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Episode Overview
Want to be a better networker and connector? Brad Spencer has this down to a science. In this episode, I pick Brad’s brain to learn how he has been such an effective networker and seems to know just about everyone.
Brad will walk you through the networking philosophy so that you can become a networking and a connector by constantly looking for win-win scenarios with everyone that you meet.
Brad also breaks down, in detail, his system for automating the process of reaching out to people and staying connected.
This is an in-depth training session that will have you feeling like an influencer and a master of networking. The conversation was edited down from close to two hours of conversation between myself and Brad. The entire, unedited, video as well as bonus training directly from Brad is available inside of Authority Insiders.
Resources Mentioned
Authority Insider (Get the full video interview & Bonus Tutorials)
Asana
The Millionaire Real Estate Agent
Essentialism
Quotables
Being good at networking means that you're constantly seeking win-win scenarios.
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Transcript
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Matt Wolfe: Hey, welcome back to the authority multiplier podcast. Today I’ve got a really fun guest and actually we had a really great conversation. I really, really enjoyed talking to him. His name is Brad Spencer and he is somebody that I consider to be somewhat of a master networker, a master connector. He just seems to know everybody and he is the guy I go to if I need a connection for something in my business or in my life.
He seems to know somebody who he can connect me with to solve whatever problems I have. He’s just a master networker and a master at connecting people with other people. I’ve always really appreciated that about him, and I’ve always wondered how does he keep up with it all? How does he keep up with all of the people he’s connecting? How does he network so much? How does he connect other people so frequently? I decide to put him on the podcast and pick his brain about that topic.
I have the opportunity to talk to him about networking, and connecting and building systems around networking. This is where it gets really, really exciting is he actually built systems for networking, like automation type tools and systems that he uses to make sure that he’s constantly staying in contact with people. This conversation actually went on for about 2 hours. It was just a really long in-depth conversation where it was just idea, after idea, after idea, and I didn’t want to cut him off, because he was just giving so much good stuff.
For this podcast am sorry I had to cut it back. I had cut out some of the extra stuff just for the sake of time. I didn’t want this to be a 2 and a 1/2 hour episode. I did cut it back a little bit, but the full unedited raw, uncensored episode is available inside the members area at authorityinsiders.net. In this podcast, Brad also talks about some tools that he uses to make sure he stays in contact with people. He told me that he was going to make a special training video just for members of Authority Insiders and we are going to put it in the members area. That video will be in the Authority Insiders members area very, very shortly, where he’s actually going to do over the shoulder video tutorial of him walking through his networking systems. That’s all available inside of authorityinsiders.net. The full video, the full unedited, uncensored entire conversation we had plus this bonus training that Brad promised to create just for members.
Really, really exciting stuff. He’s just got so many ideas, so much information and I can’t wait for you to hear this conversation. We are just going to go ahead and dive right in. I don’t want a lot of fluff, I just want to jump right in. Welcome to the call Brad. Why don’t we just dive right in. Tell us a little bit about your back story, how you got into the business that you are in, how you got into the marketing world, and let’s go from there.
Brad Spencer: Awesome man yeah, I’ve been online now for 7 and 1/2 years or so. I’ve always really focused on … I started out back in 08, creating little products. I had a summer before I started working Disney world, because I left. Incidentally I graduated in the world’s worst time to be in the real estate industry back in 08 and the banks were all firing everybody in the real estate finance division which is what I went to school for. Had to figure out a new career, and decided that summer to start out my internet stuff. I had 3 months before my contract started and my internet journey started then.
I’ve always been around the product creation arena. I’ve done a lot of things about from when YouTube was just started out and everyone loved video courses as if that was video, oh my God. The internet is going to blow up with video and it was all PDFs before that. Now what I do is I focus on getting webinars for busy internet marketers, and we’ve done about 2 and 1/2 million in the last 2 years or so, doing that for different clients. I specialize just in connecting with people and really building relationships. Am like glue, the social glue if you will. That’s where I come in. Starting a new brand with the win win deal maker and that’s where am going man.
Matt Wolfe: Nice, nice, you mean business model is essentially you find people that are looking to promote webinars and you find people that have killer webinars, you make that connection, and you get a little cut of the-
Brad Spencer: Exactly.
Matt Wolfe: Of the profit.
Brad Spencer: Yeah, that’s why I make a lot of money. I have a lot of other deals that are going on in the background, but that’s the main bread and butter that everyone sees on a daily basis.
Matt Wolfe: Cool, that specific business model obviously requires a lot of networking, a lot of getting out there, a lot of getting to know people. We’ve obviously had quite a bit of discussions before we’ve done this recording, and you’ve told me you’ve built systems for networking. This being the authority multiplier podcast, we’re constantly looking for ways that people build authority and grow their brand, and that sort of thing and I think networking is one of the most powerful ways to build authority. The more people you know, the bigger your network is, the bigger your authority can grow. I think that’s like an authority multiplier in like … That’s practically the definition. Let’s dive in and talk about networking. What is your philosophy on networking? What’s your philosophy on getting out there, meeting people, networking, going to events? How often do you do it? Just explain your philosophy, your process for it.
Brad Spencer: Absolutely, first off the core value that I build everything also. If it’s not a win win it’s a fail fail. That’s the core business value of everything I do. It’s what I stand for, it’s my creed, I say it in every talk when it comes to connecting with people, and my philosophy, what that basically means is, whenever I do something, I look at where somebody is at and what they want to do, and work I around that. I know exactly what I want, I know what my clients want, I know their style and module is if you will, and then I make something work in the middle. If it doesn’t then am like, “Hey, look it doesn’t right now maybe later.”
Am the anti-bulldog. I bulldog in the form of I always talk to a lot of people and I will get what I want when am very clear on what my objective is, and it might be I don’t know who it’s going to be in a pool of people, but it will come about some fashion. That’s my style. Am not the guy who is like, “Hey men, let’s go, 5%, 10% here and 5% here,” negotiating [inaudible 00:07:15] points. Like I always say, I don’t negotiate over points. That’s one of my things.
When it comes to networking and connecting with people, really understanding what they’re all about is actually very simple. What do you think … I think it was in how to win friends and influence people, Carnegie talked what do you think? Has been the most amazing question. I’ve always been really oriented towards that fashion. When I connect with people, it’s always like, “Hey, this is what’s going on, what do you think?” Then everyone likes to share their opinion 99% of the time. Most people are wanting to share and be listened to. If there one thing I can say when it comes to networking it is, yes I do talk a lot, am very sociable, and I get a long with pretty much everybody naturally, but I also am very fascinated by listening to people. Really sincerely listening, not just hearing people waiting for your spot to say something, but actually listening and understanding.
I have a belief that at the end of the day, we are all just reflections of each other’s. If someone says something to me especially after I’ve said, “Hey, what do you think about this topic? Or whatever am asking him about, that they will tell me something that will reveal the ultimate solution to whatever it is that am going through. My listening is very different than other people. Am not listening just for data, am listening as almost a solution to my own situation or problem or goal or whatever you want to call it.
When it comes to connecting with people man it’s a swarm game but it’s also quality. I go after a lot people. I call it smiling and dialing. I’ll sit down sometimes on a patio and write up a cigar, and I’ll smile and dial meaning like I’ll get myself in a good mood, I’ll click a button on the iPhone and say, “Okay, Cs, who is on the C list that I haven’t spoken to in a minute? Or who do I want to talk to in that moment?” and I’ll call and a lot of times you’ll get about 50% call back rate in 24 or 48 hours, but at the end of the day what it’s doing, is it’s forcing me to be in conversation with somebody that I might not be there.
If I have, I believe more non-coincidences I guess you could say, I believe that everything is happening for a reason. If I decide to talk to so and so, there is a reason. I don’t know what it is. It doesn’t even matter why, but it’s that true connection. That’s what keeps the connection alive, is that is is organic and that’s how I make it organic. I’ll just sit on the patio, dial and I’ll talk to people. I’ll get 1 out of 5 that actually pick up the phone when am actually calling, and then 2 or 3 more of those people will call me back within 48 hours and that’s when things happen. Am just constantly dialing. The same thing applies to Facebook messages, the same things applies to really any channel of communication, when you genuinely just want to talk to somebody. It’s a numbers game.
It’s like, I might contact 50 people a week to talk to about business like what you got going on? Or some other prospecting type of thing, but I don’t look at it like I need to talk about 10 people about my webinar today, 10 people tomorrow, 10 people the next day. It will happen the way it needs to happen when I connect with people, if I have the numbers game. When I actually get on the phone with somebody man it’s a very different conversation. It’s where by it goes say, “Hey, what’s going on?” All that normal chit chat, and it’s like, “Hey, what do you got going on right now?” People I’ve a belief and I just notice this more and more as I get older, that people want to be listened to. They want people to be sincerely interested in them, and sincerity is a really forgotten art.
Everyone is different and there is no baseline always you can’t blanket statement or anything, but to overgeneralize everything, I think if you lean more towards that sincere connection, you’ll always win. That’s really what at the end of the day, time in time out doing that everything just evolves the way it is. That’s why we are here doing the recording. We’ll them about how we reconnected after being a few months apart, but that’s it goes. Right?
Matt Wolfe: Right.
Brad Spencer: You don’t have to look at an email, and I don’t check on a daily basis and [inaudible 00:11:25] and so here we are connecting.
Matt Wolfe: For sure, you’re contacting people constantly. You’re sitting around, you’re making calls, you’re reaching out on Facebook. You are doing all that kind of stuff. How did you acquire these contacts? How did you find all these people that you are in touch with? It’s one thing to constantly be reaching out to people, it’s another thing to actually have this database of people that you can reach out to.
Brad Spencer: No, totally. The biggest that I do that’s very different is first off to get my database with people. What I’ve always done when I started this business way back in the day and I’ve see a lot of people come and go, this has the proven by years of experience, and so you just copy me and you don’t have to go through that experience. When I meet someone, one of my core mentalities, or ideas whatever you want to call it, is that birds of a feather flock together. If I like somebody odds are, probably I like most their friends too. What I do, is anytime I have a good deal and I did this all the way back in the beginning back when I couldn’t even change the background color on an HTML template.
This is how I found everybody, was, “Hey, who else do you like? Who do you like working with?” The question … I am going to say that again, because it’s a very key question, who do like working with? Not who makes you the most money, but who do you like working with? Because I have a belief that if I like somebody, I will find a way to make money with him. Some business venture or webinar something else all together, but I know that if I like and get a long with somebody, and we have similar business values, and dreams, and goals, we’ll figure something out. It’s just a matter of time.
That’s big for me because there is a lot of people that make a lot of money with people, but they don’t really like that much. Am like, “Why keep doing business with him? That’s a pain in the butt.” That’s just the way people are. It is what it is, but that’s what I do this. When I would meet somebody and get a long with I will be like, “Who do you like working with?” He be like, “Let me introduce you to John, let me introduce you to Joe and to Bob and then all over sudden I work my systems and do my magic and it does take time am not going to lie, but then I would get along with those guys. Now I got a network of 4. Each of those 3 people spiderwebs into 3 more people, and all over sudden you start building a spiderweb of network there.
There is a lot of value in building networks and we can talk about network effects and things like that in another call or something, but at the end of the day the bigger your network, the bigger the collective value it is. When I come in and I meet somebody else, and I say, “Hey, look oh, you and me get a long like you and me.” If we just met and we didn’t know each other, I now have this gigantic pool of people of people to introduce you to. Now you get plugged into my network, and now I’ve got maybe 20/30 connections for you to make, and now you are like, “Oh, Brad is a great guy like, he knows everybody. Oh, Brad knows every.” I hear it all the time and that’s because I plug you in, in a very strategic way. If you say, “Hey, Brad, am struggling with x, y, z thing, I got a guy for that. Oh, I need a, b, c thing, I got a guy for that.
At the end of the day, I’ve always got a guy for that, and that’s the business value that I bring. I want my brand and my reputation to be Brad is always got a guy for something or whatever, or resource, an article or something like that. When it comes to networking, I started small and then I spider-webbed, and then that collective thing. Everybody is not like me and this is one thing that I’ve learned painfully sometimes, is that not everybody connects with people very easily. For me this is my magic ability, and I understand that not everyone’s like that.
When I do this, I see that there is a lot of people who can do things that am terrible at, and that’s all they want to do. When it comes to connecting with folks, I can add amazing amounts of value to them, and so that’s what I do. I work that system out, and it blows up like in the theory of concentric circles on a vlc network. It just gets bigger and bigger exponentially, and then every time someone comes into the network, they plug into every connection. All the development work that I do on a daily basis, they get the benefit of that. When now with my business today, 7 and 1/2 years later, someone could come in and say, “Oh, man I don’t have to worry about this anymore.” “Oh, I got a new webinar there is 300 grand right there because Brad will just go papapapapa! Through the network and find who wants to run the webinars.”
That’s the business side of it. That’s how the business develop, but it really came from this idea of connecting with people day by day saying, “Who else do you like working with?” In about after a year or 2 of doing that, you’ll start to notice it’s the same people, and then when I go to events that’s who I associate with. Then am always constantly deepening, deepening, deepening the relationships. I have a lot of them, and am constantly deepening each of them through the communication. Does that make sense? I know it’s [inaudible 00:16:30]
Matt Wolfe: Yeah.
Brad Spencer: Throw at you but that’s all I do. That’s day in day out my work if you will, like a tasks and things that I am working on, that’s what am doing. It’s constantly deepening those relationships.
Matt Wolfe: How much of the networking that you do? How much of the contact building that you do comes from actually going out and meeting people in person, going to events.
Brad Spencer: Lot of it.
Matt Wolfe: That kind of thing verses just reaching out and connecting with somebody on Facebook?
Brad Spencer: It’s both but I will always try to get somebody. I believe in a lot of magnitude. Here is my system. I think messaging someone be it email or Facebook chat or Skype chat or whatever is like a value of 1. Getting someone on the phone is a value of the 10 mores or it’s 10 times more valuable to me, then just a Wrangler text message text type of communication. Another auto magnitude on top of that is in person, and then another auto magnitude beyond that is doing family vacations and outings. When I look at my income, if I go 80/20 to the third power, most of my income comes from people who I’ve done family vacations. I know their wives, I know their kids, we’ve played, they know my family, all that kind of stuff.
If you have a value of 1 on a text message, you have a value of 10 on a phone call, you have a value of 100 because we’re doing all those magnitude or whatever, and value of 100 for being in person like at an internet marketing event or something like that. A value of 1,000 when we’ve done stuff on the family, and a great place for this is like the market or schools is a great example. What’s you’ve done now with somebody, those relationships pay dividends in one form or another forever, because when you’ve gone Stingray city, you’ve got pictures with somebody’s wife, you are the 4 of you all together on a trip going to outing, you can’t take that back. Business has changed but those relationships don’t change.
That’s how I connect. I always take everything into real life, IRL, little happy [kiddy charts 00:18:37]. I just learned that one from my partner’s son. He is like, “Yeah, IRL.” Am like, “What the heck is IRL? [inaudible 00:18:43] and am like, “Okay whatever, [inaudible 00:18:47] I guess I don’t understand.
Matt Wolfe: Do you have a networking working like ascension thing where you start by reaching out through Facebook and getting to know all him and then, meet him up at an event and then working a crew or whatever. Is there ascension process that would like to walk people through?
Brad Spencer: That’s the [eccentric 00:19:07] process. I just gave it to you. It’s starting out with the message and then developing this up, because honestly when you’ve out with eaten dinner with somebody … I come from a very … The best way to think of it is like an old Italian family. If you’ve ever been with immigrant type families. It doesn’t matter where they’re from, they are all seen to … Very similar culture where I grew up in Indiana where you always had Sunday meals together. You always had dinners. If you invited someone out, you paid for them. All this is weird proper etiquette and it’s not as common in American culture now as it used to be, but that’s where I was brought up. When you ascend someone into a different category if you will, and you develop these relationships, you can’t take that away.
We had lunch together, what? January or something like that, while back and that relationship will never go away, because you can’t take that lunch back. You spent 2 hours chatting getting to know somebody, breaking bread together, and in many cultures around the world outside of the United States breaking bread is like if you invite someone to your family like, wow, that’s like big deal. Especially I learned it from a guy who did a lot of business in Asia, and that’s a huge way to show respect to somebody is invite them over for a family meal. That’s how deals get closed.
That’s more the culture and style that I operate from, and that’s cool and everyone is like that but for me that’s critical, because businesses change, life changes whatever, but that stuff doesn’t change. It will always be because that’s human nature. You’re talking biology and evolution and that cool stuff that people hard wired to want to eat together, [inaudible 00:20:45], chat, get to know each other, go skiing together, all those types of things. That’s where the real value is created in the long run.
Matt Wolfe: Right, let’s talk about networking events just for a second. In my business if I mapped out like a growth chart of the growth of my business, it probably looks pretty flat lined and then I started going to networking events, and then you can see it skyrocket. It was the point where I started going out to events, and seminars, and networking parties and all that kind of stuff, then I probably saw the largest growth in my business. Let’s talk about what is your philosophy on getting out to events and connecting with people at events.
Brad Spencer: Go to as many as you can. The thing is I go to as many networking events as I possibly can, I don’t care where, I care what, I know in my life because I am so on a vibrational level if you will, I am so focused on meeting and connecting as just a core like when breathing or opening my eyes or whatever, that at any time I meet people, I will always connect with someone. I don’t know who, I don’t even care who, it’s a numbers game to me.
I value everybody and I can find value in everything, and I also believe like when it comes to networking stuff, like take a Traffic and Conversion Summit, where we’ve both hang out before, that event is like 3,000 [inaudible 00:22:16] people. You could say, “How will I ever go to this event and meet people and develop relationship? There is 3,000 people. I’ll never get their attention.” Whatever. You can come in with that, or you can say, “I don’t need to meet that many people, I need to meet 5.” There is something to be said about … Because this is something I’ve done like when it comes to networking events.
If you are talking to someone you want to connect with and a lot of people stick weird thing about events that I don’t really understand myself, but I get where people stick to people at their same status level, perceived status level anyway, especially the perceived part and they’ll connect with somebody and then they’ll be like, “Oh, hey, my friends are going to go out and eat.” Then they walk away from that person that they want to connect with. Who might be a guru or whatever who often they want to talk about.
The biggest most powerful thing you can do at a networking event is saying, “Hey, we are going out to lunch at the bla, bla, bla, do you want to come with us?” That power of invitation because now you’re talking when you’re at a networking event and you invite someone, you are talking about a primitive, tribal behavior that everybody is hard wired. This is some really deep psychology stuff, but they’re hard wired to want to say yes, because people want to be included. We are tribal animals. We’re meant to be social and be together.
When you invite people, you’re tapping into that. You won’t always get up but you might be amazed like, “Hey, can I grab you a $7 beer and the only other way to get that person’s attention or invited out to lunch or something would be to pay for a $2 thousand or a power day or something like that to get their focused attention, but that $7 beer [inaudible 00:23:54] it like the best networking technique there is. As you get in the conversation, “Hey, let me get the next round.” You are like, “Oh, my God, this guy is like buying me beer.” It’s because the people are programmed to in their mind to reciprocate. We’re talking primitive stuff here.
When it comes to networking events, being a real human and talking to as many people as you can, it is a truly a numbers game, and then asking people about people about themselves. It’s a 3 step process. Go to as many as you can, talk to as many people as you can as possible, and ask them about themselves and know that you’ll be taken care of, because a lot of people go into an event but have an agenda or they are like, I want to like be that guy, that guy and that guy, and that guy but they don’t say, “That guy might not be the person you think he is, because there is a lot of smoke and mirrors perception stuff, and there is a lot of people, I’ve learned in going to hundreds of events over the years.
The quite guy in the corner is often times the biggest treasure chest and because of the relative perceived status that he has like he in the corner quite, a lot of people aren’t going to talk to him or he is not that loud, or he is not a show baller or wearing fancy clothes, looking like a baller status or whatever, and he is more calm, chill to himself a lot of people aren’t reaching out to that guy. That means that when you actually do reach to that guy, he has so much more attention to give you when you ask him, “Hey, what do you think about this?” Do you know what am saying?
Matt Wolfe: Yeah.
Brad Spencer: Like [inaudible 00:25:26] deluded by like 50 people go and be lining after him say, “Hey, can I get a minute of your time? Hey, can you look at my thing? Hey, can you give me, me, me, me.” Whilst a lot of high status people in any social group have a lot of people pulling at their coat strings if you will. When you talk to those guys who might be the underground superstar who has got the results that you’re looking for or whatever your objective is to go to a networking event, now he is like, “Oh, all right, so you are the guy? All right, cool.” Like, “I’ll talk to you.” Because you reached out to me first and I am the quiet guy because am not outgoing. Maybe that’s not my thing. A lot of people aren’t like that, especially in big groups, they get shy even though they’re successful they still get shy, because human nature is human nature. That’s my thing with events as many as possible.
Matt Wolfe: It’s funny the whole guru, perceive, value, putting people on pedestal kind of thing. It’s funny too because you look back to I haven’t been dating in a long time and I know you’ve got a fiancee and all that stuff. Neither of us has been in the dating world for quite a while, but back when you were in the dating world, you go to the bar, the prettiest girl on the bar nobody is talking to her because everybody thinks she’s out of their league right?
Brad Spencer: They never could ask her.
Matt Wolfe: Chances are that girl never gets talked to because everybody has that same feeling. It’s the same thing with these same people you put on a pedestal, and those people are like sitting there going, “Why doesn’t everyone want to talk to me?”
Brad Spencer: Right, and that’s human nature because the thing is everybody no matter how shy they are, wants to connect. I don’t care if there is no such thing in human nature as a real true loner, it just means someone is not as open and like even the people who are closed off and have those closed off body language, that’s actually for me, I actually come out, this is one of those weird connection things I love to do, I take that as an invitation. That might be closed off like oh, that guy doesn’t want to talk, I’ll actually go talk to that guy and I don’t feel rejection when it comes to just talking to someone I don’t know. I’ll talk to somebody on a plane and I don’t care if they don’t want to talk to me and they blow me off, I don’t feel any resistance to that, so I’ll talk to anybody. That’s where when those people are closed off, I know that they really just want to connect. [crosstalk 00:27:47]
Matt Wolfe: Let me backup for a second too. When you just said that you don’t have any sort of resistance, you don’t have any of fear of rejection or talking to people, is that something that you think is just something that you’ve always had, or is that something you learned and was practiced?
Brad Spencer: Both. Absolutely both. I’ve drilled, I’ve really talked to thousands of people. I can talk to anyone anywhere about any thing, I’ll find something. It’s just my nature. That’s my natural talent, but my discipline practice talent comes into cultures. I worked in a business library and colleges. My college job and one of the books we had was called, Kiss, Bow or Shake and it’s an encyclopedia. It’s literally like 6 inches thick of all the business etiquette and cultural nuances of all the major business centers in the world. How do you go to dinner in Saudi Arabia? How do you give gifts in Asia? All those silly details and unless you’re a translator or you’re doing business, you would never know to do that.
To me I’ve drilled with lots of people. I worked at Disney so you learn how to connect with any person to close them on the experience. Not close them on a sale but close them their experience. Like you are the person who is the person that gives them the brand. That is the Disney brand. When you are trained like this, and you’ve gone through drills and dozens and dozens and dozens of interactions everyday. Even back then, that was 7/8 years ago, during the recession and you’re the guy that’s there, these people are spending tonnes of money and you’re learning how to connect with them when they don’t have a lot of money to spend on T-shirts and all the other junk because it’s a recession, and then you go into events and you’re the guy who’s lonely.
I will psych myself up. I have a routine and a ritual that go through where I put on smile on my face. I’ve walked around college campuses and different events permanently forcing myself to have a smile just to be more welcoming, even when I don’t want to smile. I’ve done all these somewhat idiotic things just as an experiment to know how to connect with people. I am very persistent in that way when it comes to connections. I will not stop. If I want to connect with you, I will connect with you. I will find a way.
This is the very masculine discipline, drive, power that this is where it shows out for me, is that, I will connect with anyone and I can connect with anyone. It’s just a matter of time. That is a core belief down to the core and that’s where my disciplines come in and all the work that I’ve put in to get to this point, a lot of it the 80/20 of it is talk to ask many people as possible, ask people what they want, show sincere interest. Not everyone is like that, but if you do show sincere interest, you might be surprised who you run into. Once there is hook, where am like, “I kind of like this guy.” I don’t mind spending 3 hours on the phone talking to that person.
Matt Wolfe: When going to events maybe not even necessarily events. What are some exercises that you’ve recommended just to give some people some takeaways of, I want to get better at networking, so I want to do some of these exercises to feel more confident networking at events? What would be 1 or 2 exercises you would recommend people go and try just to get in that flow?
Brad Spencer: The best way to do this and this any human being. I do this a lot with MacDonald’s clerks, gas station attendants, the movie theater attendant, store clerks, people that I call the forgettable that people forget like the service economy, and they are just like, “Oh, that’s my waiter.” They are like, “Okay, he’s a waiter.” I don’t see the world that way, I see everybody very human. The first thing I always do with everybody, “How is your day going?” Almost every human I interact with, even at a cashier level, where am just buying a bottle of drink at the airport something like that, “How is your day going?”
Look in their eyes, you’ll see if you start looking at people, people’s pupils will dilate when they’re happy and they’re excited, so you’ll start to notice when people feel like, “Oh, wow, someone noticed me. Am not just the guy who’s given you your money back. My day is going great. I just got here.” “It’s going to be a long day.” “Uh, man well, I hope it’s going good for you.” Do that with every human you interact with, that’s the first thing. How is your day going? That will get you used to to actually learning to listen and not like, “Hey, how is it going?” Then walking away like you don’t really care, like more or less like that’s like a hello in American culture, but like when you actually ask somebody especially if you’re dealing with foreign people, [for us you 00:32:18] stop and tell you and I’ll expect you to listen. It’s just one of those weird things. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is “What do you think?” Add what do you think, on any declarative statement that you’re making. If you are saying like, “Bla, bla, bla, this is stupid, what do you think?” You’ll open up people because this is also a way to soften the blow especially if it’s controversial or it’s like a heated debate. “What do you think Joe?” Unlike you see 2 people talking and there is that person that’s awkwardly standing nearly hasn’t nothing. We all deal with conversations like this all day long. What do you think so and so? And it defuses any potential conflict, but it also includes people. That situational awareness of doing the what do you think? Is a massive thing, because again it’ll force you to listen.
A lot of this networking stuff really comes down to how you can listen to people, and when you look at people and you’re paying attention to their body language. If right now like I’ve been going on for a second. If I wasn’t here looking at you, am actually paying attention like I see interest in what am saying or do I need to say, “Hey, what do you think?” If were having a conversation or something like that. I might say, “Hey, I’ve been talking for a minute or 2. What do you think?” Then, boom, it resets the whole thing.
That’s the connection stuff that those 2 things, how is your day going? And what do you think? Will open up our opportunities, because people will say things and one I’ve learned and I don’t remember who told me this and it really changed my life about 2 years ago, was you don’t learn anything when you’re talking, you only learn something when you’re listening. If you go back and look at for example guy who did better than I think anyone that I’ve ever explored in my life, was Johnny Locker fella, he didn’t say anything. He was the [tourist 00:34:15] and people would just buff information, because they didn’t like the awkward silence which is another conversation all together and using that to your advantage in negotiations, but he would just like, “Mm-hmm, interesting.” Give you the awkward pose, so people were are like say more crap and that’s how they got all this information to build the empire, because all he did was listen.
That’s why he’s the richest guy in history. You could say rich in financial terms or relationships of whatever, but all those super connectors, the ability to listen is the thing that determines their ability to succeed at whatever they are connecting about whether it’s business, or life, or relationship, marriage, friends whatever. It’s all the same, because humans don’t change. It’s just the topic that changes.
Matt Wolfe: Absolutely.
Brad Spencer: Yeah man. Those 2 [crosstalk 00:34:59].
Matt Wolfe: That’s cool I think that’s some good things to try and it gives people something that next time they in event or just out in public in general, the can just start getting in the habit of doing of all these things, and next thing, when you are networking with the people that could help benefit your business, you’ve got that flow down. You’ve practiced it. I think that’s some great stuff. I do want to shift gears a little bit and talk about systematization of networking, because we’ve had some conversations and you’ve told me you have a pretty cool, little system for making sure that you’re constantly staying in contact with people and you actually told me that you are going to make a little training video for the members of the Authority Insiders to actually show how you set this up, but do you want to give us a quick overview and explain what your system is for making sure you stay in contact with people?
Brad Spencer: Absolutely, I modified this oath of the Keller William’s marketing system. If you want a great book, it’s the system, it’s called the 33 [inaudible 00:36:04] but it’s in the millionaire real estate agent. Is where I was doing it intuitively and then when I read this, I really systematized out to read this book like about a year or 2 ago. That’s Gary Keller one of my favorite authors of all time. Even though it’s real estate , I love the guy. He’s great communicator.
What I do is my goal in life, when I first started out in business, my first system and networking and this is a great one anyone can start with. Whether it’s Facebook or Skype or whatever, I would talk to 3 people with the first name of A. That started with the letter A on the first of the month. Second day of the month, I would talk to 3Bs, 3Cs on third, so on and so forth. You go through your entire network one way or the other for the most part by end of the month. What that forces to do is that when you talk to more people, more people will talk to you.
A lot of people they are like, “I only want to talk to a certain people.” It’s a wrong attitude, because not everyone is going to reply back to you but 2 out of the 3 will. Whether it’s a phone call, or it’s a message or whatever. It forced you to stay in touch. Its a discipline thing. It’s not even really about anyone conversation, it’s the discipline to constantly stay in touch. That’s the first system.
What I do on top of that to layer it on is that I use is use a program called Asana. Asana is a great project management, to do list, task thing like Trello or some of these other ones that are popular now. What I do as I program people in there to say like if I haven’t spoken to this person in 33 days, it’ll show up and it’ll remind me. I’ll say like, FW for follow up and follow up with, and then I put the person’s name. What I will do in there is I’ll keep a task list like you can do this with any to do list App, but I’ll know the main things this person talks about, so at a volume I can remember if someone said something like, “Oh, hey, we’ll going on a trip to Boka next month and I haven’t talked to him in 2 months, I can remind myself say, “Oh yeah, I’ll ask him about that.” Start a conversation about that. Real human level conversation but I don’t have to remember every nuance detail of every conversation.
I’ll keep a chat log in there and I’ll say, the bullet points are the main things about what that person is about, what their business is et cetera. Then I’ll keep a chat log in Asana networks in they call the comment section but I use it as a chat log. Say, “Hey, talk to this person on such and such and such a date.” What that does is I can go back to that conversation, remember what we spoke about and I’ll keep a log. Am not perfect about this, because one of the big things that I do when you talk to so many people, you have to keep notes and am terrible at converting my notes into Asana, that’s a weakness of mine, but if you are on a computer all day on Skype, you can have Asana up in the background. As someone says something you are like, “I want to remember that.” Add a comment and it will keep a time-stamp of when you did it so you will know what’s up.
At the end of the day, I have a lot of people programmed in Asana at one level or another, and I’ve experimented dozens of ways. I took my ABC system the thing I mentioned a minute ago, and I put it in Asana, kind of works. It’s a little frustrating at time, so I didn’t really stick with that for [a long goal 00:39:19], but I’ll have all those people followed up with. If I haven’t spoken to you in a while, I’ll have it as my back stub memory. Asana from a systematic perspective, it’s very difficult for me to lose touch with someone who I actually want to stay in touch with, or who I had a good relationship with, because worst case scenario, I’ll pick a random date, 33 days maybe 19 days. It’s never the same, so it shows up on different dates, and it will remind me, “Hey, you’ve talked to Bob in a while.” Boom.
Matt Wolfe: You put all these names as essentially a task in Asana. That task you can add comments to that task, but then you can also add a due date kind of thing right?
Brad Spencer: Yeah, exactly. Repeat this task every 19 days is what Asana calls it. I don’t know what they call it in Trello, because I don’t use that, but every service has something like this where it is a repeatable thing and when I talk to him, I’ll mark it is done. If I talk to him between, then I’ll know, it doesn’t matter, but worst case scenario will always be heard from me at some … I purposely pick a random number because I wanted to be organic. I don’t want to say every other Thursday if I haven’t talken to Matt or talked to Matt am going to call Matt. That ruins the whole conversation. They’ll see oh, he hit me up every other Thursday for something. I don’t want that people have that impression on me.
I purposely pick a random date like 1 to 35 day. Depending on the relationship, some people I know better, once I get to know them better, I’ll shrink that repeating task down to like now less maybe every 13 days. Someone I know really well but I don’t have a direct partnership with. That’s where I function in that environment.
Matt Wolfe: Maybe Asana will send you a notification to-
Brad Spencer: Yes, shows up in the task, you have a daily task list like this is my stuff to do today. It builds a to do list and I use that same system to stay in touch with different ideas and remember to read something or if I have too many things to read or [inaudible 00:41:15] this task and I’ll spend the next 5 days only read these 2 articles, these 2 articles, these 2 articles, clear my tabs and am back to tab bankruptcy but that’s another thing. The same system works for everything, and that way am systematically talking to people all the time, because in my business, the number of people I talk to, I haven’t figured this but a KPI of mine is I want to schedule so many webinars a month. Which means I need to talk to so many people and that’s the way he talked about it in the real estate stuff.
In real estate Keller Williams talks about the call 33 touch. You need to have 33 points of communication over a year with your I think he calls it like a firm list or something in there. Or have [inaudible 00:42:02] data I think is what the term is that they use in Keller Williams. I took the same concept and am actually working on a big project right now where I took everybody on my Facebook friend list, and I sorted them into 3 or 4 databases of the depth of the relationship, where it is right now. People I know the best there is about 50 to 100 in that category, those people that I would love to have in my 50 to 100, those people I’ve me but don’t know so well, and those people I’ve no idea because they just randomly friended me on Facebook which that’s probably 80/90% of the database.
Am going through literally I’ve a spreadsheet with my 4,000 rows and my system pulled it for me, and am going through and giving everyone an assigned of how much I know them. Not like who I like the best or anything. I want to be very clear on that. It’s not like who I like the best, it’s who do I know the best, and then I’ll say I want to further develop the ones which are people I know the best, and I’ve done the most with, and I might have … I’ll go in and those are the people am going to send Christmas cards to, those are the people am going to call on their birthdays, those are the people am going to do all that stuff, because I do all that crap like message people, call them. “How is your kid doing? Oh, I’ve see you posted that you just got back. How was your anniversary trip?” I do a lot of calls like that everyday.
The people who are number 2s are the people that I would love to get to that point with. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, but that’s where I’ll put a lot of focused attention on those folks. People I’ve met once, but like we met at a conference. “I like that guy, he is cool whatever. He does this that.” I want to move everybody up one level. The 1s get deeper, the 2s I want to turn to 1s, the 3s I want to turn to 2s, the 4s I want to turn to 3s. When I travel, I go to Facebook and say, “Who do I want to have lunch with?” Every time I take a trip, it’s a tax write off because am always doing some business on my trip, because there is so many people that I want to meet and maybe do a webinar with or something. I can turn any trip into a business situation, because of the way I network with people.
It’s all to develop a genuine communication. All my systems make it easier for me to really go back and say, “Hey, how is your day going? What do you got going on?” One of the things, just to give you another system and that’s a big project am working on. It’s going to take me a few more weeks, but once it’s done, am going to be 10 times more contact with people that am at even now. One of the things that I do with Facebook and everyone loves this, so I want to share with your folks too, is when you go into Facebook … I have a video on this so I’ll include it for the members, I can stay in touch with folks who if you are in one of my number 1 and number 2 list for example, and I’ll figure how this is going to go. Right now all my VIPs which is the people I know the most, I see everyone of their Facebook statuses.
What I mean by that is you can get the notifications and it will pop up in the notifications on the top of Facebook. When I wake up every morning there was like 50 notifications, but I don’t look at the newsfeed, because I don’t want to see all those junky, viral, political, religious crap that’s uprooting Facebook, I only want to connect with people and see, “Oh, hey, went to dinner.” like, “Great.” I care about that stuff. Each one of those things will show up on my Facebook and now I have unlimited source of ideas to talk about. When you go to the desktop on Facebook there is a little tab, it says your friends with somebody, and when you click that it will say get notifications. You can say, see this first. It will always show up, and it will show up in notifications.
I get everyone of those people’s notifications. When someone posts in a group that I want to stay in touch with, I see it. All that stuff I see it, so am constantly curating essentially my Facebook to where am connecting with more people I want to connect with, or people I already know pretty well. Am moving those folks in there. I know when you’re travelling and you went on cruise for 10 year anniversary. I can call you back 3 days after you get back and say, “Hey, I saw your photos, how it going? What place did you like the best?” “I used the south cruise.” I always love doing that because it’s always a great conversation.
Something will always come up. I always believe that everybody wants to do business with people that they like, it’s like KLT, no one I can trust. People want to do that, so when you have a conversation based on that principle, it’s a very powerful thing.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, that’s awesome. I was actually going to wrap it up after the systems thing here. There is a couple of final questions I was going to ask and then everything beyond this is going to be just for members of the community. One question I always like to ask wherever I do any sort of interview is, what book would you recommend related to this topic and also what’s your favorite book. You already mentioned the Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Keller Williams. Will that be the one book you recommend around the topic of networking or do you have something else? Also what is just your favorite overall book? Business book whatever?
Brad Spencer: Favorite overall business book, there are so many of them. My favorite Gary Keller book as much as the Millionaire Real Estate Agent a lot of people will say it’s a real estate book, but it’s a great way on business and connecting because real estate is all a connection business, so you can apply that model to anything. The One Thing by Gary Keller’s is his newest one I love that. He says let’s says a phrase like, something like, what’s the one thing I can do to get xyz done today? That will make everything else easier and necessary.
I think it is what it is, and it’s a great thing with networking because what’s the one thing that I … People will say like, what’s the one thing I can say that will open up a good conversation every time? What do you think? How is your day going? It’s the silly caring. I got to emphasize you actually have to care. It can’t be like that very quicky message thing what everyone does. Where it’s like, “Hey, how is the going Bob?” Then you don’t stand to listen and you don’t care to listen. Just say hello, if you really don’t want to know.
That’s what I would say for networking is the one thing. Looking back at the one thing. You don’t need to be an expert, you don’t need to do like what I do with all my manic OCD like systems that I love, you want to be the person who is sincerely caring, because if you are sincere, that’s the 80/20 to the third power of networking connecting with anyone. That is just the details like who they are, did they respond to you? Did they like your hair? People have weird things but that’s it. That’s the big business book. Really the one thing is huge for anyone because it’s just a very results oriented book I think.
Matt Wolfe: Very cool, the systems that you set up in Asana and the systems you set up in Facebook, are you going to be adding some bonus training for the Authority Insider’s members?
Brad Spencer: Absolutely [inaudible 00:49:08] I got a date, so they have to make sure they are members of that because that will be the video walks on how to do all that stuff.
Matt Wolfe: Awesome, I appreciate you taking the time and teaching our networking skills. You mentioned earlier that you’re building up a new business that you’re working towards. What’s that brand and where can people find more about you?
Brad Spencer: Absolutely, it’s at thewinwindealmaker.com. And I’ll be working on a blog there a new blog, talking bout this type of stuff, and also just my musings on building deals, because remember I always tell everybody if it’s not a win win, it’s a fail fail. That’s my core value with everything is it’s always going to be a win win where everybody gets what they want out of a transaction. Whatever it maybe, relationship transactions, doesn’t matter. That where I’ll be sharing all that stuff and how it can grew everyone’s business.
Matt Wolfe: Awesome, I appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time today.
Brad Spencer: Absolutely man.
Matt Wolfe: All right. I hope you enjoyed that episode with Brad Spencer. Make sure you check out thewinwindealmaker.com to learn more from Brad. Also inside of authority insiders, over the authorityinsiders.net, Brad said that he was going to make some bonus training for everybody. This is going to walk you through how he uses Asana and sets up his systems for staying in contact with people. If you’re not already a member of Authority Insiders definitely, definitely go check it out at authorityinsiders.net, sign up. You get the full almost 2 hour conversation that I had with Brad. After I stopped recording the podcast, we continued on for another good probably hour of networking talk, and more ideas, more tools, more information about how you can become a better networker. It’s really cool. Definitely check that out, authorityinsiders.net.
Again this episode is a little bit longer than what I anticipate most episodes being, but Brad was just giving so much good stuff, I didn’t want to cut him off. We ended up recording 2 hours of content, and there is still more if you want to check it out. Hopefully you enjoyed that, and I will see you guys in the next episode, episode 4. See you later.
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