What and How to Say To Grow Your Network Without Being Spammy

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, but 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 hello, or I'd shake their hand or give them a kiss on the cheek or a hug or whatever was 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 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, 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. Just all these things that we didn't want to do. Like you've got to do these parties and you got all 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.