There are five critical mistakes that you're making right now with your networking. You got to stop it to find out what they are. Join us on this episode of the Inside BS Show.

Hey, now I'm Dave Lorenzo. This is the Inside BS Show. I'm the godfather of growth.

And I'm here with my good friend and partner, Nikki G. Good morning, Nicola. How are you today? Good morning, Dave. I'm great.

How are you? I'm fantastic. Thank you. We've got the five critical mistakes that business leaders make when they're networking, and they got to stop making them.

We're going to jump right into the topic before we tell some stories. Number one, mistake number one that people need to avoid. Nikki G, tell them what it is.

Mistake number one is it is not about you. It is all about them. It's always all about them.

That's fantastic. Give me an example of what you're talking about. You go to a networking event.

You walk up to somebody that you are looking forward to introducing yourself to, and you immediately proceed to start talking about yourself. Let me tell you what I do for a living. Let me tell you about what I did today.

They don't want to hear about that. They want to hear you be interested in getting to know who they are. That's how you're going to build a great relationship right from the get-go.

Oh, I hate that so much. So how about this guy, right? Those of you who are listening, I am now in my hand. I have a business card and I am walking up to Nicola and I am like, hi, my name is Dave Lorenzo.

What can I do to help you get more clients for your law firm today, right? That's the guy who's the business card guy at every networking event. And I'll tell you what, to make sure that the people that I work with don't do that, my advice, and this is so controversial, it's going to blow everybody's mind, is don't bring business cards with you. That's right.

You heard me correct. Printers everywhere are, they're shaking in their boots because I'm telling you, do not bring business cards to a networking event because here's what happens. When you have a business card in your pocket, your own business card, what do you want to do with that? You want to give it to somebody, right? And if you're thinking, how quickly can I get my business card in Nikki G's hand, you're not thinking, how can I help Nikki G? So what I want you to do is I want you to find out everything there is to know about the other person, and I want you to ask them for their business card.

And when you ask them for their business card, it does three different things. And that leads to helping you avoid some of the other mistakes. Nicola, give us an idea.

What's the worst thing that's happened to you recently? I mean, you and I do a lot of networking together, and I know you're like a magnet for losers, freaks, and wackos. What's the biggest faux pas that's happened to you at a networking event recently? Sure. Here's one, and I have to, I'm laughing at the business card, because that happened to me.

I am in the middle of a conversation with two other people, and someone is so excited to hand out their business card that they walk up, interrupt the conversation, don't even say anything to us, aside from hi, stuck the card in my hand, and stuck the card in someone else's hand that I was speaking to. I walked away. That's the worst.

You know, I'll tell you that that, to me, that is, when somebody extends their hand with a business card in it, I have all to do to keep from just smacking it right away from them. Like, obviously, I never want anybody to feel bad, so I wouldn't do that, and I always accept the business card and smile and nod. But in my mind, I am smacking that card right away from them, because that is just one of the absolute worst things.

Mistake number two for me is not delivering value first, right? So in addition to leading with, hey, guess what I am? I'm this, and I do this, and here's how I can help you. In addition to that, I think after you meet the person, after the relationship is established, the best way to make yourself interesting to the other person is by doing something valuable for them. It's not telling them who you are and what you do.

It's by doing something valuable for them. And I'll give you an example of the right way and the wrong way. So you and I, as most people who listen to and watch the show know, are part of the best networking group of professionals in the country, ProVisors.

And there are times when we go to a live event for ProVisors people, and even some of the ProVisors folks don't understand that delivering value first is the quickest way to be interesting. So they'll come up and they'll ask you what you do, which is the right thing to do, and then they'll immediately try to rush to tell you what they do. I've found that, obviously, I have a great tagline, great nickname, the godfather of growth.

So that's interesting, and it's provocative, and it makes people want to ask me what I do. But for me, I try and keep a little bit of mystery about that. And what I try to do is when I connect with someone for the first time who I know could be a good referral partner for me, I don't ever talk about what I do.

When they ask me what I do, I usually say, well, I'll tell you what I do is, and then I go, wait a minute, I want to ask you one more question. I do the Columbo, and then I continue to ask them about them. Then when I follow up, I deliver as much value as I can, like connect them to somebody, pass them a referral, invite them to something else, maybe two or three times.

And what happens then is it creates such an amount of anticipation that they can't wait. They're like jumping out of their skin to figure out how they can help me. So for me, and this is an advanced networking strategy, it's not for beginners, rather than come up with a really concise BNI-like elevator pitch that's really gitchy and teaches you who I can be introduced to, I would rather, if you're somebody I'm seriously interested in, I would rather focus my first 30 or 60 days on delivering an overwhelming amount of value to you so that you call me up and you go, wait a minute, wait a minute, Dave, listen, I appreciate you introduced me to this person, you sent me this referral, and you invited me to this event.

You're such a great person. You're such a great guy. I got to figure out a way to help you.

That's what you're going for. So when you're thinking about how quickly can I tell this person what I do, they're the perfect referral partner for me, catch yourself, think about dating back when you were hot and out on the market, and think, how can I make myself so desirable that these people are waking up in the morning thinking about me and going to bed at night thinking about me, and take that approach. Because those of you who were great at dating know that when you played hard to get, you were always much more attractive than you were like, hey, look at me, right? That's the way to go when it comes to networking.

So mistake number two is not delivering overwhelming value. And the way to focus on delivering overwhelming value is every time you feel like talking about yourself, say, have I delivered three points of value before introducing myself and what I do? If you haven't, take a step back, make it about them, and deliver value. What do you think, Nikki G? I agree.

And I think that really leads well into point number three, which is pitching. Do not immediately pitch yourself. I've seen this one a lot, especially on platforms like LinkedIn.

You get a connection request, you accept the connection request because it looks like it could be a good fit for you, and you are immediately receiving a direct message after direct message selling you something. And then you don't respond and you get more messages selling you something that you're not responding to with someone following up on a message that you didn't respond to. Do not be that person.

That is a big mistake when networking. You can have a cold invitation through a platform like LinkedIn and make it extremely effective. How do you do that? By following the steps we're here talking about today.

You have to establish a warmer connection, and you do that by building a relationship and rapport with someone rather than just pitching. Hey, Nicola, got time for a quick chat? You've never seen that on LinkedIn, have you? Never. The quick chat.

I love it. Hey, Nicola, I see you're a successful attorney. I love your profile.

We have a lot in common. Got time for a quick chat? That is the worst. That's the absolute worst.

A platform like LinkedIn, okay, is good for this approach to networking. Who do we have in common? Let me scroll through. If the connections are open, let me scroll through the connections, the mutual connections, see who we have in common.

You know what I'm going to do? I want to call Nicola, so let me look at our mutual connections. Oh, I see Joe's connected to Nicola. I can call Joe and ask him about her.

I called Joe. Tell me about Nicola. Tell me about her practice.

Tell me what she does. Tell me what she's into. Okay, great.

Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to reach out to Nicola and ask her to connect with me because Joe and I were having a conversation, and he mentioned that she was really into the University of Miami and their citizens board. She heads up a charitable initiative where everybody rides bikes and they raise money for cancer research.

I like cancer research. My dad's a cancer survivor, so I'm going to commend her on doing that because Joe told me that's what she was really into, and I'm going to mention Joe as our mutual connection, and that's what I'm going to use as my connection request without asking for anything. So now what happens when you get that, Nicola? What do you think? Hey, Dave Lorenzo just said, great job raising money for cancer research with the University of Miami citizens board.

You know, my dad had cancer, and he's a cancer survivor, and we try to raise money for cancer whenever we can. I really want to thank you for doing that. What do you think when you get a connection request like that? My immediate response is, wow, this person took time to actually think about what I did before reaching out, and so now, to me, that's not a cold reach out now.

You have established some connection, and we haven't even met. Excellent example, and I'm responding to that one. By the way, now everybody's on LinkedIn, like people are pulling off the road listening to this, and they're going on LinkedIn, and they're pitching you on LinkedIn by using the University of Miami citizens board.

The number four mistake is not being human, right? So I am, if nothing else, I am a flawed individual. So I love to approach people by pointing out something that we have in common that proves that I'm human by demonstrating some vulnerability, and what I find quite frequently is that most people, especially at in-person networking events, are so rigid, and stilted, and focused on professionalism that they're not relaxed, and they don't make the other person comfortable in a networking situation. There's a sales trainer, David Sandler, he's passed away, but his Sandler system lives on, and it's being taught all over the country, and he had this wonderful expression that if you want to build rapport with someone, you have to make that person feel more okay than you.

So one of the things I love to do is I love to walk up to somebody and go, hey, how you doing? My name is Dave, and then you would introduce yourself back to me, and then I would say something like, I think I spilled something on me, do I have a stain on my shirt? Or I would say something like, did you have a hard time finding parking? I had to park all the way down the street, and it was a long walk, and now I'm all sweaty. The idea is to do something self-deprecating that creates a little element of vulnerability, because that immediately makes the other person feel like they're a little bit more okay than you. They feel a little less self-conscious, because you're in a position where you're making yourself feel like the object of the, you know, the schlub, you know, you're the schlub of the group.

And this works incredibly well, because the other person then is like, no, no, no, it's okay, I don't see anything on your shirt. Or, yeah, I get it, it was a long walk, and it is a little hot in here, they need to turn down the air conditioning, right? A great, and I'll tell you a great story about this. So I go to a networking event with my friend Layla one time, and actually you and I know another person who, the three of us walked in, Barry, our friend Barry.

So Layla, Barry, and I walk into this networking event, and we walk into this room, and it stinks, it smells terrible, okay? And I'm like, wow, because the two of them were pretending that the smell didn't exist. And I'm like, wow, that smell, it's awful. And so Layla looks at me, she's like, what is that? And Barry's looking around, and I go, you know what that is? That's Legionnaire's disease.

And immediately, like the five or six people around us just broke up laughing, and like the elephant in the room was addressed, and I immediately went around and introduced myself to everybody, and everybody in the room felt completely comfortable talking to me, because I called out the elephant in the room. The other example I'll give is the story that I told to you and our friend Mike Foster the other day at lunch. I, you know, I had vertigo, I was going to a meeting, and I stumbled, and I fell into a fountain, and I was soaking wet walking into a pitch meeting to pitch for business.

I tell that story to someone no matter what they do, no matter how self-conscious they feel, they never feel like as big a fool as I was the day I fell into the fountain. It immediately disarms people. It immediately makes them feel comfortable.

So a mistake that you're probably making right now is not being human. Be human, approach people like you would approach them if you're in the car line to pick up your kid, or if you're, you know, waiting to get coffee at Starbucks, and you're just like, can you believe they haven't figured out a way to keep this line moving? Be human. So much easier than trying to be professional and saying, hi, I'm Joe, what do you do? What do you think, Nikki G? I agree.

And, you know, it's, you think about, you think back on events that you've been at, and you realize exactly what you're describing is that there's an easy way to make a connection with someone you don't know. Instead of walking up and saying, hey, I'm Nicola, this is what I do. Find common ground.

Common ground can be the room you're in together. It can be the park, right, the valet parking outside. It can be something, an experience that you've already shared with the people in that room.

It's a great way to initiate a conversation with someone you don't know. You immediately will start feeling more comfortable about having that conversation. I think a lot of people perceive networking to be this frightening experience at times.

That helps you get through those moments. And as soon as you find a quick common ground, you'll be comfortable. Yeah, I think you're right.

And there are three things, like, I get people come to me all the time and they say, hey, small talk. How do I make small talk with people? I hate networking because I can't make small talk. Three things you can use to make small talk, right? Kids, pets, and hobbies.

Kids, pets, and hobbies, right? And it's always safe to start with, like, pets, right? And for me, I have two dogs. I walk in and I'm like, do you see any dog hair on the door? Is there any dog hair here? And they're like, dog hair? Dog hair? What kind of dog you have? Boom, you're off to the races, right? And even if they don't play along and say, dog hair, what kind of dog you have? You're immediately being self-deprecating. You're immediately giving them an opportunity to say, you know, oh, no, you're fine.

You're immediately making them feel a little bit more okay. All right. So Nikki G, give us number five.

What is mistake number five that people make when they're networking? Mistake number five is a critical one. Please listen in. Not following up.

Biggest mistake of networking. You've made these great connections, but then you failed to follow up with the person. Yeah.

So the intro in networking, when you first connect with someone and you have this great rapport, you got a little banter and you think to yourself, this is somebody who's really good that I could potentially do business with. That's like, that's even the pre appetizer. That's not even the appetizer.

The relationship develops after you follow up. So my point about not bringing business cards really forces you, absolutely forces you to focus on the followup. Nicola, tell us, how do you follow up after a networking event when you've connected with someone and you're like, this could be somebody really great who I could do business with? What's your followup strategy? So my followup strategy is it's not just one followup.

The initial one is really important. That initial one will always contain something that that person shared with me in our conversation. Be thoughtful about it.

Not just great to meet you, really excited about what you do. Talk about something personal that they shared with you. Hopefully you have walked away from that conversation with something unique about them that you couldn't find by searching and reviewing their bio on the internet.

So you find something personal, put that in your followup. I always receive a very warm reception to that. And that point forward, you should be thinking about what's my next followup going to be? And what is the timing of that next followup? Because you don't want to follow up so frequently that now you are being perceived as pestering this person.

But you want to be what I like to say, you know, appropriately persistent with them. You want to make sure that you're continuing to follow up. And when the timing is right, you may get that big opportunity to work with that person in some capacity.

I think that's great. I love those first two steps. So for me, it's exactly the same.

Immediately after the event, I go back to my computer. Try to avoid typos. Sometimes not possible.

No, I'm just kidding. I try to avoid typos and I type a little email message. So great to connect with you.

I really enjoyed the time we spent together. I have a couple of ideas for how I may be able to help you. Would this introduction be valuable to you? And I'll put a little blurb in there about somebody I want to introduce to them.

Let me know. And then I make sure that my email signature contains my name, either my tagline, the Godfather of Growth, which I put in my email signature, or the name of my company, which since my company has the same name as me, I don't really include that. But if you work for a company that's different than who you are, you want to put your company name in there, your phone number.

And then it's probably a good idea to put the email address below the phone number. And here's the reason why, even though you're emailing the person from your email, they can copy and paste that then into their contacts, right? So my first follow-up is always, it was so great talking to you. Hey, based on our conversation, my friend, Nicola, may be a good introduction for you.

Here's what Nicola does. Should I connect you with her? Let me know. And then my contact info in the email.

The same thing, what I do at the same time as a kind of a simultaneous follow-up is if it's somebody brand new, I will write a handwritten note. I'll take a note card and I'll write a handwritten note. So great meeting you at the networking event at the Gelamino Law Firm.

I look forward to our next conversation. Warm regards. And then I sign my name.

I will, that's when I will actually throw a business card in the envelope so that in case they're a person, there are still people out there who like physical business cards in case they're, you know, a kinesthetic person and they like to touch and feel stuff. I throw the business card in the envelope. I hand address the handwritten note and I mail it out the same day I send the email.

So here's what happens. They get the email immediately. And then three or four days later, or depending on your post office, a week later, they get the handwritten note and they're like, wow, this person really has their act together.

They emailed me and they sent me a handwritten note. By that time they've responded to the connection that I want to make for them, right? If they say yes, I make the connection. So that's touch point number three.

And then touch point number four, which is my personal preference is would it be okay if I include you on my weekly email newsletter? Here's what I do. I add, I send out an educational newsletter every week. I do this to stay top of mind with folks.

But more importantly, if I add you to that list, it's also going to keep you top of mind for me when I'm inviting people to social events and, uh, you know, looking to connect people in my network with someone who does what you do, if it's okay, let me know. And I will add you to my email newsletter list. And that's the final point of followup so that I continue to stay in touch with them over and over again.

That's how I do my followup. And it's a system that I've used for 30 some odd years. And it's, it's been really effective for me, the pushback I get on it.

And I'm curious about your thoughts in this, uh, Nikki G and that's the, the email part of it. You know, people are like, Dave, I'm okay with all of that. But the email, I get too many emails.

I don't want emails. I don't need any more emails. And my response to that is, yeah, but you read emails from people you like and you delete emails from people you don't like when they're unsolicited.

Nicole, you're a lawyer and you get a lot of emails. Um, what are, what are your thoughts about, uh, you know, all that, that whole system and the email thing at the end? You have to do the email followup. I also really like the handwritten notes.

I'm a big proponent of that. If you've been on the receiving end of that, it's a great feeling. You have a, it just creates a completely different feeling than a quick email that you received.

Now I agree that you need to do both, but consider doing it. The response is really great to those. When it comes to the extra followup of using a newsletter, for example, by email or something else, it depends on whether that's going to work for your business.

And you need to know who you're sending this to. If it is someone, you know, for example, in my space, if it's a general counsel, that person may not want to be receiving all of these emails associated with a newsletter. So you have to ask.

And you mentioned that make sure you ask before you just put them on some sort of mailing list, whoever that person is in your audience, it will keep you out of trouble, but it will also make sure that they want to receive your content before you send it to them. I think it's a little presumptuous sometimes just to send without asking. So make sure that you ask.

And I think having a system in place, whether it's the email, the note and the newsletter by email, or it's something else is important. So you kind of have to take a look at what will work best for you, but put the system in place because it's not just one point of follow up, as we both mentioned, it's having a system of follow up because sometimes these relationships can take weeks, months, years to turn into a piece of business or to turn into something really big. I've seen it.

It can take years. So you have to really play the long game with this. I will tell you that I've gotten clients come off of my list eight years after they first got on it, and they come off the list with the perception that they have a relationship with me because they've been receiving email from me every week.

It's almost like I'm having a continuous conversation with them. Now, listen, you can ask them to subscribe to your podcast. If you have a podcast, you can ask them to subscribe to your YouTube channel if you have a YouTube channel, and that will create the same type of perception, and it's a way for them to opt in.

But what you're looking for is to continue that dialogue with them so that you continue to build and grow your relationship with them. There's one other thing I wanted to mention here, and I'm curious, Nicole, are you on Steve Klitzner's physical email newsletter list? Does he send you his physical email newsletter? No. Okay.

So Steve Klitzner, for those of you who are listening and watching, I did an interview with him. I did a couple of interviews with him over the years. He's an IRS controversy attorney.

He solves IRS problems for people, and he's been a friend of mine and a client of mine since 2007, and he does a physical, an actual hard copy newsletter that he sends out in the mail. So after he meets people, he also does an email newsletter. He subscribes them to the email newsletter with their permission, and then he also opts them into a physical newsletter.

And we look at his client, you know, lawyers call it origination. We look at his new client origination every month, and he regularly gets, you know, it's a consistent stream of clients who are on his physical newsletter. Some of them actually walk into the office holding the newsletter in their hand.

So in this day and age, where everyone is overwhelmed by email, physical mail still works as a follow-up method, and it is a differentiating factor. Many people don't do it because it's an expense, and it's not insignificant, but it is a reliable way to build relationships, and it's a reliable way to create new client activity. So you can add that as kind of a fifth step to your follow-up method if you want, but follow-up is essential when it comes to networking.

So those are the five networking mistakes that most people make. If you've listened to this show, if you've watched this show, you know those mistakes now, so you shouldn't be making them. And if you're part of our Pro-Advisors group, and you continue to make these mistakes, shame on you.

We will find you, and there will be corrective action. Nikki G., close us out. Thank you for joining us today.

If you enjoyed our show, please tune into another episode, and make sure to leave us a comment if you enjoyed the show. Until then, I am Nikki G., and you are? The Godfather of Growth, Dave Lorenzo. And we'll be back tomorrow.

We'll see you tomorrow, folks. Take care.