The most crucial business skill is sales, and sales is really just talking to strangers. It builds your reputation, tests your ideas, and shows you what messaging actually lands. The speaker uses masterminds, Lunch Club, and conferences to network from a rural ski town.
Go talk to more strangers. I find the most important skill in business is sales. The most important skill in sales is talking to people who don't know you. And it's only through that you're able to grow your reputation. And it can be really freeing. Like when you meet people that you don't previously know, you can be a little bit of an idiot. You can be trying out new ideas. You can be doing all sorts of stuff. And you're going to discover how smart some of your ideas are. You're going to discover which buttons people seem to respond to. And that is just all really valuable. Now, the question becomes, how do you do that? How do you go meet more people? I, for example, live in a relatively rural area out on the ski mountain. And that's a wonderful place to live, but doesn't put me right next to people who I'll be talking with in business. So I do it more remotely. I'm using masterminds. I'm using meetups. I'm using— I use things like Lunch Club where I have one-on-one remote meetings, all of which are super helpful. And I also fly out to conferences. Those things allow me to meet more people, which allows me to grow my reputation.
