Business Networking on Steroids and the Profitable Secrets with Grant Dempsey and Edward Zia!

Business Networking is one of my most favourite Small Business Marketing Strategies of all time.  I have been leading and personally networking for over 3 years intense now and even to this day – I find it an incredible art which takes moments to learn and a life-time to master.

Grant Dempsey (the Managing Director of 4Networking Australia) and my Persian Marketing Mentor self did a webinar together to really explore the topic and offer some powerhouse tips to the community.

Please check out the YouTube Recording included and if you are more of a word person, the transcript has been included as well.  We really covered some top ground here so on behalf of Grant Dempsey and myself – I hope you love it and get lots out of it.

From the basics of Business Networking, to Coffee Chats, to Selling, to how it goes on the street – we worked very hard to cover the lot! Enjoy it and love it Awesome Friends!

Nothing but quality on “The Edward Files!”

Thank you from Edward Zia – Marketing Mentor, 4Networking Regional Leader and Small Business Marketer!

http://youtu.be/YE267GsslFs

Webinar Transcript: 

Edward Zia: Good evening and hello, everyone. This is Edward Zia and Grant Dempsey for Business Networking on Steroids: the Awesome and Profitable Secrets. Say hello to the audience everyone, Grant.

Grant Dempsey: Good evening, everyone. It’s good to be here this evening.

Edward Zia: Yup, we’ve got one record turnout tonight. Absolute record of a turnout. We’re up for one good hour webinar. Now, pretty much tonight is Grant on the right there. He’s a handsome New Zealand guy on the right of the invention.

Tonight, we’re just going to talk about favorite networking strategies for small businesses and business networking. Pleasure to have you along. We’ve got some great people on the webinar tonight. You guys know me. I’m the fellow at the top list small business marketing mentor. There’s my lovely cat and there’s a workshop that I ran.

Tonight like all our webinars, again, when we run a lot of these webinars, we’re not here to preach to you how to run your life or run your business but we’re here to tell you what we think. We’re here to tell you about the good, the bad and the ugly and of course the top strategies for success in different areas of business and top being networking. Please listen to what we have to say. Now, you don’t have to agree with everything that we can say but think about what you can take out of it and how can you adapt it better to yourself and of course what are you going to do tomorrow in your business to take your success to that next level.

Of course, we’re here to give you information, cutting through all the junk out there telling you what you need. Like always, we love to overwhelm people. Don’t you just like dumping information on people Grant?

Grant Dempsey: I’m overwhelmed by chocolate at the moment, actually. (Laughing)

Edward Zia: There’s some chocolate take and chocolate on top and I think.

So Grant and I, we’re doing a cat theme, aren’t we Grant? Yup. That’s the only way to do a webinar.

Now, the big thing is, we’re compressing lots of years of experience into a good half hour or one hour. Like always, you might be watching this recording in my blog or on YouTube years later or you can be live with us tonight watching this amazing webinar so please get your questions through.

We love questions and that helps us guide the webinar and like always, we’ve all make mistakes and if those mistakes are still in your back and frustrating you, don’t worry about a thing. We are here to give you a compelling experience to help you move on and get amazing results in business. Like all small business marketing, it’s about making your business more awesome, helping people find it and selling more stuff. Do you think that’s a good definition for small business marketing, Grant Dempsey?

Grant Dempsey: I think it is, Edward Zia.

Edward Zia: Yup, yup. It’s a great one. It’s great, now let’s get back into it. I obviously have a very heterosexual bromance for our Grant Dempsey. Really, where all you guys might have heard this story for those that know me in this recording but years ago, I was not in a good spot. I made some big mistakes during the global financial crisis. My fiancé left me and I had lost all my money and all that.

When I came to Sydney, I had really shitty marketing manager jobs in the post G.F.C. world, owning pretty much less than half what I did, when I was at my peak before the Global Financial Crisis. When I started my business, I had not started at a good spot, had no money and after being screwed by another networking group and them taking all my money and leaving me in a bad position, I met this man by the name Grant Dempsey who he basically saved my bacon. He’s one of the few people who believed in me some years ago. He was this vague New Zealand guy launching this crazy concept from the U.K. called 4Networking.

Wasn’t it a crazy concept at the time, Grant?

Grant Dempsey: I think whenever you really start something, it’s crazy and you’re new to market so you’ve got to prove yourself so was crazy. People poo-pooed us and really didn’t want anything to do with this so but I think that’s like a lot of businesses and that you start out, no one knows you, it’s just you making it up, you’re pushing the barrel and establishing your credibility.

Edward Zia: Exactly. What was interesting is at the time, Grant was this vague New Zealand guy bringing up this crazy concept from England. Now, Grant is this vague New Zealand guy that has an amazing networking group that he built.

Tell us how the networking group is going these days, Grant? What’s the challenges and what are the things you think coming out of it, you think, Grant?

Grant Dempsey: The challenge, I think to any business is staying relevant. In this market is so much competition for everyone in the marketplace for a lot that we’re talking about, graphic designers just before and the whole Filipino offshore stuff. For networking, there’s just more … Edward’s just looking on the meet up page. How many groups did you say are there?

Edward Zia: Yeah, I was just on meet up on my Samsung on the Google Android app for it. There was 3,766 made up groups within five kilometers of where I live, Grant. The challenge for us, we’re competing against a product like speed networking.

Tomorrow night, I’ll be in Melbourne. I’m going to an event there. There’s a guy down there, he’s in the health industry, sells products and he runs speed networking. Basically, you go into a room for an hour and people just rotate around. It’s loud, it’s noisy, you’re shouting at people and that’s … people have a good time but one of the things that I know is that when I talk to people and say, “Look, this is what we do and they come along to our meetings,” they sit down, it’s a big calmer, it’s a bit quieter, they actually get to connect and so my challenge is defining our difference in the marketplace and separating out where we fit our differences but that’s probably the same for most business I think in the modern era.

Yeah, so bring it back to why we’re on the line tonight. Grant has built an a great networking group in very competitive circumstances and tonight, we’re here to just talk about just some of his frank experiences and what really I suppose in our experience and more particularly Grant Dempsey’s experience as to what works in networking small business marketing.

Now, before I let Grant take this show and do an amazing job, I just want to give you my own take on business networking. To me, many of my clients and me included have built their original businesses out of business networking. I’m talking post-internet and pre-internet. If I speak to a lot of the multimillionaires I know today with very … Specially in professional services, they built their business out of business networking.

Later on, Richard Branson basically is pro business networking so what Grant and I have been doing a lot lately, if we meet people that disagree with us on our business networking, we just use the Richard Branson defense, don’t we Grant?

Grant Dempsey: It’s interesting. We just go to a picture of our Kat Tate up there with your cat so it’s interesting because cats actually … Katherine, the human, not the cat is actually, she’s actually moving to Asia. I think she’s been in 4N for probably about a year. I’m not sure. I’d have to check but one of the interesting things is Kat’s actually a really amazing persons. She’s really lovely. She’s a friendly, genuine person. Most people who met cat like her but because she’s been networking and she’s established really good connections, she actually can move to Asia. She’s a copyright and she’s be hoping that a lot of those connections are going, continue to use her think of her even though she’s in Asia. That’s got to present some challenges but I think that’s one of the benefits of networking is that someone like Kat can move to another country and still have confidence that she’s going to be able to continue business.

Edward Zia: I think that’s a fair point. It’s very good that we’re using Kat as the example here. I think with business networking, in business networking, especially going to business networking event such a 4Networking, BNI, Chambers or whatever the case may be or Humanize is that you go to different events and you meet tons of people.

The question is, in terms of meeting all those people, how in a win-win way you make it some kind of sustainable relationship. You say quite often, you get business directly in the room and/or you connect with people and build good referrals strategic partnerships so it’s all really, really good stuff there.

Really what it all is is that and this is … Now, you’re sort of forgetting that I’m regional leader of 4Networking sitting next to my boss Grant Dempsey here. I’m just going to be straight up with you, the pros and cons of networking. Again, we’re not here to say the pros and cons of networking. We’re here to teach you how to networking but totally more strategically, being a land marketing manager, looking at business networking, to me, it’s a low cash, high time our means of marketing so it comes to low cash, it’s just you rocking up at a place and paying the membership rate and food can take a bit of time but quite often, I know millionaires today that still go networking twice a week.

The thing that I find about business networking, it has a lot of benefits beyond just direct commercial performance.

Grant Dempsey: One thing there is people like Ed mentioned about high cash or high net worth people still continuing to networking and they might not networking at something like a BNI or a 4Networking type meeting, although some do but generally, they’ll network in other context and sometimes people say to me, “It’s quite expensive but … ” or, “We need bigger businesses,” but some of these networking places or some of these venues like places where people networking, like I was looking at a club in Sydney recently. I’ve look to use the venue for something and then I was looking at their membership and it was several thousand dollars to be a member of the club. They do that intentionally because they don’t want … They want to self-select people and some people will actually go to that club. They’ll go regularly on a Friday night or a Wednesday night, whatever and that is networking and it is self-selected.

People often don’t realize that, that some networking is very structured like what we do and some is less structured but people will network in various different ways and it’s not genuinely random. There will be a regular Wednesday night that someone will go to. Tonight, there’s a rugby business networking event on the city which I often go to for rugby union. There’s people who go there and networking.

It might be less formal but it is on a regular basis. There is actually an ethos behind it for people to connect. Networking in occurs very, very different ways.

Edward Zia: Yeah, exactly and I think it’s good to think even to our business networking, we’re not just talking about going to breakfast or dinners and going home, it’s business networking as a global concept, of you just working with people in your business community to make mutual profits.

Again, it’s very interesting how it all sort of plays out. One example I like to use is there’s a photo of myself and a man by the name of Jim Vass. He’s from ATB partners, a multi, multimillionaire. This is us about a month or two ago, cruising around this brand new convertible BMW. The joke was, we’re both wankers. There’s a Persian man and a Greek man cruising up and down Parramatta in a convertible BMW. Is that a stereotype by any chance, Grant?

Grant Dempsey: It ought to be a stereotype.

Edward Zia: We both try hard. I’m almost middle aged and so is Jim Vass and we’re both thinking we’re something that we’re not but Jim Vass is amazing. The reality is that Jim Vass is a very, very successful self-made businessman. To this day, he goes networking pretty much at least every fortnight.

If you actually hear his story, I actually interviewed Jim Vass earlier in my blog. If you just dig back through it, you can hear it but it’s amazing the results he’s achieved in his live but I think it’s a testament to the importance of networking. He’ll tell you straight out in the interview, networking is one of the top strategies he’s used to build his business.

But without further ado, I want to be quiet and now it’s all over to Grant Dempsey not to tell us how to networking but to tell us how not to networking because Grant going to go through some of the slides in a different point of view that went through in our seminar the other day, aren’t you, Grant?

Grant Dempsey: Yes. There’s a bunch of people on the webinar tonight who’s the business boot camp on the weekends. We’ll talk about some of the concepts, but we’ll make it a bit different so it’s not exactly the same for you. To me and as Ed said, we’re with 4Networking but networking is networking and one of the things that I know is that the more effective networkers networking in multiple places so that the people who are looking to build ongoing connections and they’re seeking out people that they actually like connecting with and developing those relationships over time is, I put this up on the weekend and we’ll read this one again because it is a good quote by Branson.

His whole thing about networking is really about building the connections. He’s says these days, the only thing stopping you from building up your network is how much time you dedicate to it. One of the interesting things and I should have actually copied it. I’ve got it on the email somewhere. There’s a study done in the U.K. recently where they surveyed about, it wasn’t a huge amount of people, it was about 1,000 business people. They found that 60% of them believe that they should be face to face networking.

Even in these days of social media, it’s still important to press the flesh and actually get to know people. One of the interesting trends that I’ve seen in the last 10-15 years is that I’ve said this at 4Networking so some people have heard me say this but one of the things is people are afraid to pick up the phone now. They want to sit back, put some posts on Facebook and wait for the phone to ring. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s the same with networking. You can connect online but do you ever really trust someone that you’ve only met online? I don’t think you do.

Anyway, Branson’s saying, “The only thing that’s stopping you from building up your network is how much time you dedicate to it.” That’s not just network meetings. It’s actually about building your own network. One of the things that people don’t understand fully is really during a networking group whether it’s 4Networking or another group, what that is is another platform for you to build your own network. People often think you’re joining the network and you are, that you actually need to create your own network within that network.

I can show you some of their larger groups in our network and there’s … I wouldn’t call them cliques but there’s network within those groups so they’ll be a group of four or five people who have really connected and do a lot of inter-referring and a lot of helping and a lot of each other out and they do a lot of joint venture and then, there’s two or three groups like that. You need to dedicate time to the people that you’ve chosen.

Everyone can and should be a networker, those good connections will breed good connections and in the end it all comes down to talking to good people. Track down the people. This is the bit I like about Branson, check down the people you would love to work with and start sharing your ideas.

If you meet people and you don’t like them, you can still be nice to them and you can still look for ways to help them out but you need to be looking for the people that you would love to work with and invest in your time and them.

If you came along and the great thing about that with networking is you can meet Ed or you can meet myself and you might really like Ed and not be so turned on by me. You can still be nice to me and you can still look for ways to help me out but you want to be looking at investing time with Ed and looking for setting up coffee chats, looking for ways that you can get to know him more, understand what’s going on for him in his business and ways that you can work together.

Hope that makes sense because once you do that, you’ll soon discover that you’ve found some great partners and more importantly, good friends. I’ve noticed that Jennifer Long on … I don’t know if I should use names or not but the person on the webinar.

Edward Zia: Yeah, it’s not Jennifer Long. That’s J-en-n-i-f-e-r L-o-n-g. It is not Jennifer Long.

Grant Dempsey: It’s interesting. We were at a meeting on Friday and she was telling me about this group that they’re doing, she and one of the other people and looking at doing a group for young women and really building them up. I have an 11 year old daughter and I’m listening to what Jennifer’s saying and it’s really exciting me. I think it’s such a fantastic idea and I’d love to be able to, when they get it going and love to be able to help them out in whatever way I can.

What Jennifer’s done is she knew a little bit about what I’m doing. I’m being excited about it now. I’m a Kiwi bloke so I never get too excited about anything apart from rugby but I’m hoping that maybe she saw a little bit of that and if she did, that’s what you’ve got to look for. You’ve got to look for, when you start talking and people start getting excited about, they’re the people you want to connect with. That’s what Branson’s saying. It’s not rocket science. These days, it’s easy to come up with an idea.

My brother’s got an MBA, he used to share an office with the owner of the Flight Center. He’s been in the corporate world. I told him I was doing the networking and he thought I was an idiot. He says, “Why do you want to do that for?” He came up with all the reasons not to do it. Now, he’s actually looking at how we can get it. He’s in New Zealand. He’s looking at how we can do it, get it into New Zealand.

You’ve got to look for the people that when you start sharing your … What’s going on for you, they get excited. It spins their wheels. If you look for them and build, spend time with them and dedicate time with them, you don’t know what’s going to happen but they’re the people that are going to be out there shouting your name and shouting your purpose to the world. They’re the ones that you want. People are out there advocating for your business.

That’s Richard Branson. One of the things I said on the weekend is if you look at what Branson’s quote. “There’s nothing about referrals. There’s nothing about money. There’s nothing about wealth. It’s all about connecting and all those things are outcomes of connecting.”

Tony Hsieh’s another guy, very successful. He sold a company, Zappos, at one point $1,200,000,000 so he’s done all right out of that. He learned very early on. If you’re looking for a business book to read, I’ve just forgotten the name. I need to dig it out. It’s been a while since I read it but if you look …

H.S.I., Hsieh, it’s pronounced Shey but if you look for his book, it’s a very easy book to read. He started out in a flat with his friend in a unit but he learned early on in a job that he had from his boss, the value of connecting, they read a conference somewhere and a whole bunch of them were going off somewhere. His boss said to him, he was going to meet with a guy from another company. They all said, “Why do you want to meet with him? He’s no one. Why don’t you come with us and do this?”

Anyway, a little while later, that guy who his boss met with changed jobs and he basically got them in the door to get one of their biggest contracts. That’s when Tony Hsieh learnt the value of connection. His boss went out of his way to continue building a connection with someone that other people didn’t think was so important.

We see that all the time in networking where you see people walk in and they … Ed’s got some flames going here. He’s playing with fire.

Edward Zia: Just so you know, there’s this thing where Grant and I are doing a webinar, I got a little bit of isopropyl alcohol. I’ve actually started a little fire next to me and it freaks Grant out so continue, Grant. I’ll pay attention to what’s going on over here. I’ll take a final one in Facebook. Continue, Grant.

Grant Dempsey: We see it all the time where people walk in the room and they’ll walk past someone. They’ll dismiss people and it’s like they look at people and just judge them, straight up. The reality is, if you … I mean, most of us know this is that you don’t know what’s going on for people. You don’t know where people are in their business. You don’t know who they know.

Look, if you dismiss people, then it’s not only rude, it’s going to cost you business down the track for sure. There’s just no other way to say it. You need to treat everyone that you meet the same. You need to give them the same level of courtesy and respect because you just don’t know who they know. The thing with networking is it’s such a powerful tool but it can be counterproductive, too, if you do it wrong. We’ve had people in our network come in and basically screw people and go away with a very, very bad reputation. If you ask a few people about certain people then you’ll get the same response and that’s really what you don’t want. You need to treat people the same because they can open doors.

Very early on we had a guy who did, what was it? Test and tagging where he just puts those little stickers on your electrical goods to say that it’s okay. He got one of our … He got Greg Mason, gave Greg Mason a referral which I think greater was about $60,000 to him in 18 months, over an 18 month period. Now, if anyone else looked at this guy Andrew who test and tagging, this blue collar kind of guy, people would dismiss him but they do so at their own peril because you don’t know who he knows. Someone like Andrew, who’s a test and tagger, he’s out and about all the time. A lot of office people, I’ve got his photo there on Facebook with the flying going on.

A lot of people who are office bound and they’re dissed all day, they hardy meet anyone where someone who is out and about like a test and tagger, they’re meeting a lot of people.

You need to be focused on friendship as its own reward, not focused on what position does this person have, and what sort of status do they have. You need to look at people and go, “Do I actually like them? Do I get on with them?” because if someone’s a high status person, you don’t like them. It’s not going anywhere. Just don’t worry about what people bring to the table so much? Look at them as someone, “Do I actually like them, do I get on with them? Do I want to pursue a relationship with this person just because I like them?”

Edward Zia: We got a few questions coming in, actually. We got a good comment from Greg Standen on the line. The actual book name that Greg’s saying is the book by Tony Hsieh.

Grant Dempsey: Hsieh.

Edward Zia: Tony Tsieh, sorry. The Korean name is Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh. Thank you for that, Greg.

We’ve got a question from Shane Blunt on the line and we’re going to ask this one to Grant. “What is the best way to break the ice when you’re networking and how do you get it right so you don’t get a bad reputation of coming across wrong because you’re nervous?”

What’s your commentary on breaking the ice and controlling your nerves, Grant Dempsey?

Grant Dempsey: I think that most networking events that you go to and there’s always a few exceptions to the rule but I think most people who network are actually fairly open and nice people and so they’ve all been in the same situation. I think the key element of networking is trust so the first thing you want to do is be honest and you don’t want to erode trust by pretending to have it all together when you don’t.

One of the things that I’ve seen quite a bit happen and network is people come in and the 40 second round in our groups where people stand up and say, “Hi, my name’s Bob. I’m from such and such.” They’ll get up and they’ll say, “This is my first networking group and I’m really nervous.” You know what? It breaks the ice. It shows people that they’re open and they’re honest and people are more amenable to them because they see, “Here’s someone who’s open and honest and they’re prepared to make themselves a little bit vulnerable in front of everyone.” They’re not trying to get up and show I’ve got it all together. You give the others who do try and do it get up and look as though they’ve got it all together and stumble and fail. Not fail but stumble and miss it up. Everyone does that from time to time but I think the best thing is to be open and honest. This is your first networking group. Say, “Hey, look. This is my first time here. I’m not quite sure what’s going on but I’m really happy to be here and I’m just trying to see what this is all about.” That would be my advice.

Edward Zia: Yeah, so a very, very good and now, Simon Hornstra. Great to have you on the line, Simon. Made a good point. Being nervous and being excited is a similar emotion. Couldn’t agree to that and yeah, nervous and excitement, there is quite a fine line there. I think biochemically, it’s a very similar process. Thank you, Simon.

Greg, who’s an amazing researcher, has found out that Tony Hsieh’s book is $17 at Amazon, $15 in King Arthur and on Amazon. Greg Standen must be an affiliate for Tony Hsieh. I don’t know.

Grant Dempsey: Or Amazon.

Edward Zia: Exactly. No, Greg Standard is just a great guy.

Grant Dempsey: You also get a comic book version of the book for one of my teenage sons.

Edward Zia: There you go, there you go, and there you go. I think it’s very interesting some of the points that Grant is making here.

The point there is that networking works. These are guys that are being big in business so start in small like you and I and that made it big and have used networking to d that. It works for the big guys, it works for the little guys, it worked for us in 4Networking. That’s how I got the organization going and I still continue to network at other groups so I can see tomorrow night, I’m going to speed networking event. I take my ear plugs because it’s a noisy venue but its high energy, it’s a lot of fun and it’s a good place for me to make connections. Some people at that event tomorrow, I’ll naturally connect with and I’ll make times with to see outside. Others I won’t.

That has worked for Edward Zia so we won’t get him talking too much but anyway.

Grant Dempsey: Yeah, because we know that I like talking too much, which is very interesting.

Edward Zia: We’ll move onto the next slide. One of the things I hope that you’ll get out of tonight is just a different take on networking. If you knew that it would be hopefully motivating for you, if you’ve been networking for a while, that it’s going to give you some insights. If you’ve got questions just fire them through, we don’t have the hands up and all that sort of stuff. Some of you are sending questions, we can direct this in a way that’s going to be relevant for you. We’ll move on.

The things that don’t work for networking, normally ask people what do you see that doesn’t work? When I say that, we’ve touched on one of them and that the big thing is being yourself so when Shane asks about what’s the best way to break the ice, I say to people, “If you’ve been in business for six months, tell people where you’ve been in business for six months.” Trying to bluff your way through doesn’t work. There’s an element where in business we all have to fake it to make it. If you’re having a crap day and you’ve got bills and the cat’s sick and your car’s not running well and you’re at an appointment, you’ve got to show up, you’ve got to be positive, you’ve got to make out that you’re actually on top of it all. That’s just how it is, otherwise nobody’s going to buy off you. That’s just the bottom line.

I guess one of the things that networking is that you can be yourself and that’s if you build your own network, if you have your own inner circle if you like, while I’m not real keen on that area but if you’re in a networking group of 30-40 people and there are three or four or five people in this and there are three, four, or five people in that group that you connect with, there are people that you can connect with and be honest with and you can say, “Look, I’m having a really tough time,” because what I have seen is when people do that, people will rally around. People will make phone calls. People will try and send work to someone who’s really struggling. They’ll make an effort. Honesty is the best policy in networking, being dishonest doesn’t, that’s one of the main things. Yeah.

Now, I’ve got that there. That’s the top three reasons why networking doesn’t work. The last one being not being yourself but not doing the work and the focus on referrals. It’s interesting to know, we’re just talking about work here. If you read Tony Hsieh’s book that Greg’s mentioned, Delivering Happiness, he had an amazing work ethic, it’s a stereotypically Asian work ethic where he learning three instruments and expected to practice in each one hour a day plus do all his homework. He was just a machine like most of his family and his peers but we’re saying, just before we’re having a meal, we’re just saying that one of the things, reasons I think a number of businesses don’t go the distance because they don’t work.

It’s interesting. Grant and I were having this conversation before. I’ve always been a hard worker but after I got washed up in the G.F.C. and basically came to Sydney to start my life again when I was 29. I’m 35 now. One thing that I bought into my new life was pretty much my Old Persian, I suppose and Asian sort of a work ethic. For a while there at least, these days I’m pretty sophisticated. I’ve got great training, great experience and great technology but when I started out, I didn’t have that advantage, I had a great education, didn’t have quite the track record.

For me it was that work ethic which I believe is one of the key factors that I made it. What do you think, Grant Dempsey? Is it because I work out you find my handsome or do you think it’s my hard work? Why do you think I succeeded, Grant? If you want to come out now, now’s the time to come out.

Grant Dempsey: Ed’s used the network effectively. He’s used it but he hasn’t abused it. That’s the key. I think one of the mistakes that we make as small business people is we work too hard doing the wrong stuff. We’ll spend hours on trying to do, fix our computers or get a handle on a website or Facebook or something like that, we’ll spend hours and hours and will be effectively working hard but essentially we’re not actually working effectively.

I think that’s a key thing in small businesses is picking the right things and one of the things I’ve seen in networking is that people come in and they end up utilizing people within the network and so they become more professional, so they’ll go to printers or get them set up with some good flyers and cards, one of the designers will give them tips. They’ll get someone to do their Facebook for them or get someone to do different things for them. They become more effective. Probably the most obvious one is they get a bookkeeper. One of the most interesting one is meeting on Friday, one of the guys got up and he gave a shout out to Lucy Milekovic.

Edward Zia: Lucy … Mileko- (laughing) Thank you. I know them.

Grant Dempsey: Lucy M!

Edward Zia: Lucy Milekovic from Ultimate Business Solutions. She’s an amazing bookkeeper.

Grant Dempsey: She’s an amazing bookkeeper. I’ve actually referred business to her and that business turns over $20,000,000 a year and their books were still a bit dodgy but Lucy got on top of them. Even larger business are struggle but one of the things that I’ve seen is people get more professional. If you were someone who’s doing everything yourself, you need to be looking at getting others involved so that you can focus on the stuff that you do well.

Look. Networking is the same. You need to do the work. You need to work harder. We’re working backward through this but its okay. You actually need to do the work. The work of networking is fairly simple. You’ve got to show up. You’ve got to put in your diary. You’ve got to do follow ups. You’ve got to see the people that, you’ve got to seek out the people that you want to connect with. You’ve got to share like Branson says, “Talk centrally about your work. It’s got to be two way so don’t dominate.” You follow up. You look for opportunities to help people. You look for opportunities to refer people and you look for ways to add value to people. There’s a lot of art to that but there’s a lot of science to it as well.

One of the things is just following up. One of the things is writing, having a list of people that you know. If you’re at a barbeque and someone’s going on about “Oh, look. I’m struggling to get my message out there,” that you can refer them to someone who can help them with marketing. Someone’s talking about wanting to buy another property then or refinancing that there’s people that you can refer to, if someone’s book is the mess and they’re complaining about that, there’s people that you can refer to.

When the people I mention before, Andrew, when he referred to Greg, it was because Greg had talked about end of the year reports, he was a graphic designer. Andrew knew someone whose business was struggling to get it on top of their annual report, so he referred them to Greg, so you need to be someone who’s vigilant and proactive about looking for opportunities, not just to yourself but other people. That’s a lot of the work.

Edward Zia: It’s interesting. We got a great honest comment from Simon Hornstrah and I want to thank Simon for that one. Following up has always been my challenge. I was talking to a client about that, I was actually with two clients today and we’re talking about sales and both occasions. To me and this is … I haven’t read this anywhere, I’ve watched this on YouTube. This’d be my personal application but when it comes to face to face networking and selling, especially, be it face to face or over the phone selling, to me, half the selling in networking is just following up with people because anyone can go to a networking breakfast. It doesn’t take any skills to do that but the actual discipline of following up and being in contact with people I think is half of it.

Definitely, I think, I mean, there you go. Networking event, your idea is to start connecting with like minded people to see how you can help each other out. Definitely, my own view is networking and selling, half of the jobs is at least following up. What do you think of that sort of view, Grant?

Grant Dempsey: Probably the biggest challenge to any small business person is sales. If you get a top producing sales person, they are a follow up machine so some of the people on the line may have met, will know Ron Sherry who started out North Sydney Group. He retired at the end of last year. He had been very high up in insurance, life insurance in Australia. I think he was state manager at the Tower I think at one point and he had his own business, he was partner of his own business. He is a follow up machine. He lives in Sutherland, has an office in Crows Nest and he came to our Sutherland Group, ended up getting group leading there, you could see the potential of it for him because Ron comes with a sales view.

It’s interesting because one of the things where we talk about that you don’t do in networking is sell in the room. We tell people we sell through the room. Basically, you don’t look at people in the room as sales targets. They’re the people that are going to help you to get to your sales targets, to the people that you want to get in front of.

Now, Ron is a pure salesman and he could see the potential group leading and then he could see the potential of having his own group, so he started his own group in North Sydney, 4Networking group because he knew, it was the best platform for him to invite potential clients along to. He was amazing because he was just a follow up. In our structure, we have area leaders and it’s the area leader’s role to follow up. Ron was a group leader but he did all the follow up because he knew that was one of the very valuable parts of networking for him.

We have some group leaders probably now if we asked them to follow up, they’d probably say they were a bit busy because they don’t have a sales focus. I could go to someone like Ron and I’ll say, “Look, there were five visitors at another group. Do you want to follow them up?” He’d say, “Yeah, sure. Give me their names,” because his view is connections. The more connections that he has, the more legitimate reasons he has to phone someone up and have a chat with them, the more money he’s going to make in the long term because he’s sales.

Unfortunately most small business people don’t understand that the value of follow up. I’m banging on about it because it’s key. I mentioned at the boot camp. I gave a referral to a guy recently that took them a week to follow up that referral and he emailed, he didn’t even phone the person. It’s disappointing for me because it was a good referral.

I know a week later, I haven’t followed up to see what’s happened but probably a week later when I gave it to him, it was a really good referral. A week later it was probably a cold referral. It is really critical. If you don’t have sales, you don’t have a business, you’ve got a hobby. If you want sales, you need to follow up. I don’t know how to say it nicely.

Edward Zia: Just follow up. Now, we’ve got a learning spree so follow up, follow up, and follow up.

Now, we’ve got another. Thank you, Shane for that great question. Another great question is what Shane Blunt is asking is that if they’re working as few clients as well … Actually Shane, can you please re-ask that question?

Grant Dempsey: To someone like Ron and I use Ron because Ron’s … Yeah, he’s someone who’s at the end of a successful business career. He was probably the savviest networker in our network. I can learn a lot from him and everyone likes Ron. It’s interesting because Ron wasn’t a loud person. He’s actually a quiet but he is a very quiet person and they say, “It’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch,” but for Ron … Paul Shade’s going, “We just love Ron.” He sees networking as a platform.

He knows that 98% of the people he meets today, maybe 100% are not going to want to buy insurance off him. He knows that. That’s like most of us in business. Most of the people that you meet today or tomorrow are probably not going to want to buy your product or service off you unless it’s a hot lead, someone’s phoned you because they want it but let’s just say randomly, 95% of people don’t want to buy off you but Ron knows that that’s okay. He’s not trying to convert them but he knows if he gets them in and builds relationship with them, he has at some point, they may have a question on insurance and he’ll be there to help. At some point, their insurance might come up for renewal and they might consider him because they know him, but that aside, he knows that most of those people at some point may know someone who needs insurance and he’s banking on, he has built a good relationship with them that they will refer that person to them.

Now, he got 42 clients in 18 months out of 4Networking and I know like just with my wife and myself, this process worked because my wife needed insurance and hers was a bit tricky. She talked to Ron and she got insurance. My insurance, because she worked well with her, I ended up changing, getting some income protection with Ron and life and so forth. We referred a friend of ours who’s starting out in business and so she’s gotten insurance. There’s three policies he’s got through us through exactly that process. That was about nine months. Karen, my wife, saw him about nine months after he had joined the network.

That’s exactly how it works so it’s not about building relationship to get clients. It’s about building relationships so that … if you build a great relationship, the outcome will be that you’ll probably get clients but if you build a relationship to get clients, you probably won’t.

Edward Zia: Exactly and I think it’s very well spoken so very, very, very good dialog there and I don’t have anything interesting from client Paul depending on the business industry, could come sooner or later. A great example like if you’re selling something that’s worth $10 compared to 10,000, obviously there could be a difference in terms of the buying cycles. I think very, very good point.

Grant Dempsey: The other thing, I mentioned Lucy Milekovic and I forget who referred her. Was it John Stapleton? Their referral for her. He’s referred a client that’s got a $20,000,000 turnover. That’s a pretty serious business. He’s not going to refer someone to that client who he doesn’t trust because if John refers someone who’s just walked in the door and does bookkeeping to that client and that client makes a mess of it, it’s John’s reputation on the line.

My guess is, I don’t know for sure is that perhaps that client is one of John’s clients. Maybe John’s actually referred his clients so the last thing he wants to do Is make a referral to that person and it turns to custard because that’ll affect his relationship with his client and possibly his future business down the line. It’s taken a number of months for those two to get to know each other and for a level of trust to build.

It does take time and there are things you can do to shorten that process but it still takes time. The more time you spend developing that relationship, the sooner it comes. If you only talk to a person for five minutes once a fortnight, obviously it’s going to take a lot longer time. If you meet outside of the meetings, you have social events, you invite them over for a barbeque, you have coffee, you look for reasons that you can gather people and develop your own networking group or networking community, and then it goes faster.

There’s a couple of people there saying, “Couldn’t agree more.” Paul’s saying, “Very different for a cleaner or plumber than the accountant or financial planner.” It’s exactly right. If you need a plumber because your hot water service is kaput, you really don’t care. You just want someone who’s going to come out and do a reasonable job for a reasonable fee. You hit the Yellow Pages or Google. You don’t really care but if you’re after a higher trust occupation like an accountant or a lawyer, then it’s going to take a little bit longer for you to get that business.

Edward Zia: Yes. Very, very good and just quickly. I know he’s already covered it but Grant is on the talking side of various value strings and that sort of thing. This is a good slide that come out. Grant, we didn’t talk about this in the book camp. Maybe, we can do something about this now, Grant.

Grant Dempsey: Thanks, Ed. This slide represents your life and business and your life and networking. It’s paralleling networking and business. When you’re brand right at the start of the journey there. You’re brand new at the boot camp on the satellite. I was talking to a woman who is still working and she’s looking at starting up her own business and she’s very nervous and apprehensive about it and excited, much like the comment before, there’s a lot of similarity between nervousness and excitement but she’s right at the start.

There’s quite a bit of fear because you don’t know where the money’s coming from. When you’re in employment, you expect to show up in six months time and still be getting paid. You negotiate an annual salary. You get conditions with that so you expect in six, nine months time, if you’re sick, you’ll get paid for the days that you’re off. Not so with self-employment.

There’s a lot of fear and anxiety and it’s really about survival mode. You know, you’re out on your own and it’s about survival, so it’s about, “Am I going to have enough money to put fuel in the car.” At the right of the path there, it says, “Meet.” 4Networking it’s about meeting people, coming in and meeting people and the important thing there is about being open and transparent. There’s no point in saying you’re a multinational conglomerate when it’s just you and your cat and your computer at home.

Edward Zia: Give me a break. There’s two cats. I’ve doubled my team in the past two years.

Grant Dempsey: Business is expanding. He’s got another cat.

Edward Zia: We’ve doubled the size of our workforce due to amazing prudent strategies for success.

Grant Dempsey: One day we’ll find out he’s getting work subsidies for them.

Edward Zia: Yeah, go labor. Welfare abuse! Yeah.

Grant Dempsey: On the right there is about meeting and being open and transparent. If you knew, the thing is and the comment about breaking the ice, if you were new to business and you’re new to networking, just be up front and say, “I’m new to this.”

We’ve had people. I had a woman a little while ago, she’s been from corporate life so she’s networked in the corporate world which is very different to small business networking because in the corporate world, they’re often networking because they’re looking for jobs and waiting to be headhunted so it’s a bit different to small business networking.

She really had to learn this whole new way so that the important thing when you’re starting out is about meeting people, looking, just getting out there and meeting people and being open and transparent. As you go along, you start to understand where you are in the market and you start to feel a bit more secure about where you are and who you are and your business, you’ve worked out what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to. One of the guys at the boot camp on Saturday, John Gregory, who’s been in 4Networking for nearly three years, since we started, he made the comment that it took him 12 months to get a referral from 4Networking. Now, he was brand new in business. He was brand, brand new but it also took him 12 months to work out what he was actually selling and where he fit in in the market.

He said on Saturday and I’ve heard him say this before, he was selling the wrong thing. He was selling something people didn’t want to buy. What the network helped him to do was work out where he best fitted in the market and what products would sell well and sued the market.

Edward Zia: Yeah, that’s a very good one and Simon made an interesting comment. Simon Hornstrah has got a role that’s 100% commission.

Grant Dempsey: Oh! (Laughs)

Edward Zia: I’ll tell you what. I don’t know what anyone says about Simon but Simon Hornstrah, that’s what I call a real man. Would you agree with that? He’s a real man.

Grant Dempsey: (laughs) you’re backing yourself up, Simon. The buck stops with you. When you’re 100% commission, it’s all about you. That’s like I mentioned Ron …

Edward Zia: It’s like what we do, Grant?

Grant Dempsey: That’s what we do, yeah.

Edward Zia: We’re lunatics like Simon. Yeah.

Grant Dempsey: Ron Sherry and insurance people, pretty much sales people but they’re relationship people. I had an insurance agent in New Zealand when I had a business in New Zealand and he’d been an A&P for years and he had done really, really well. I’ve known him. I used to go out with his daughter many years ago.

Edward Zia: Does Karen Dempsey?

Grant Dempsey: I don’t know. Is she online? (Laughs)

Edward Zia: Karen Dempsey is online but rest assured, unless you give us $10 each, she will be sent a link to this recording.

Grant Dempsey: But he was the guy who had done very well, insurance had been very good to him. Interestingly like years ago, he used to drive a seven series BMW and then when he was older, he drove a Suzuki. I’m not sure why but he enjoyed but he’s quite an independently wealthy man. Owned quite a bit of property. Insurance has done well.

You know what? He’d come and seen me a couple of times a year when he was passing by, we would talk to 50 minutes about family, kids, different things and then he’s say, “Right. Now we need to talk about your policies. This is what I think we need to do. Blah, blah, blah. Done.” I learned from that is to him, insurance was about relationship. If he built the relationship, then he had the right to get the sale and keep the sale. That’s really the networking. Just back to this diagram. There’s scenes where you’re awakening, you know when you’re on the market, like looking for people that you actually like.

Now, at any networking event, there could be two accountants, one you really like and one you don’t They both can be brilliant networkers. It’s just the personality thing. It might be because you’re a similar age. It might be because you’ve got shared interests. It might be, you might both follow the yields or whatever it is but you’re looking for people that you like. You become more relaxed and you’ve become more inclusive. You’re less fearful about competition and less fearful about everything. You’re more inclusive and relaxed. You’re actually like people prefer to deal with people who are more inclusive and relaxed than who are uptight and fearful but it’s hard not to be when you run a business.

The next stage is you got to a period of accepting and belonging. You know where you are in the market. I recon that’s probably where you’re at right now and I’m at with … Ed and I both started out businesses about the same time and I think that’s probably around where we are. I accept who we are and what we do as a business, I feel like we belong in our place in the market. We’ve still got a way to go to dominate Australia with networking but we’re getting there.

Edward Zia: We’ve at least conquered most of Sydney.

Grant Dempsey: That’s about being supportive of others and being a position where you’ve got a bit to offer. There’s people in the network that do a lot of support of other people. One of the things I’ve seen in our network and I think it’s probably the same in most networking groups, if someone says they need help, they have a group of people who are ready to help them. To be honest, I’m a bit fussy about who I help now. We’ve helped a lot of people who just turned around and crapped all over us.

Edward Zia: That’s an interesting one because as you can tell by some of my blog hosts, I tend to get screwed up by someone the day before, and what’s my solution? Let’s blog about them anonymously the day before. I think that’s a funny one, Grant, because there are some people out there. I had a very good friend do this to me last year. I’m not a friend anymore but it’s funny, Grant, how in this game is that every so often you get people that, they’ve faked being your friend and they take you just for a bit of a ride, don’t they, Grant?

Grant Dempsey: The network I guess people are networking because they are … The good networkers are looking out for people that they can help. They have an outward focus rather than an inward focus. That’s the mature networkers. They’re not up for what they can get, they’re in it for what they can give because it’s that whole pay it forward principle. To networkers I guess are a bit more vulnerable to that because we are as a group, people are looking to pay it forward and sometimes it turns to custard.

Edward Zia: I think the good news is, though, and I say to some, if you get five people, one out of five people are rat bags but the other people are totally awesome. The majority of people are just normal people like us.

Grant Dempsey: It’s probably not even one in five but look, there’s a sense of this collectiveness and being part of something and then there’s this element of trust where you move on, where you’re at a point and it’s interesting, I met a couple in the U.K. and 4Networking, the 4Networking Christmas party in the U.K. They spoke like very, very posh English people, like they’ve just come from hanging out with the Queen and that sort of crowd. Lovely couple, probably about 60.

I said to one of the guys, I said, “Who’s that? That couple over there, that really interesting couple? I had a good yarn with them.” “It’s interesting. They’re actually both lawyers and they join the network. They don’t need work. They’re at a point in their life when they’re looking at retiring. They don’t need more work. They’ve actually joined because they love the ethos, they love being around the positivity of the network and they want to contribute.” The guy who’s telling me about them said they’ve helped so many small business people in the network. People been stuck in franchises that they couldn’t get out of or people who’ve had legal issues around their business or personally. I’ve just given so much time to helping people in the network.

Yeah, that’s a point where I think where I’d like to be where I don’t have to worry about the business and I can focus on really giving back a lot more than I am at the moment. I think that’s a point where you’re really living where you can be relaxed and you’ve got your business in check and you’ve got your life in check to a certain degree and you’re able to just to sew into the community and see other people succeed. That’s what success is. I mean, other people might say, “Success is having a Lamborghini,” but I don’t know. You look at those movie stars and their success-

Edward Zia: My definition of success is doing webinars on Monday night with Grant Dempsey and owning two cats. Definitely my definition of success.

I think that brings us to the end of our webinar, Grant. We’ve been going for an hour.

Greg Stanton had a good one. “Ask not what you can do for your network or what you know could do for you but what I can do for my network.”That is just funny and yeah. Drew made a great comment before but visual chart, represents wishes on the journey. I think this is pure magic. Thank you, June. You’re a fine woman as well.

I think that brings us to the end of our webinar. We’ve been here an hour. We’re overtime and really I think we’ve spoken a lot about these things. Some of the slides that I’m clicking through is actually from our workshop.

Of course, at the workshop, we had a shot at Tom Cruise. There’s nothing wrong with having a shot at Tom Cruise. Come on, Tom. Give Katie back her cell phone. Yeah, I love Katie Holmes. I love Katie Holmes. I’m sorry about that but where were we?

Look, just in wrapping up our webinar, we’ve pretty much here all night and you guys have been a fantastic crowd. Really, what I’d like you to all do is really think about the action from this. Books things to your diary, allocate time to networking, learn the skills and add abilities to others and get some amazing referrals and develop your own skills.

This quickly as well and wrapping up, Grant Dempsey and I love being clients so if you need any help from all of us, I’m more than happy to have a half an hour chat with you on the house.

If you need from help from Grant Dempsey, who’s free to speak to him speak at 4Networking here at Australia, some interesting networking groups. Also as well, you can hire him on an hourly basis and he’s got good packages to as well as a mentor to help you maximize your referrals and business networking results.

Of course me, if you can put up with me and deal with my issues, I mean, listen to my amazing expertise, I can help you out as a marketing mentor. If you like what I say but you just can’t put up with me, feel free to visit the awesome marketing box, it’s an all one part, so you can acknowledge my knowledge without having to deal with me.

Grant Dempsey: Cut out the middle man!

Edward Zia: Yeah, cut out the middle man. Actually, I’m the middle man. Ah, yes. There you go, there you go. Guys, I just want to say it’s a pleasure. I got some great feedback coming in. Just a big thank you for tonight. It’s been great having you here, just on the final side, there’s details, you can 4networking.com and you email Grant at 4networking.com and there’s my details there.

Without further ado, the recording will come out in the next few days. Thank you for being an amazing audience. This is Edward Zia signing off. Say good bye there, business Grant.

Grant Dempsey: Good night, folks. It’s been great being with you today.

Edward Zia: All right. Happy small business networking everyone. I’ll see you on the other side and good evening and good day if you’re watching this recording somewhere in the world. (Laughing)