0:00 I'm your host Kevin bemel and we're here every Wednesday morning at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time 1: p.m. eastern time and an hour in for Central and mountain and we talk about all things related to business professions wealth building um how to handle that part of of your life um here in the three pillars of attainment uh dealing with uh the finances realm particularly although you know anytime you're dealing with finances you're inevitably dealing with relationships as well as you know
0:37 your identity so probably the um most important aspect of our professional lives is the the people that we interact with whether it's co-workers whether it's customers whether it's clients we essentially have no business unless we are interacting with other people now in some cases that group may be very small I was I was talking to somebody yesterday um who's a writer and he
1:15 commented to me that um and we we were working on a business matter for him and he commented to me that uh he was really surprised by how things went because he he basically spends his day writing he doesn't interact with a lot of people other than his agent and his publisher Etc and and and so his his network if you will is pretty small other people their whole business revolves around making new contacts so anyone in sales knows this uh and and most of us
1:50 probably fall somewhere in between so if we're looking for professional growth if we're looking to advance our career get a promotion um promote our business um we we need to be working on our Network now there's two aspects of working a network one is increasing the closeness of of your network and another is expanding the number of people with whom you network or with whom you have relationships so
2:26 I've talked um I've talked about both both of those before and if you go to our YouTube channel at uh youtube.com theee to wow you can look at some of those episodes um and and today I want I'm going to focus primarily on expanding your network but expanding it in a a focused way and in a way that won't cost you anything in terms of dollars and cents it will just take time and um while I I can appreciate time is at a
3:03 premium um I'm going to be using uh LinkedIn and and while LinkedIn has a paid membership it's it's expensive um and for most of us I think it's it's unless we're in sales or something like that where it really is worth our while um I I don't find that the the cost is Justified frankly now if you're recently out of the military um you can get a a free uh subscription to LinkedIn premium for a time I believe it's for three years um
3:38 and there may be other circumstances where you can get a a free um U membership if you will in or a free access to to LinkedIn premium um but I think you know building our networks expanding the PE the number of people with whom we have relationships is an ongoing function and so we need something that is um uh on the one hand sustainable um and accessible but on the other hand is not a monthly drain on our resources because some months um we may just not have the time to be building
4:14 our networks and so then any money we spend on that um is is essentially wasted so I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and go over to LinkedIn okay so you should be seeing my my my LinkedIn um uh profile or whatever whatever you call it um you know you you have your your feed um sales Navigator is yeah it's one of the products they sell um and um you know here's new new posts okay so this is just you know
4:49 where you see what's going on so um what I'm going to recommend is um and I'm going to I'm going to do this based on my business because I already have it set up and so um you'll see there are certain things you can and cannot do um you know right away there it will take some some time um but um what I'm going to suggest you do you go over here to for business okay and see here there's an icon it says groups so click on
5:24 groups okay and what you're going to get is the list of groups that you're um of which you're a member now um if you're already a member of a group that relates to your profession so you're all set um if not um and and in this case I'm going to Veer off so let's say you're in um cyber security okay and you w to um you want to uh expand your network in that field okay so go to cyber you know
6:00 search cyber security groups okay here you go cyber security groups and just go through and you can see um I mean a lot of these groups have a lot of members so this cyber security Forum initiative has over a half million members wow okay mission to provide cyber warfare awareness guidance and security okay so this is this is focused on cyber warfare okay cyber security here's 136,000 members in today's information economy the protection of information assets is a key element in long-term comp blah blah blah blah blah okay and you can
6:36 always go to the group okay and and you'll have a description about it go here to show all okay and this gives you the the details of the group and in most cases you're going to have to apply to joints so see this is a private listed Group which means you can see that the group exists but you have to apply to join okay it's it's not a public group okay so um the first step in expanding your context using LinkedIn is to find a group um
7:14 preferably a large group okay that um that you can join that has the kind of that has the people in it with whom you want to network okay and establish relationships all right so I'm I'm going to go back to groups because if I try if I click to join a cyber security group it it may take a while for them to do that and we don't want to sit here you know all day doing that okay so um as as many of you know um my primary business is being a a professional fiduciary here in California so I'm part of something called the trusts and Estates Network
7:51 and and now if if you look at um if you look at trusts and and uh and Estates okay if you search that trust in Estates and go to groups okay you're going to see this this is the the top Group by four by far okay it says 42,000 members you can see there are other ones but all of them drop precipitously in terms of the number of members okay the next biggest one is 300 okay um and and then it you know it goes down from there so um now by the
8:29 way um I've I've done this technique with both small groups and large groups and and it works no matter what the size of the group that doesn't matter um and and in some ways what I found was um it worked better with small groups um I think because you know everybody sort of gets to know everybody else um however once you're connected with everybody in a small group so then you know what do you do you got to go on to another group or something like that and it's hard to participate in a in a lot of groups
9:06 TimeWise so um in my case um this is my trust and Estates network is my uh primary forum for for uh establishing and building relationships okay and and the people I want to meet are uh estate planning attorneys uh accountants involved in Estates and trusts um people in financial services involved with Estates and trusts uh um other fiduciaries excuse me and and and and
9:42 and that's it and and also then people who do valuations for Estates and trusts now occasionally I'll come on I'll come upon somebody who doesn't um excuse me do any of those things and yet still looks like a good uh a good contact for me and so um I will you know um ask to connect with them um as well now I do a a weekly show on trusts and Estates as as some of you may know on Mondays and so sometimes I'll come across somebody who I think will make an interesting guest and so
10:18 I'll look to connect with them even though there might not be an opportunity for us to do business uh directly in terms of perhaps you know uh referring clients and such so um I I My Philosophy is I want to um provide uh value uh to to people with whom I Network and and you know inevitably if I'm providing value to other people it seems you know business comes my way okay so if you if you go over here in the group you see how many members there are okay and you
10:53 can see um I have I'm connected with you know 246 people um in this group okay you see the number there um so don't worry about invite connections that's inviting people you're already connected to to join the group and you can certainly do that um to help the group out but if you're looking to make new connections so go to show all okay and here is a list of members okay and you see you see it's just it's going to
11:28 go on and on in this case it's you know almost 42,000 members but by the way I was I was in the group before it had even 40,000 members so um and here you you eventually you'll get down to you you'll click the link show more okay and it and and it'll load more and it keeps going you know on and on and on okay all right so go through now um yeah go through the list okay so here's here's somebody at the top Here Blake Co okay now um when you're dealing with just the top people
12:03 on the list you can click through directly to that member so there's Blake Co okay and um he's with Phillips auctions okay and he's in the group so this means that um auctioneers typically they're involved in in selling um assets of an estate um but they're also involved um oftentimes with valuing Assets in an estate okay so um this could potentially be um someone for me to connect with you notice right here it
12:38 says he's third connect he's third level connection which means um there's there's no direct connection so sometimes you'll see a connect button sometimes you go over to more and you'll see the correct the connect button here so go to connect okay now here's the key don't just click Send because it's you're just you know arbitrarily connecting that doesn't do a whole lot okay so you want to add a note you've got 300 characters so I have um a
13:14 pre-written note that I keep in in Evernote okay and so what I do is I just copy it okay and I paste it into the the message optional box and I fill in the person's name so hi Blake okay and this and and then here's my message as a licensed professional fedu shary I am reaching out to others in our field to see if we can help each other build our practices would you like to connect okay courage at all times Kevin now you say well wait a minute you got another 200 characters yeah I do um but
13:52 I I've found that a short note um is is is more effective okay okay and then you click Send okay and there you go okay now um I keep a list um of people that I um reach out with or reach out to whom I reach out I should say um so I put in Blake Co okay and um he in in this case he's he's an other I do my list in in in French it just lets me you know practice my French okay and and there you go all
14:29 right so then then you just you know backtrack in your browser and you're back to your the membership list of the group okay um now so here's Gary Norsworthy mechanical manufacturing engineer at ECA medical instruments honestly not sure why he's in the group maybe he just maybe he wants information uh for his own estate planning purposes but this isn't somebody that I could um give business to most likely so I'll I'll skip him okay next is Joshua Andrews cfp certified financial planner
15:05 and he's a second level connection associate wealth advisor at resource Consulting Group so I'll go ahead and click on Joshua's um uh profile okay and you see here's my Mutual connection okay that's why he's second level because we have a mutual connection okay and here in this case there's a connect button right you know right under available you don't have to go into more it's available here open and that's so often times the case when it's a second level connection okay and you can go down here you can read a
15:40 little bit about the person if you're you know if you're not sure um whether it's really someone um you know that that um you know you can potentially give business to and and establish a relationship with so um Joshua Andrews looks like a you know a good uh uh a good Prospect he went to Samford University interestingly enough I know someone who went to Samford so there's an opportunity for us to you know connect on that okay so again just click connect again we're going to add a note okay and just you know copy and paste
16:16 and here's you know Joshua okay and uh okay and it says the same thing as before okay so we'll press press send okay and now we'll add uh Josh oops Joshua Joshua uh Andrews okay and he's a financial services professional so there we go um all right and okay so here's what's going to happen um now let's click back
16:51 So eventually what's going to happen is you're going to get so far down in the list that when you click back through it's going to take you back so here let me let me actually let's I'll show you what I mean so let's let's let's go as far down as let's okay so [Music] um okay okay so here's Julie Wright we wealth life and healthc care consultant at AER life okay so I'll click through to Julie okay and okay so then let's say I
17:26 I connect with her okay but when I click back see it takes me back to the top of the members list okay which means I've got to spend all this time clicking you know going back through and I have to remember okay where did I leave off oh there okay there's there's Julie all right so see there's extra time there so once once you get to the situation where clicking back means you have to scroll through the list for uh any amount of time um what I recommend doing is opening up
18:03 another uh browser window in LinkedIn oops hold on one second okay and okay so this is going to get a little bit difficult but let's um so let let's let's look up Julie Wright okay so I'm going to go over to a a different LinkedIn tab okay and um now uh we're going to go we're gonna go oh I'm sorry we don't have to scroll down
18:39 and we're gonna we're g to put in Julie right okay and look here she is at the top of the list wealth life and healthc care consultant okay there you are AER life okay so go to her full profile okay and okay there we are connect okay so we'll we'll copy in our message Julie and send okay and then we'll put her here over on our our
19:16 list and I'll show you in a minute why you want to keep this list all right now you're just going to so then you'll go back to the the tab and see we still we're still in the same place here's Julie okay and let's say you know we done everyone above you know Julie we we've already selected those okay so now we go down here don't see anybody don't see anybody uh well here maybe there's this carol Joyce okay so we'll go back to this tab and we're going to search Carol Joy okay and see if we here she is
19:52 manager at JTC group okay there you go okay she's on the aisle of man she's not in the United States so for for my for my business this is you know she's probably not um you know a good candidate although she might be a candidate to appear on my show but for someone for me to network with probably not okay so we'll go back to the list okay and let's add some more people okay and see click add more okay and here we are um okay Lee helmer's
20:28 vice president certified financial planner private wealth adviser US Bank private wealth management okay so let's let's see if we can find uh lee Helmer okay so we'll go in here Lee Helmer and there he is Lee helmer's cfp okay he's in Lexington Kentucky okay good um we have a mutual connection that's why he's a second level all right and so we'll go ahead and connect with Lee or at least request to connect with
21:03 Lee oops okay um all right and and so then we'll put Lee helmer's on our list wealth manager okay all right so we've I've connected with you know four people and um basically now it's just a matter you know and um sometimes you know I'll I'll I'll look to do you know 10 a day 20 a day it depends on um you know how how much time you have how how you know assertive you
21:38 want to be in expanding your network how many people you want to bring to your network okay all right so the next so why am I keeping this spreadsheet well first of all I want to know who who I've connected with um although it should say pending okay sometimes I'll come up on someone and the name will seem familiar um and I'll search them and indeed I have requested contacting them with contacting them before but for some reason it's not listed pending now I don't check that on everyone I only check that when a name
22:13 seems really familiar to me um but in any event um what I want to do um is first of all know how many people have I requested to connect with and what percentage are in each category so I I started doing this um I forget what the day was D4 minus 8 A2 where's oh A2 okay yeah I started doing this um October 23d
22:50 October 19th of 2023 so October November December January no wait October November December October November December January yeah so I've been doing this for yeah roughly three months okay um and in fact down here um it shows that I've been doing it for aund over 101 day period okay and um I've averaged uh contacting um 11.5 people um per per month um I'm
23:27 sorry per day per day um per per weekday I believe that is by the way okay and roughly 42% of them have been lawyers interestingly enough only about six% of them have been accountants so there aren't a lot of accountants in these groups only about 5% of them are um real estate agents um and about 37% are Financial Services professionals 2% are doing valuation about 6% are other fiduciaries and then about 3% are others so you can see the two groups that I've been able
24:04 to um reach out to the most are lawyers which is a good source of business for what I do and Prof people in financial services which is also good okay so then what we're waiting for then is to see who responds by connecting so what I do is when someone connects I pull their name out of Master list and I put it into the connect list okay so um as of um the last you know couple of days I I I haven't done any
24:40 new ones for a while but I've had two people um connect and you'll notice I put them in italics because I haven't responded to the fact that they've connected yet okay so when somebody connects okay what you want to do is send a follow-up message to them okay so let's let's go over here um you can the easiest way to do it is is to go to my network okay and you can go to connections okay and you'll notice that
25:15 um uh Vicky cheers and mie Moore are the or Marne I'm sorry Marne yeah Marne Moore are the latest two and actually so here's a here's a third person must have just done this this morning um Karen Harris Melendez so let's let's find her on the list oops I spell her name wrong no now one of the one of the challenges
25:50 with this is yeah I must have I may have spelled her name wrong let's just let's just try Karen Carie nope okay that's weird so someone is connected with me um so here's what you do you can look at message oh okay I'm sorry that's not some okay that that she's she's the sister of a friend of mine that I connected with okay so so for networking purposes um it's it's just these uh last two here that I haven't connected with
26:26 okay so um Mary Moore will do will do connectc see here you can see the message I sent her before and then I have my follow-up message in um in uh Evernote as well and I just copy it off now when you do when you're already connected um you don't have a limit in in terms of the size of the message so I do a longer message so I'll say hi Marne okay um and I say thank you for connecting okay if you would like to have a brief call to share some specifics about your work and how we may
27:01 be able to help each other my number is and I give you my number or you can use this link to um schedule a time at your convenience and I'm happy to call you and I give her the link to my calendar to my schedule okay and then just you know courage at all times Kevin BMA blah blah blah and then I put in a link to my show why not um you know let people know about it okay and then um so then you know I filled in her name Arie so send okay and one of the things you see is it brings up this icon for schedule now all right and then I'm going to do the same
27:37 thing for uh Vicki okay same message bang okay so I've done my follow-up messages now so then I'll this is just my way of keeping track so now they're I take them out of italic so I'm up to date on those now if someone responds with either um uh um you know scheduling a meeting time or requesting information then I put them in this next category and I I won't get into all the
28:14 the the the the colors and such too much um but generally speaking if someone responds um by scheduling a call or suggesting they'd like to schedule a call so then I'll put them in um in green okay and and again if it's perspective just like it's perspective up here green and italics means it's perspective okay if they set a call okay then I'll put them in green just regular um you know font okay and then after I speak with them if they're um someone
28:52 that I want to continue to work to develop a relationship with then I'll underly buy them okay and what you're going to what you see down here now is of the you know 820 people yeah of the 820 people okay I've connected to 21 of them as potential sources as as people to develop relationships with or roughly two and a half perc okay you say wow that's really small it is but the reality is this doesn't take a lot of time you could e easily bang out 20
29:29 requests to connect in 20 or 30 minutes depending on how efficient you are and then you can send out um the uh follow-up messages again 10 20 30 minutes at the most okay and and then once you get to the point where you're scheduling a phone call I I recommend you use a link um to so that you don't have to be going back and forth when are you available when am I available just give them a scheduling link okay and so then by the time you're talking to them you know you're talking with actual prospects in terms of potential new
30:06 relationships oh and I realized you can't see oh my gosh um I realized you you can't see the the spreadsheet hold on one second let me uh let me stop sharing okay I'm gonna uh window Microsoft unable to share screen oh it's not going to let me oh shoot okay I should have tested this I so my apologies you you un you unfortunately you can't uh can't so let's let's try
30:42 this let's entire screen share let's see if this will work no it's not going to work okay all right um I have to update my permissions for you to see this um so um if if you if if you want a a a template of the um of the the spreadsheet that I'm using to keep track um feel free to to let me know um just uh drop a request in the in the chat um
31:17 Andor um you know send me an email um the the links to do that will be in the show notes after this um after this uh episode posts to our YouTube channel so by doing this and and the key is to do it consistently so what I recommend is um put into your calendar um 30 minutes a day 45 minutes a day um maybe honestly I I wouldn't do it for more than an hour a day um I have at times done it for more than an hour a
31:52 day it it it is pretty exhausting to do it for that longer period of time but if you consistently do it for 30 to 45 minutes a day a weekday anyway um I I suspect your results will be pretty similar to mine where for every um hundred people you just request to connect with you will get you know two and a half right um between two and three who you can establish relationships with okay and then from there you'll transfer them into into
32:27 your relationship tracking uh grid which I've talked about in other lesson in other shows I mean and again if you if you'd like a copy of that let me know I'm happy to um send you it's it's an Excel spreadsheet as well um and you you can keep track of them so I'm I'm I'm I am going to take a couple minutes since we have the time to um review um this this aspect of it which is um and I recommend to you here I'll actually I'll I'll I'll bring this up hang on one
33:04 second okay so there's a book um [Music] called um make sure I'm giving you yep here we go how to be a power connector and let's go back here I'll go ahead and share my screen so you can see this here we go share okay so how to be a power connector by Judy Robinette and this is the system that I use the 550 100 rule for turning your business Network into profits this is a this is an outstanding
33:41 book and um Judy's theory is that we can effectively keep T in touch with roughly 150 people 155 people okay and uh I find that that's basically the case now I actually work to keep in touch with about 170 people um because I include just you know personal friends that I have no business connection to in my list because I I I I really value keeping in touch with my friends and I like to know you know the last time we
34:16 spoke um but but in any event oh I'm this this happens to be the the audible book here let's go over to the paperback not that it really matters okay so here you go um create a personal power grid of influence to spark professional and personal success so the the grid that I use it's not it's not exactly like the one um Judy has in her book um I've um revised it over time um and and to make it work better for me and and and by the way in all of these things I recommend
34:52 that um you take my technique and make make make it your own make the changes that you need to make so that it'll work as effectively as possible uh for you okay but I I recommend this book BEC and it's it's it's very easy to read it's I think just a couple of hundred Pages if I'm not mistaken yet 256 pages in total and and and this is really the the system that I use um and I'll I'll put a I'll put a link um in the show notes to to to Judy's Book and uh
35:28 okay stop sharing there we go okay so based on that book what you want to do then is create your grid of relationships and make sure that you're periodically contacting them um most of the time you can just give them a call checking in see how you're doing how can I help you with your business um my my friend Bill gross is brilliant at doing that he's built really his entire practice doing that um and and and I tend to do the same thing although I
36:03 candidly am not as good at is Bill is um but you can also like if you come across an article that's that will interest somebody or something like that send it to them email it to them or whatever um and just you're you're making friends with them that's really what it comes down to how do we make friends we we help somebody out okay and and that's that's really it so the the the keys to this are um first of all again I'm I'm just going to kind of review this for a moment it's it's finding a group where you're likely to meet people with whom
36:41 you have similar interests similar professional interests and then connecting with them in an efficient way okay keeping track of who you connect with and you know periodically reaching out to them and you can pretty pretty quickly build your network so um I mentioned uh over the last 104 days that I've been using this this particular um system okay I've established uh 21 new contacts and many of them um have we
37:16 we've established already you know you know pretty solid relationships so um um you know I have one one in particular that we we trade information and such uh quite often um in in another situation where you know looking at working on a Case together um I just interviewed another one on my show and and and so on and so on and so on so um all of these are by way of creating the Professional Network that's necessary in order to be successful that's really you
37:54 know the name of the game so if you have any questions about this um feel free to um you know Post in in in our social media um platforms LinkedIn Facebook Etc if you have uh especially if the questions could be applicable to you know our broader audience um if um if you have a Like A Private Matter feel free to either direct message me if we're connected already on social media or send me an email my email address will be in the show notes and I'm happy
38:29 to um reach out to you and and um uh you know help you with whatever your questions are um and you know candidly if there's if there's enough enough people where you know you want to do a like a zoom tutorial or something like that I'm happy to take you know 45 minutes and and do a zoom tutorial and and and sort of talk you through the process yourself okay we'll do some Preparatory work before we would do the zoom tutorial um that is by having you search out an appropriate group so we're
39:04 not having to sit around waiting for you to be admitted into a group but once you're in a group we can we can do everything else I think in about like 45 minutes maybe an hour and I'm I'm happy to do that so if you're interested in having that by all means do let me know and um we can we can put that together so that's that's all for today um we're not going to go full hour um that's okay hopefully by you um but I I I do thank you for tuning in and um would would you know love to hear your your comments as to uh how you find this in terms of
39:40 usefulness Etc um and and this also wraps up our shows for this week so I'll be back next week on Monday at 10: am Pacific time with trust and Estates weekly on Tuesday will be the next episode of business lessons from the milit milary also at 10:00 a.m. Pacific and then 7 days from today will be the next episode of people making money again all at all the shows all my shows now are at 10: a. so we can be together at the same time every day um and since I do have a few extra minutes I I I just want to mention a couple things if you
40:17 have an interesting way of making a living or you have uh a technique for marketing or you have um a way to help people um better pursue wealth building drop me a message let me know love to have you as a guest on this show if you're involved in trust and Estates um I'd be happy to have you on my um you know trust and Estates weekly show and if you're a military historian especially if you're an amateur military historian um you know and you have an interesting perspective about something
40:54 in the military that applies to our professional and business lives uh let me know um perhaps you you'd be a guest on business lessons from the mil military my friend Josh joerger um came and did an episode um talking about ulyses S Grant and the Battle of VI Vicksburg back in the Civil War and how we can apply how Grant pursued that battle to our business lives it was it was fascinating um Josh is a fiduciary like me but he has a keen interest in military history and when we when I
41:30 found that out I said hey you know brother you got to come on and and share this with other people it was a great episode so um always uh interested in hearing from you if if if you're interested in being a guest or if you know someone that you'd like to see be a guest by all means let me know about that as well so that'll wrap us up for today thanks again for watching wishing you a wonderful rest of the day and rest of the week and signing off as I always do Marie you're my bell darling all the best folks