MBA1457 How to Meet Industry Leaders with Dinners + Free Ride Friday

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Hey, today is Free Ride Friday so make sure you hang on to the end of the episode to hear who won this week's free ride. Every Friday we give away a lifetime membership to EZcourse, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course. It retails for $500 over at ezcourse Co or you can win it for free. Just leave us an iTunes rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday to see if you won. It's that simple. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on itunes. Alright, let's jump into today's episod. Hey O welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast you can't afford to miss every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you'll learn how to meet industry leaders with dinners. Yes, dinners. We're talking food here. I'm sure there's a ton of people in your industry you wish you could meet that you could become friends that you can get to know. Maybe you want to work together in the future. Maybe to Know them because you love their books or love their speeches or love what they do. But how do you meet them? How do you actually get together with them? How do you make that connection happen? Well, in today's lesson, I'm going to show you how. This is a tried and true method that I've learned from a friend of mine, Jason Gaignard, and I want to pass on to you because it's incredibly effective. I'll also throw in a few tips to enhance this technique that I learned from Jordan Harbinger from the Jordan Harbinger Show, Dan Martell from SAS Academy, and Matthew Kimberly from How to Get a Grip. Can't wait to get into this one. So let's get into. Let's get down to business again. I learned the foundation of this technique from Jason Gaignard. Jason runs a big event, an annual event called Mastermind Talks. It's a huge, very popular, first class event with entrepreneurs, business owners that are highly, highly successful. Entry to Mastermind talks is $10,000 minimum. And yet it sells out way in advance every year. Now, I got to know Jason because we both were speaking at the US Military a few years ago, and I spent three or four days with him and he told me a story. He told me that he actually got started with dinners. His event now, Mastermind Talks, is in exotic locations like Cabo or the Napa Valley, but he actually started humbly with dinners in his local area. He would organize dinners with people he wanted to meet, and that's how he got the ball rolling. But you can use this technique to meet people you've been wanting to meet for so long in your industry, people that you admire, people that you look up to. Let me break it down for you. So number one, this is gonna require some forward planning, some time, and you gotta trust the process like this is gonna happen within this year. And I'm not gonna meet everybody I want at once, but I will eventually. So how do we do this? Well, first of all, you start with the top 100. This is a very common a technique that people do or a practice that people do where they basically have a list of 100 people they want to meet. And you can shoot for the stars here. It doesn't matter who's on that list. You can put Oprah Winfrey there, you could put Barack Obama, you could put LeBron James. But of course you can also put other companies, other businesses, authors, speakers that you admire, that you've consumed their information, that you really want to get to know and meet and just Maybe collaborate with them in the future. Now, the point of the list here is just so you have a brain dump of who you intentionally want to get to know. Now, it's really hard to cold call these people or cold email them. So you gotta make an effort to build relationships with people that may have a connection with them, that may have worked with them, that may have shared a stage with them, that may have collaborated with them in some way. So against each of those names, each of those hundred names, I want you to give two to three names for each of your top 100 who are two or three people that may know this person, that you might have a better chance of getting know a little bit. They could be a podcast host, they could be a blogger, they can be an event organizer. You may already know this person. The point of this is that these relationships, they don't happen by accident. You have to actually get to know people that know other people, because a warm introduction goes a long way. I've met a lot of people through warm introductions. People that I know personally, that know people that I know. And then I would reach out to them and say, hey, do you know this person? How well do you know them? Would you feel comfortable introducing them to me? Now, I know you're thinking, where are the dinners? Omar, I thought you mentioned networking with dinners. Well, this is where it comes into play. Anytime you're in any city, you're traveling for a conference, traveling for work, traveling for pleasure. A city that's close by to you, that you can get to anytime you have the intention of being in any city, find out who's in that city, who lives there. Obviously, the earlier you can plan this, the better. So if you know you're going to be, let's say, for example, in Los Angeles six months from now, that's great, because you want to start getting the ball moving. Who do you know is in la? Who do you know that you want to connect with, and who do you know that is connected to the person you want to connect with? And in fact, you can invite both the person that you want to connect with and the person that is connected to that person. When I say invite, it's literally an email to a small group of people, let's say less than 10 people, to a dinner. Now, this place doesn't have to be expensive, okay? Where you have dinner could be just an authentic, really casual, nice place. You could be in Austin, and you go to a barbecue joint that is just famous in Austin, where you're all going to end up paying like 20 bucks a head, right? And if you pick up the tab, you're talking about $200. Not a bad investment for being a connector. $200 is too much money. Don't invite 10 people, invite five people. So what do you do? You send out an email to everybody who you want to have at this dinner. So you're going to get the emails of everybody that's involved. So if you know somebody that knows somebody else you want to get connected to, say hey, can I grab his email? Grab her email. I want to be able to invite them to this dinner. I'm organizing my tree and often it's a great idea to do this the night before the beginning of a conference, maybe that you're all there for, maybe you're speaking at that conference, maybe they're speaking at that conference you're attending because that's usually a free night and they don't have to go to a speaker's dinner that's a part of the event. Often events will have a dinner just for the speakers during the day of the event or the days of the event, or they're obliged to go to a, like a mixer or something like that to be part of that and you know, mingle with the attendees. So if they're a speaker at an event, it's best to do the dinner the night before the event kicks off and they're usually in the town before then so that they can, you know, get a night's rest. And this is a simple email. And the email just has a few lines. We want to keep it short. And the subject line is simple. Are you free Thursday night? Are you free on June 5th? Whatever it is. And that's the subject line. And in the body you say, hey, I'm Omar Zenholm. Some of you on this email know me or know each other. I'm organizing a small dinner with some friends and you've been invited. It's going to be at this location at this time. Reply and let me know you're in. It's a hundred percent, my treat. We're talking about, you know, 20 words here. It's a very short email. What you're doing here is you're saying, hey, you're invited to something that is going to be small, not a big crowd. You're not gonna be grilled, right? You're gonna be amongst friends and it's a no brainer, right? It's a good restaurant, it's nice, it's friendly and you're not paying. It's important for you to, you know, have all the emails there in the CC so people can see, oh, I know that person. Yeah, okay. Jor going to be there. Great. Patricia's going to be there. I know her, she's really cool and let the replies come in. I find that this works like 90% of the time, 95% of the time where 100% of the people say yes. Especially if it's a small group. Once it gets a little larger, you know, eight people, 10 people, you might get a couple people say, hey, I can't make it, I'm not flying into lay or you know, I want to have an early night. But even so now you have a connection with the person, you have a dialogue, right? The gesture is there. You invited them to a dinner, you're treating them for dinner, they just couldn't make it. You can reply to that person now and say, hey, no worries, I'll catch you at the conference. Maybe I can grab you a drink or a coffee in the morning. But automatically you're seen as a connector, as a influencer, as a leader in your industry because you're organizing something that connects people. Most people are either too shy or don't make the effort to do what I just outlined right now. Be the differentiator and go ahead. This technique has opened so many doors for me, has allowed me to meet my heroes in business, has allowed me to meet interesting people, have great conversations and lifelong friends. Most of them we didn't work together or do any kind of collaboration or any kind of partnership. But some of them we did and that's cool too. But really the best thing I got out of it is just being friends with people that I really admire, people that I love, their work, the way they think, they help me grow, I help them grow. And just being around and being a supporter of their work. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

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Listen, important people are busy. We know this, this is just a fact. So the beauty of this technique is that it's the timing. They're in town, you're offering them a great meal and they're amongst friends. So it really helps for them to say yes. They gotta eat right? Dinner is a meal they have to eat. And if you make it convenient, if you make it close to wherever they are or wherever the, you know, the convention is or the conferences, they make it simple. Now I have to say, every time you do this, they're going to get a different result. You're going to get mixed results. Sometimes it's going to go great, it's going to be amazing, be a lot of fun. And sometimes you're only going to get two people show up. No problem. Don't give up on it. The consistency of this practice is the key to its success. Every time you go to a new city, organize a dinner and make it happen. And by the way, a lot of times I like to just organize a dinner, even if I'm not going to pick up the tab, but organize a dinner with people I already know in that city, people I want to just kind of reinforce our relationship, rekindle that relationship and make sure that we build upon the interactions we've had in the past, get updates, what's going on with them, how can I support their work, all that kind of stuff. Big shout out to Dan Martell, who taught me that short email kind of subject line and phrasing, big shout out to Jordan Harbinger from the Jordan Harbinger show, who taught me about the 100 list as well as who's connected to that person on that list. He also taught me a really good technique where every day you try to contact three people, you message them, you send them on WhatsApp, you send them an email and it's just a quick one liner. What's up, how you doing? And you're just kind of checking up on them, just like a friend. That way when you do email them later on, it's not like the first time you've emailed them in years. If you email three people or message three people every day, you guessed it, there's a list of 100 people around a month, you'll contact them and be in touch. Well, that wraps up today's lesson. But today's episode's not over. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's free ride. And the winner is. Ejettle Finger. This is the handle that's on iTunes. Ejettlefinger says. Amazing podcast for entrepreneurs. Five stars. This podcast helped inspire me build my own online business. They're amazing. If you're an entrepreneur, definitely check them out. Thank you so much for that great review, E. Gentle Finger. Go ahead and email me over@omar00mba.net so I can hook you up with the free lifetime access to our full $500 course over at EasyCourse co. And you can build your own online course in 30 days. If you want to win, just leave us on itunes rating and review. It's that simple. You enter our weekly random draw we call Freeride Friday. Listen in on Friday to see if you won. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on itunes. And don't forget to hit subscribe. By hitting subscribe, you get access to all our 1400 episodes of the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Over 1400 episodes for free. And it's the only way to have access to our archives. So make sure you hit subscribe on whatever you use to listen to podcasts, whether it's Stitcher radio, Spotify, itunes, Himalaya Overcast. We're on them all. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Your relationships are your biggest asset. You can lose your business, you can lose your brand, you can go bankrupt. But if you have your relationships, you can build yourself back up. You can make connections. You can get introductions. You can get opportunities. You can work for somebody even if you need to. So make it a priority to build relationships. New ones. Build upon the ones you already have. Make them strong. It's worth the investment. Like Jordan Harbinger always says on his show, dig your well before you're thirsty. And I love that quote. All right, thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care of. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

Tuxt and data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile just bring your number 31st month at $25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days.