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

There's a load of things that you will have noticed of how people went about spreading the word of their startup business, of their franchise business. Now, 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?

The main thing that I realized, like, even back in the day, is if you ever put a picture up on social media, whatever, just normal stuff. Whenever I posted that, you'd always get a ton of engagement, hundreds of likes, loads of comments, and then as soon as I ever mentioned my business email. Even these days, with the coaching comparative, when we put an offer out, a pitch post compared to like a normal post, like, it's chalk and cheese in terms of the level of engagement. So there's obviously something there. You know, people like to buy, but they don't necessarily like to be sold to. 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? Cause we hear it all the time. 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 you opportunity to sell or pitch or promote your product.

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 sparked, 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, are 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? 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 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. And since then we've had a pretty meteoric rise, really over the last two years.

So tonight, like I say, we're going to talk about how to network the right way. 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 MLM or service accommodation, you find that your Facebook just gets bombarded 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 there is another way. 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 of how people went about spreading the word of their startup business, of their franchise business. Now, 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?

I mean, the main thing that I realized, like even back in the day is if you ever put a picture up on social media, whatever, just normal stuff, whenever I posted that, you'd always get a ton of engagement, hundreds of likes, loads of comments, and then as soon as I ever mentioned my business, even these days with the coaching comparative, when we put an offer out, a pitch post compared to like a normal post, like it's chalk and cheese in terms of the level of engagement. So there's obviously something there. You know, people like to buy, but they don't necessarily like to be Sold to 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 from engagement? Because we hear it all the time, 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 product. So in actual fact, engagement is super important. 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, they tend to say the same things. 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 things all the time. But they don't know how to do anything else. 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, say hello or I'd shake their hand, or I'd 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. Then I'd have some small talk. 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 me. 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? 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. We first started to figure this out when we're doing network marketing and we was like a struggling network marketer. We were told that we had to do these two, just all these things that we didn't want to do. You've got to do these parties and you've got to do these coffee dates and we just didn't want to do the thing. So screw it, we're going to do this new way that we think is right. And our business revenue went from $3,000 a month and in six months it went to $56,000 a month. 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.

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?

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. 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. You know, 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. Like we still aren't in a position where we're not surviving. So 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. And the flip of that, they're too long sighted to actually start making those necessary small victories and wins that they need to survive. How I would address that is a lot of people in the beginning, they value their time too much. 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 going to go to the extra networking meets or 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. Don't be so short sighted that you're missing out on opportunities because there's opportunity in everything.

You're 100% right. You never know what the outcome of doing something so little would be. To tell a story of my own personal experience, when I first started out, I got invited to do a workshop for maybe six people from the local support group for businesses in the Scarborough area. I had to go out on my time to go and get there. You know, it was an evening where I could have been doing something with the wife and kids, but sorted it with Laura, went to it. Like six people turned up. It was good experience. But the offshot 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 for 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 fee. 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 owner, 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. Especially for these guys in the service industries, you know, it's the same as network marketing. And network marketing is just a community game, just building a big community of people. A volunteer army. And in many ways that's what you're doing when you're owner of a hotel, you know, you're dealing with big groups of people and you want them to keep coming back. Why do they come back? They come back because of the community. They come back because they love it and communities keep. The point is, right, the products in all of them pretty much the same. You know, Audi and Waitrose is a different price point. I'm pretty certain that it's pretty much the same product most of the time. 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.