been there, there's stuff that we don't want to do and when you neglect those things, like that's what really starts to hinder you eventually. And I say that's the biggest thing. Like, you know, beggars can't be choosers, especially in the beginning. So I think that's a mistake to avoid. You know, fail, you know, make mistakes. But don't be so short sighted that you're missing out on opportunities because there's opportunity in everything. You know, I could speak to somebody and get paid, you know, just say 50 quid, right, it's not worth my time, but all right, how can I make it worth my time? What can that 50 quid turn into? Where does that network go? Whatever opportunities can I get off the back of it? If I help that person, who else can I help that they know? Maybe there's a product I can upsell them into, you know, so it's Trying to look at the bigger picture in all areas to maximize those potential opportunities, if that makes sense.

You're 100% right. You never know what the outcome of doing something so little would be. And to tell a story of our own personal experience. When I first started out, I got invited to do a workshop for maybe six people from the local. It was like a local support group for businesses in the Scarborough area. I had to go out on my time to go and get there. It was an evening where could have been doing something with the wife and kids, but started it with Laura, went to it, six people turned up. It was good experience. But the offshore of that, further down the line is somebody at that meeting was a part of the local university and they had just been given a big grant to help businesses in the North Yorkshire area and they were looking for trainers to come and work at these workshops. And they put my name forward and I would never ever have eventually gone to that meeting with the university to get the job to then being offered a contract which set us up for the next 18 months while I was still finding the feet just from going to that one little thing. And you know, everybody watching this now will have their own little story like this. I'm sure you have your story or something like that, but that's really good advice. Not just for service accommodation, not just for any network marketers that may be watching or listening this back. Hospitality owners, any business owners, you know, long term relationships, long term thinking with the short term wins to, like you say, to keep you going.

Yeah, I think there's a key thing, Mark, if I can just to add on to that. And this is what most people don't think about. Like a business has three parts. You have to find and attract people, your target market and solving their problems. You need to have a way to convert them so they buy the thing and then on the back end. Although it's not just the back end thing, it's retention, it's community. Especially for these guys in the service industries, you know, it's the same as network marketing. Like network marketing is just a community game, you know, it's just building a big community of people, a volunteer army. And in many ways that's what you're doing. When you're an owner of a hotel, you're dealing with big groups of people and you want them to keep coming back, coming back, coming back. How do they come back? Why do they come back? They come back because of the community. They come back because they love it. They come back because of the attention to detail. They come back because you help them. You go above and beyond. It isn't to do with the price. Price is to a degree important. Value is more important than price, you know, without kind of having to go down that route of having to explain the difference between the two. Hopefully. I'm sure you guys get this already, but that point of community. And community is key. You know, it's like, where do you go shopping? Do you like big shop? Mark, what supermarket do you go to at the moment?

Because it's closest? Lidl.

Okay. So when you go to Lidl, there's probably certain feelings that you have. It'll be either, you know, I'm saving money, or actually, I like how it works. The shop, like the parking. I like the people. You know, you have some people who are from lower incomes, we have some people from higher incomes who are saving money. But we're all kind of here together. Like there's an aspect of that shop that you like and feel comfortable at, right?

Yeah.

Which is why you keep going back again and again and again. It's like some people go to Waitrose. They go to Waitrose because it makes them feel good. Some people go to Morrisons because they like the people in there. The point is, right, the product in all of them is pretty much the same. Audi and Waitrose, there's a different price point. I'm pretty certain that it's pretty much the same product most of the time. But the thing that makes people come back is the community. It's the other things around it. It's the quality of the tarmac in the car park. It's the person, the pinny, it's. It's the person that says hello. These are all these little nuances. And it doesn't have to be the right thing for everybody, but it has to be the right thing for a particular type of people. The target market. And when you address that community, so they like it, they feel comfortable, they enjoy the experience. It then becomes very easy to come back. And that works on back end with paying customers, but that's front end as well. Because what we're doing as business owners is gone are the days of building a list, you know, like building an email list or just building a Facebook group or whatever. We have to invest our time into building an audience. And an audience is active, they're engaged. It's tribal. The audience. It's almost like a tribe mentality of. Rather than it just being me to them and them to me, it's these guys talking to each other. It's creating space so they can have discussions around topics. If I run a hotel in Scarborough, well, I'll tell you what, if I create a, a things to do in Scarborough Facebook community, well all of a sudden I'm becoming a go to expert in that local community and I've got all these different people that come to Scarborough asking questions, well, guess what, if I'm answering their questions and then they go, well, where should we go and book our accommodation? Well, you should probably go to this place, of course. And what's going to happen? All these people in this group, they're going to say, this person, Johnny, he's such a nice guy, he gives us all help and information. It tells us where to ride the donkeys, it tells us where the best ice cream is, the best fish and chips and his hotel. It's amazing. It's really well priced, right? You get the idea. It's community again. It's that front end community which builds into the audience, which then pushes more people, more volume through into those systems that you should have in place.

I like how you're talking about building the community, building the audience, because one thing that I've noticed that you do better than most is building that audience, building that community. And I saw a post from you, maybe start this year 2019, talking about your trifecta system, really, really well put together, really nicely explained. And the good thing is it doesn't take a lot of time in the day to do it. So I thought it'd be really handy if you could explain to everybody watching now a little bit more about the trifecta system, how it works and what you do to make it work.

So basically the trifecta system is in reference to the three main social media platforms, which is Instagram, Facebook and Linked. Now you don't have to be on every single one, but if you are going to be on them, it kind of makes sense for you to understand what they're actually going to do to benefit your system. So generally speaking, Instagram is very much an engagement platform. It's about meeting people, a virtual handshake. There's nothing more to it, there's no depth of conversation. You're not building community there, you're building interaction. You're building people to say hello and as soon as they've said hello, you want to be sending them elsewhere. You want to be sending them to a list or to a website or to a messenger bot, or to an email or to a video sequence or to a community group or whatever. It Might be we want to find them and get them off the platform. Facebook, especially with the updates from last year with fa, I think it was last year, maybe earlier this year, their big focus is community. So community is nurturing, community is building the relationship. LinkedIn is just pure business. You can just get people to buy something very, very quickly. However, if you just have each one individually, let's say for example LinkedIn, you know, it's more business focused. But if you just go onto LinkedIn and you haven't done any relationship building anywhere else, and you haven't built your reputation and therefore you don't do any building of relationship on LinkedIn, you just go pure selling it ain't gonna work. So what happens with this trifecta system? If you are looking to use all three platforms, it doesn't have to be these three platforms. Essentially it's all about having three steps. You know, it could be that you have Instagram, Instagram, you engage with them. One of the systems that we teach for Instagram, we call it five four, three, two, one. So five times a day you follow somebody new. Four times a day you go and engage on content of an influencer in your market space. Three times a day you send a direct message to people that have engaged with your content. Twice a day you do a story. Once a day you post to your grid. If you were to follow that strategy, for example, you could then be sending people to your Facebook profile, right? Because that's where you want the relationship to develop. Because perhaps the content there is a little bit more in depth, perhaps you are using on your Facebook page, maybe some sort of ad campaign at that point or like a retargeting strategy or something like that. Maybe the third part is you get them into a Facebook group or it could be onto LinkedIn. But when you have one person on three platforms, it's important to know what each platform does because you can then take them from step one to step two to step three. But if you just have one platform, well, make sure that you have layers to it so you can do step one, step two, step three. For example, if your stories on Instagram are going to be very much about engagement, great. Well, what's your grid going to be for? Should really be more of that community relationship building. Okay, how can you convert them? Or maybe use Instagram tv because then you have a clickable link. So that could be your three step system staying on the platform. Facebook. Most of your guys, Mark, are probably going to use pages over profiles just because of the terms and Conditions. So maybe it goes from a page to a group to Messenger. It's a three step system. So that's the key really to it. When you're looking to kind of like figure out what we refer to as a trifecta system. There's three steps to a business. Engage, attract, convert. Make sure that you're either using all three platforms in that way or one platform. Three lives deep.

I like that. And that was a lot to take on board. Whether you're watching or listening back, I will make sure in the show notes or later on somewhere online, I will point you to that blog piece, that article that I read, which, which lays it out really clearly so you can actually put a plan together, put it into practice. So we talked about mistakes, we talked about learning from mistakes. But I'd be interested to know when you left your network marketing company that you were part of and you then decided to go off and coach and start a coaching company from the process of, say, two, three years ago to where you are now, what has been your favorite failure that you've learned from and you've grown from?

So it's interesting because you sent me this question beforehand and I had a real tough time answering it because I don't think that I failed yet because. And it's kind of like a deep subject, but whatever, fuck it, I'm going to tell the story. So December 7, 2016 was the day that I wanted to kill myself. All right? And it took me a long time to get to that point. And I've gone through like a number of challenges, a number of like dark periods, a number of mistakes and errors. And just it was a hard period in my life. I'm sure people go through much worse, but that was my story. They got me to that point. And what happened was, because it was incremental, it wasn't like one day I woke up and it was like an emotional reaction, oh God, I can't take it anymore. I'm going to like do this stupid thing. It was a very calculated, logical decision because I just creeped nearer and nearer and nearer and nearer and nearer to making the decision. So I woke up on that day and it was such a logical thing to do. I was even trying to work out what was the best time of the day to do it. I was thinking, well, I got to get the kids to school and then I've got. I was even thinking, I've got to finish off some work stuff and then I'll probably do it in the afternoon. And then as soon As I realized, oh, shit, God, I am so accepting of this. And then it just hit me like a ton of bricks because I never actually attempted to do it. But it's that thought, it was that acceptance that I was happy to do it. And it hit me and I was fortunate because I've got a very loving wife. And she heard me and kind of had the breakdown and the sobs and whatever and said, right, Dan, you've got to go to the doctors. So I went to the doctors and doctors said, you've got to take antidepressants, you've got to have the counsel. I said, I don't need those things. I said, I know why I'm unhappy. I said, I'm unhappy because I'm not living the life that I want to live. Because I was doing things that I didn't want to do. Time to behave and act and be a certain person I didn't want to be anymore. And I just got to the point and I remember saying to the gp, I said, no, I don't need anything. But from right now, this is the point where I'm going to say, fuck it and I'm just going to go for it. I'm going to stop holding back, I'm going to stop playing small. I'm going to stop being a yes man to the wrong people and I'm going to back myself. That afternoon I joined a Facebook group, which was Coffee with Dan, which is where we met. And that was when I made the decision that I'm now going to start my next phase of my life, which was for many, many years. I'd always wanted to help people, had this real desire, like this burning passion inside of me that I wanted to help people. And I thought, joe, I'm gonna follow that. And so the next day I basically told my clients, said, I'm going on a 20 day, a 28 day leave of absence from mortgages. Look, I'll, you know, I'll help you if you need some help, but I'm basically not working. And the reason I did that is I gave myself 28 days to set up a coaching business and I did. And then it kind of went from there. So when I now think about failing, like I failed as much as I possibly could without ending everything and making the most stupid decision that I could have ever possibly made. So now there's no fear there, there's only love because nothing can really go wrong. There isn't anything that can ever fail in my life. You know, if something goes wrong, it's Awesome. I love it. I love things not working out the way they should because it's the periods in my life where I grow the most, where I learn the most about myself or I learn the most about people who are around me and whether I should then keep them or not keep them in my inner circle or in my world or part of my team or part of my company or one of my clients or a friendship or whatever it might be. So my favorite failure in answer to the question, there isn't one and there won't ever be one as far as I'm concerned, until the day that I decide to quit. But then even that, if it's the right thing for me to do, it's not failure. If it's taking me closer to where I want to get to, which for me, it's happiness and freedom. That's the thing. Every single day I ask myself a question. Is this taking me closer to happiness or further away? If it takes me closer, I do it. If it takes me further away, I stop doing it. And then I ask the second question. Do I feel like I have more freedom now because of that? If I do, yes, great. I make sure I keep doing it. If I don't, I question it. Okay, well, maybe I need to look at a different way to do this. And that's it. It's very simple. The way I live my life, freedom and happiness.

Should have just dropped the mic. I should just end this. That was amazing answer. I never knew that. And thank you for sharing that. Fuck, I thought you didn't know that story. No, mate, never. Never. Amazing, unreal and fantastic answer. All right, let's just try and bring it back to the networking bit because that is what this podcast is meant to be about and it's sort of tangent and gone over so many different ways. And there's so many people that I know will get a lot from this and I will make sure that we send links to where people can go to find out more about you afterwards. But one thing I really want to talk about. You do a phenomenal job with connecting to people that some may say are higher than you in the food chain. Now, I don't know if this is natural or this is planned if you've got people that you specifically set out to connect with. But do you have a method? Is it a tactic or is it literally just a case of I like the look of you, I want to get in touch with you? Just walk us through that.

So first of all, I have no pre planned tactics or Anything to reach out to particular people to achieve a particular result. I suppose if anything, it's probably a skill that I lack. I'm very introverted by nature. I don't like asking for help either. So it's something which I have to really work on. I have to really practice that skill to. To make sure that I keep asking for help and I keep showing up and I keep giving appreciation and stuff. So I haven't yet. At the same time, I've also been able to create some really amazing connections with some very, very influential people. So I was thinking about, well, how did I actually achieve that? And it was quite simple, actually, when I thought about it. Number one, I just choose to be really, really good at what I do. Like, I wake up every day and I think, how can I be the best version of myself? How can I be the best at what I do in my industry? And I know what that looks like, and I strive for it every single day. So that's the first thing. I show up and, you know, I take on challenges, I accept responsibility, I do the work, I step up, and I help people to my absolute maximum potential that I can. And I think that's so important. You know, if you want to be the best or achieve the best for yourself, well, then you've got to do the best that you possibly can. And that's all you can do, really. You know, it doesn't have to be anything more than that. Just could be the best that you can do, and that's always enough. But then the second thing was, well, how I actually got these opportunities. So I've been good, so I put myself in a great position to take advantage of opportunities. And that's the second thing. When an opportunity comes, you got to take it. Because opportunities do keep coming again and again and again, but if you just keep neglecting them or you don't go for it because of fear of failure or going wrong, then, you know you're missing out on some mega stuff. Because when opportunities come, it presents a really great chance in your life to test yourself and to see how good you are and to see what goes next and to elevate your life in different ways. And so when an opportunity comes, take it. You got to grab it with both hands, you know, and you can't let go of it. You can't dip your toe into an opportunity and see how it goes all in. There's two examples in particular. I was one year into my coaching business, and I was a complete outsider. Nobody knew me in the Industry, really, apart from our very niche client group. But we got to speak, I say on stage. It was actually invited to his house. The number one trainer, like the top guy who has been for years. We got invited as one of the top five coaches in the world to speak at that event. And the way that we did so was, first of all, I knew that he was looking for people for something. And so I ran a campaign. I did it for a week long. Every day I'm on Facebook, I'm tagging them in posts. I'm telling him that, you know, our clients have got something to tell him. I'm asking my clients, I'm helping them, I'm reaching out to them, and we're getting attention. And that's what a lot of it is. To be able to get somebody who is further ahead than you, you need to be able to get their attention. There's two ways to get someone's attention. You either give them money or. Well, the second thing is you give them something to give a shit about. And when you give them attention, it gives them the possibility of them having some kind of rub back from you, if that makes sense. So that was one story that was with a guy called Eric Worre, who is like a leading trainer. The second one is more recent. I actually think his son might be watching this on Facebook. So there's a guy called Tom Chanel. And I didn't actually know this, but he was a very big part of a company called an mp, which is association of Network Marketing Professionals. And I just liked him. Like, he just seems like a cool dude. Like, he's older. I'm not sure how old he is. I'm assuming he's probably in his, like, late 50s, 60s, I don't know. But he says on his Facebook, he says all the time, call me, call me. And so I did. I kept calling him, but he won't answer the phone. So I kept calling him again.

He didn't answer.

I called him again. He didn't answer. And then eventually dropped me a message. And it's just like, I like you, kid, or something, like words to that effect. You know, I love your stuff, kid. And then we arrange a time to actually speak. So it could have been quite easy then to have not kept calling the guy. But I did because I wanted to, because I thought, I want to speak to him. And then I spoke to him, having no idea of who he was or what he was, really kind of shared some stuff, spoke to him, and then he gave me an opportunity, said, Danny, he said, I'd love to help you. I said, can you get to Dallas on this day? I want you to speak on stage. At that time, I didn't know what the training was going to be. I didn't know how long it's going to be. I didn't know who was going to be there. I didn't know anything about it, nothing. I was like, yep, I'm in. And then the next day, because it was late at night, the next day, paid my ticket and it's not cheap to go to Dallas, I don't know why. From the uk, it's an expensive flight. Dallas sucks to go to, and having to get my accommodation and being away from the family. So, you know, it's like a good two and a half grand to get there. It's not a small change. And I dropped in the messages the next day, Yep, paid, I'm in. And he's like, holy shit, that is like commitment. And I didn't know what it was going to be, but I knew it'd be something big if I showed up. And, you know, even when I got there, you know, again, he's talking about, like, taking the maximum opportunity that you can, you know, I got there and it wasn't ideal. You know, what I thought I was going to be, which was more of a main speaker. Turned out to me, actually being on the last day and being on a panel, almost like as a kind of like guest speaker, I felt a little bit as almost like a bit of an afterthought, like it hurt my feelings a little bit. But there's a lot of people who was moaning about it at the time. And so I thought to myself, well, great, I've got two things I can do here. I can bitch and moan about this or I can make the most of it. So I made the most of it. I was in that room for the entire three, four days. I'm there, I'm clapping, I'm cheering everyone else on, I'm telling everyone else how great. I'm taking notes, I'm learning, I'm listening, I'm showing appreciation. And then what happened by the end of it is that I got my opportunity, people appreciated it. And what people then appreciate about me was the fact that I just kept quiet. I did the work, you know, I was respectful to other people. You know, I didn't piss on anyone, you know, I didn't do anything that I could have easily done, you know. And what impressed me about that was there was another guy who was the. I don't know what he is the founder, leader, type person of this organization. I don't know what his title is, remember, and we was in front of a group, about 40 or 50 of our peers, and he actually publicly apologized in front of all these people saying, we should have had you speaking. And you know, there's a lot of upswing to stuff like that. You know, when you're like, you just, it's not just doing the right thing, but it's kind of maintaining that integrity and giving people, you know, enough opportunity to kind of get things right as well. And just thinking about what is the bigger, longer impact of my response to all of these different situations and circumstances that I find myself into. And that is how you start to make an impact. That's how you start to build like long term relationship with people. Because it's really easy to think to people fuck them, but it's a lot harder to be forgiving and to kind of do the work with the relationship, thinking, well, how can this work long term? How can I benefit them long term? How will that benefit me long term? And I think that's where I've been able to build and maintain those relationships because I have a long term relationship. In actual fact, I just spoke to a guy earlier, I spoke to another big name in our industry and I just reached out to him, said, hey, let's catch up, want to speak to you about it. I've done a couple of things that I think probably pissed you off. You didn't like it. Just want to put my hand up and take responsibility for that and just want to let you know who I am and kind of clear the air. And again, I don't know what's going to come from that, but I can only see being a good thing. You know, I can't see there'd been any downside to that. So yeah, hopefully that answers the question in a very long winded way.

No, very, very good. Very, very well answered. And what I like most is that there wasn't any set agenda. You've just, you've just done stuck true to what you talk about. You don't, you know, you're not a sheep, you're a shepherd. You know, you do that well and just by doing that, you attract people's attention. And whether that is people that are starting out, whether it's people on the same level or is that people ahead, do you just, you grab the attention. So we've talked a lot about the coaching side of what you do. What at the moment your passion Projects. What are you working on right now? Who you helping? Who are you sort of coaching? Tell me a little bit more because I know there's a lot of people watching right now. Doesn't matter what industry that they're from, whether they're tuning in live, whether they're tuning in on the podcast or on the YouTube video. What are you working on, who are you helping and what are you doing right now to get in front of people?

So my main passion is probably two things. One, which is launching in September, which I'll tell you about in a second, but the main one, which we're focused on at the moment, it really is our business. I mean, my business is my passion. I love it. I just love what I do. I love everything about it. I love the people that I help. I love the people that I speak to. I love people getting the breakthroughs. In terms of the reason why that we do it, the biggest driving factor for me and why I've created what I've created and why it's turned into the thing that it's eventually turned into was born out of frustration really. Like, I was just a pissed off, fed up guy trying to do better in life but never being able to figure out how to do it. And my trust in people was severely damaged by giving people money, giving people my time, my commitment, because I'm a loyal guy. Like, if you say to me, Dan, I mean, I'm with you for life. Me too. No questions asked. You know, if somebody, for example, did anything to you, Mark, right. If you had, you know, because I, you know, kind of would refer to us as friends, you know, somebody did something in your business that screwed you, fuck him. I wouldn't have anything to do with him, you know, because that's how I am. Like, I'm loyal to Mark, you know, like, screw that guy. So how that kind of then translates into my business is that I was just fed up with all of the bs. I was fed up with all of the lies. I was fed up with just people being, I don't know, miss sold like this kind of dream and it then becoming almost like such a parody of itself that people don't even believe in the dream anymore. And that was kind of where I was like, I was so just fed up with everything. I didn't believe it was even possible. And that's a real sad place to be in. But you kind of resigned to, well, this is life, this is it. And it isn't true. Like there's just unbelievable possibility for every one of us. It doesn't matter whether you're 20 years old and starting out, it doesn't matter whether you're 60 and starting again. You know, I truly genuine believe that anything is possible. And so what I wanted to create for people, especially in that online space because that's where my expertise lie, was to give people the how. Like how do you do the bloody thing? I mean even, even very recently, we invested a couple of grand into a training program from a very, very well known coach. And it's pretty good stuff, the training, but I was just kind of looking to my wife as was going through it, it was like, well, everything she says makes sense but I still haven't got a clue how to do it. It's also wishy washy. It's like, well, you know, if you're going to write a blog, then you should of course write a blog imagining that you are the very best version of yourself right now. And how would you show up like that? I'm like, I don't know, I haven't figured that out yet. How? Just give me the bloody how. And so that's what we've done. We've just given people the how. You know, we've just gone step by step, do this, then this, then this, then this, then this. And then people look back and they go, bloody hell. It wasn't that hard actually. It's like, no it wasn't. Because most things in life aren't hard. We make them hard. Like we over complicate the shit out of the most things that we do. Like we are weird, stupid things, humans. Like we make life miserable, we love to suffer, but in actual fact there's just ways you can get around it. You know, it's like whenever you're building a business, it's like with social media for example, you know, there are just certain systems to follow and once you follow them, you get better results. You know, it's like when you're a kid, you do paint by numbers. You know, if you color in within the lines, you do the right colors for the right number. Guess what, you get a better picture. Same is true for when you're building a business, but it's just that as we get older, the truth is that most people don't know the how because either A, they never learned it themselves or B, they just don't care enough to invest in the time or C, well, they've just not yet had the opportunity to figure it out. And we have. And so that's what we do. We're just in the trenches with people testing, tweaking, making mistakes, figuring stuff out, showing you how to do it. And so that's what it is. We show people how to build an online business and then we give them everything they need to build it.

I like that. So someone wants help building a business. Doesn't matter whether it's service, hospitality, network marketing, e commerce, whatever, where do they go?

So multiple things they can do. They can head to our website, jointhevip.co.uk they can reach out just to me directly on Facebook, my personal profile, Danny Clark or my Instagram. You can reach me at Danny Clarkofficial because, you know, I'm all like Billy, big time these days, being all official on Instagram.

Amazing. I've seen you, you've gone big on the Instagram recently, doing some good stuff. I just want to say thank you very much for that tonight and I really hope doesn't like say it doesn't matter what industry you're in right now, I really hope that you watch this, digest it, read the trifecta system, take on board what he's saying and next time you're looking to potentially network with somebody, doesn't matter whether they are on the same level or ahead of you, take on board the advice, don't just go spamming McSpam spam and just bombard them with a sales pitch. Actually try and get to know them and see if you're going to be potentially to work together. Please, please, please go and check out Danny's profile, his Facebook group, go check out the website, go check out the Trifecta system. But I just want to say thank you very much to everybody that has tuned in to this episode. This has been a recording of the Boost hospitality podcast. This is season six, episode seven. If this is the first time that you've tuned into this, then you've got a lot of episodes to go back on. You can go get the full back catalog@booster.co.uk podcast. It's available on itunes, available on all of the places that you can potentially listen to a podcast now, even Spotify. So this morning my son Alfie, 6 year old, was chatting to Alexa or next thing I know I'm on Alexa, which is pretty cool. So before you leave us today, head to itunes and go and leave us one of those lovely little reviews, just that more people can see and hear about this. But thank you very much, Danny. Thank you very much everybody for tuning in and we will see you again very soon for episode number eight. All right.