Referral Request: I am looking for a very creative Graphic Artist.
I am choosing to look within my network, instead of going to an online service. For all that are interested, I will be giving the details of what I need/want by next Monday. It will consist of some re-branding with logo, name tag & business card creation. From there, I will choose one designer to work with (based on their submission) and I will announce via social media (My Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter) of my decision.
Please message me or email me if you are interested in working with me and taking on the challenge.
If you know of someone that would be interested in this opportunity, please forward them this information and have them message me or email me.
I will distribute the details by May 2nd and will be accepting submissions through May 9th.
Since so many of you were asking me about the details, I figured I’d go ahead and post the details here on my blog. Get connected immediately if you can. It should be some great information from some very successful “Networked” gentlemen!
In today’s changing world one thing has remained constant: the power of connecting with influential people.
This online event is a must attend for any business professional! The quality and success of the speakers is something that should not be missed, (especially for free!)
Join us on Wednesday March 16th as thought leaders Keith Ferrazzi, T.A. McCann & Craig Elias share insights on how to build your network to learn of the hidden opportunities that can take your career or your business to its highest level. (Check out their bios below.)
During the 60 minute webinar you will learn:
1. How to connect with those you want
2. Who you want to connect with and why
3. How to leverage the technology to make it happen
You don’t want to miss this FREE Online Event at 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PDT on Wednesday, March 16, 2011. Click the button below to sign up now!
Are you going to SXSW? Don’t miss our panel about “How Work is Evolving” – RSVP:http://plancast.com/p/3r7v
Learn more about the 3 speakers below!
KEITH FERRAZZI, the world’s foremost expert on relationship development, is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Who’s Got Your Back. His first book, Never Eat Alone, redefined professional networking today. As founder and chairman of the consulting, training, and research firm Ferrazzi Greenlight, Ferrazzi counsels the world’s top enterprises on how to dramatically accelerate the development of business relationships to drive sales, spark innovation, and create team cohesion. Ferrazzi is a thought leader and a philanthropist, putting his signature methodology to work to aid corporate citizenship and education. Ferrazzi has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Inc., and Fast Company, and has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNBC, Larry King, and other national TV. Experience his complete playbook of mindsets, tactics, and strategies in the online community Relationship Masters Academy.
T.A. McCann was the founder and CEO of Seattle-based Gist (www.gist.com) – a next-generation social contact management solution for business professionals. In February 2011 Research in Motion (RIM) acquired Gist. T.A. now serves as Vice President in the Research and Development department of RIM. Previously T.A. was an entrepreneur-in-residence at both Vulcan Capital and Polaris Venture Partners. Prior to Polaris, he held senior positions at Microsoft, leading product planning for the Exchange Server Group and developing Service Delivery Platforms focused on mobile applications and was the founder of Jump2Go, HelpShare and Soft Labour. T.A. currently serves on the board of Zoopa and Wishpot. He is also an advisor/mentor for Techstars/Seattle, Founders Institute, h-farm and NWEN. In addition to his deep technology background, T.A. has won sailing’s America’s Cup and sailed around the world. T.A. holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University. You can learn more about T.A. at gist.com/tamccann.
Craig Elias is the creator of Trigger Event Selling™ and author of the Bronze Medal winner of the Top Sales Books of 2010 “SHiFT!”. His relationship building skills combined with his knowledge of Trigger Events has resulted in a 20-year track record as a top sales performer, winning a $1,000,000 prize in a global billion dollar idea competition, having his last company chosen by Dow Jones as one of the 50 most promising companies in North America, and coverage on NBC, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
Have you completed your profile… completely? Have you made it easy for people to connect with you? Have you planned a way to keep your profile from becoming stale?
My brief recommendations are simple:
1. Complete you profile 100%. Make sure that you use terms, phrases and/or keywords that are important to you or to the people that will be searching for things that you do, or have done. If you do not complete your profile 100%, then what message are you sending to a prospective connection… or even worse, a possible client?
2. When you’re done with your profile, go back and edit your name and headline. When someone is searching for something specific and you finally come up in their results, you want to make it easy for them to connect with you. Put your email address and the term LION in your headline. A LION is a LinkedIn Open Networker. You are telling the world that you will accept all invites that you receive. The reason why you put your email address there, is because now that they know that you are an Open Networker, they will feel comfortable using your email address provided when sending you a “connection request.”
3. You should also be intentional with your invites. Find other LION groups online (i.e. Dallas Blue) that are Open Networkers and invite those well connected individuals. You are only given a few thousand invites, so don’t blow them. You’ll be upset if you meet a super-connector (10′s of thousands of 1st degree connections) and cannot invite him. I’ll guarantee you that he’s out of invites too. You’re now up a creek without a paddle. So, the lesson here is… don’t do what LinkedIn says and hook every one of your email accounts to LinkedIn and try and invite all of those people. You’re already connected to those folks in other ways. Connect to people that have thousands of 1st degree connections, not people with 1-10 connections.
4. Lastly, you should keep your profile “appearing” current. Even if you don’t go to your profile but once a week, month or even every six months, you should have a way to make it look like you’re active. If someone comes across your profile but the status says, “Last updated 485 days ago,” do you think that person is going to reach out to you? They will most likely think that you’ve moved on to other things and have abandoned your profile. I fix this by linking my Twitter Tweets to my LinkedIn status. This way, as I send out tweets from my smartphone, twitter website or from my blog (when I release new posts), they will all update my LinkedIn status. This way onlookers get the feel that everything is current with my profile because they can see that I’m still around.
You will find that there is great value in a wide, and deep, network of professional connections. Have a plan and work it! Good Luck!
If this is the first time that you’re hearing about “Everything Networking” or if you’re an avid listener to the show, I’ve got some incredible news for you. It’s not about the show, per se. Ya, we’re still going to have the same lineup. We’ll introduce the Co-hosts, Mitchell From (myself) and Eric Standlee, and then we’ll introduce a guest. We’ll ask the guest to give us a background on his life a little bit… bringing us to current times. This allows the listeners to create connection with the listener, through getting to “Know” him and determining if they “Like” him as well. Then we get into the guests business a little, giving them the opportunity to put a shameless plug into the show for whatever they’d like. Then, we get to the good stuff… the stuff you’re all waiting for… all the Do’s and Don’ts about networking. The really exciting news is that we will be having a very special guest on the show. If you’re reading this after the show date, go back through the Talkshoe.com player and listen back to the show. We’ll be interviewing and talking with Bob Burg… about Networking! Don’t Miss It!
Bob Burg shares information on topics vital to the success of today’s business person. He speaks for corporations and associations internationally, including fortune 500 companies and numerous direct sales organizations.
Bob regularly addresses audiences ranging in size from 50 to 16,000 – sharing the platform with notables including today’s top thought leaders, broadcast personalities Olympic athletes and political leaders including cabinet secretaries and a former United States President.
For years he was best-known for his book “Endless Referrals: Network Your Everyday Contacts Into Sales” which has thus far sold well over 175,000 copies and is still going strong.
His previous book (coauthored with John David Mann), is entitled, The Go-Giver. A business parable that both touches hearts and build bigger bank accounts, it shot to number 6 on the Wall Street Journal Business Bestsellers list just three weeks after its release and reached #9 on BusinessWeek. It’s also Bob’s fourth book to top the 100,000 mark in sales.
His newest book is entitled, Go-Givers Sell More. Also coauthored with John David Mann, this books take the Five Laws of The Go-Giver and applies them directly to the selling process.
Bob is an advocate, supporter and defender of the Free Enterprise system, believing that the amount of money one makes is directly proportional to how many people they serve. A lover of animals, he is a past member of the Board of Directors for Safe Harbor, which is the Humane Society of Jupiter, Florida.
This blog post goes out in the month of December… when I know a lot of you are going to be going to networking events with food all around you. Whether you’re at a Chamber of Commerce Luncheon or business after hours, you’re bound to have finger foods there. If you’re going to some mixer of sorts… you’ll have finger foods there too. Trust me, there will be some sort of tasty treat that you will want to stick in your mouth. Here’s where the nugget comes in. Whatever you do, Don’t eat things with your right hand. Time after Time after Time again, I see people carrying a small plate of finger foods in their left hand while they push things into their mouth with their right hand. What happens next? You got it! They continue by licking each and every one of their fingers.
Now we’ve all been here at some point. However, what I want you to do, moving forward, is to be mindful of where you’re at and what purpose you have for being there. Think of it this way: Would you like to go up and shake someone’s hand after seeing them lick their fingers? No. So, with that in mind… we shouldn’t be doing it either. Your purpose is to meet people and create a connection with them. You want to get to know them and have them get to know you. You’re not going to accomplish that if everyone runs from you like the plague.
I recommend that, if you have to eat, that you use your left hand for shoveling. This way, you will not be turning anyone away with the dirty or recently licked, right hand.
Good Luck this Holiday. Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year. Keep your fingers out of your mouth! **Smile**
As you can see, Tony Gambone and I got caught standing by the digital display for the Incredible Networking event. On the display is a number of sponsors for the event. James Dutton, our VP of Sales & Marketing for My Referral Network, did an incredible job promoting and running the event. As President of MRN and one of the speakers, I was very pleased with the all day event.
One of the great people I got to meet was LuAnn Buechler (http://www.pmcevents.com). LuAnn is putting together the 2011 Get Connected networking summit, along with the help of Gail Stolzenburg. Gail and LuAnn have asked for My Referral Network’s support and we are discussing ways to partner up with them in order to make this a hugely successful, value giving, event for the attendees. I look forward to bringing everyone together… so that people can actual help each others’ business grow through networking.
Thanks to everyone who came out to the http://incrediblenetworking event today. We greatly appreciate you.
I was very honored when I was invited by Brenda & Eric Standlee, to come with them to the IBAT convention in Ft. Worth, Tx. The convention is for bankers and businesses that work closely with banks. The few days that we spent networking with these individuals was terrific.
It was interesting to hear about some of the struggles that “Community” banks are dealing with. Most of these banks are looking for ways to increase their profit margin, during these “slow” times. I sat in on presentations that were anything from how to price loans, to whether banks should or should not allow social media available to their staff.
First off, those of you that know me, know that I am an advocate for social media. From a networking & marketing standpoint, social media can be VERY powerful for a business. In addition, I would like to add that the threat that social media brings (in the I.T. realm) is truly insignificant… if a company has taken measures to protect their infrastructure in the first place.
The other thing that I noticed as that the two industries (Factoring & Merchant Services) that we represent (Brenda & Eric represent American Prudential Capital and I represent Element Payment Services) were nowhere to be found through this convention. There was no talk about how partnering with a factoring company or a credit card processing company can be highly profitable for a bank. I look forward to sharing these possibilities with banks, and the upcoming sector of Credit Unions, that are open to these partnerships. The bottom line is that our goal is to help banks increase their non-interest revenue. Who wouldn’t want to do that… with little to no risk on their part, right?
A couple of social things that happened while at the event were the “Singer Songwriters Performance” and the “Auction.” I was amazed to find out was behind some of the most popular country songs of the past couple decades. These guys were incredible. I was absolutely blown away by their talent. If I can find my notes, I might even post their names and link to their websites. As for the auction, all I have to say is…. “I didn’t spend too much money, honey!” :)
Sometimes the most profound things that we can do are also the simplest. Dale Carnegie spoke about “Being a Friendlier Person.” I would have to agree with the statement, especially when it comes to networking. I recently heard Bob Burg say that we must create “Know, Like & Trust” with our contacts if we are to expect them to part with money or referrals. Both of these things can be brought back to a very simple act… Smile.
I attempt to educate people on the power of a smile. If you test this theory, you can go throughout your day and just smile to people and watch their reactions. Now, I’m not talking about that creepy kind of “Stalker-type” smile. I’m referring to a genuine smile that says you’re happy with life and wish that the other person has a great day. You will be amazed at how others will smile back at you and some will even speak to you.
When we take this into the context of a networking meeting, we have to look at the statement of creating “Know, Like & Trust.” If we are trying to present ourselves as “Like-able,” then we must first start with the simple act of a smile. The other thing that a smile does is it attracts people to you. Let’s say that you visit a networking group of some sort. When you walk in and decide which direction to head or which people to approach, do you head straight for the guy or gal that has a frown on their face? No. We head towards the people that are smiling. We are naturally drawn to people that have a positive outlook on life and that can be seen by the simple act of a smile.
Bottom line… even if you’re not “in the mood” to smile, do it anyways. If you think that you can’t bring your energy level up enough to muster up a smile, then think twice about attending that meeting. Although I’m not typically an advocate for skipping out on a networking event, the damage that you can do from showing up as a big ‘ole grump can be far worse than not showing for “personal reasons.”
Good luck in your networking and don’t forget… “Smile!”
For all of you business professionals out there that like to network, I’ve got an incredible News Flash for you! The absolutely best networking opportunity of 2010 is coming November, 8th. Tony Gambone (of TWG Business Services & Tough Talk with Tony Gambone – Talk Show) is putting together a networking cruise this year. You can get all the details about the cruise, on his website, http://www.toughtalkwithtonygambone.com. Just for a little teaser, I hear that he’s lining up 8 (or more) incredible speakers and that we’ll have networking mixers every night, on the ship, like we’re accustomed to going to, because of “InHouston.” All Networking groups, such as InHouston, My Referral Network, Houston Networking News, Christian Networking Group, BNI, Christian Business Fellowship Association, local Chambers of Commerce and many, many, more organizations are invited to attend and expand their “Networks.”
The Cruise itself is a Carnival Cruise that’s 6 days, 5 nights and will be a much needed vacation (for my wife and I), a networking opportunity (for me, while my wife hits the salons) and most importantly… a tax writeoff!
I was very honored when I was invited by Brenda & Eric Standlee, to come with them to the
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