Topics:

1. To have a mindset that something is too small for you limits you from connecting with people who need what you have to offer the most.
2. Don’t be too proud to get connected with your local community.
3. It’s important to connect with people who are at the same stage of their business as you are, so that you can mutually help each other.

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Build a Badass Business: Episode #37: 3 Tips for Connecting in Real Life



Coming to you from the city by the bay, this is Build a Badass Business with Diane Sanfilippo. Diane is a New York Times bestselling author and serial entrepreneur. She’s here to teach you how to grow and develop a successful business you love, and how to create raving fans along the way. Here she is, your host: Diane Sanfilippo.

Diane Sanfilippo: Alright guys, welcome back to the show. Today I’m going to talk about 3 tips for connecting in person, and if you’re not already with me over on Periscope, you’re missing out because I record these episodes live on Periscope, I take your questions at the end so your question may get featured here on the show if you’re with me over on Periscope. You

get to interact live, so it’s a much more fun way to do this; but hey if you’re listening to this through the Build a Badass Business podcast, awesome. Maybe you’re in your car, you’re putting on your makeup, what have you. That’s what I do when I’m listening to podcasts. So more power to you; I’m glad to have you here.

So what I’m going to talk about today are 3 tips for connecting in person, because I’ve been getting a lot of questions about, Diane how did you get started? I’ve told people before that I used to teach seminars around the country, but what a lot of people don’t know or maybe I haven’t repeated enough times is that I started out much more local than that.

I started out my very first sort of class or workshop, I guess you could call it, was a cooking class and about 5 people attended, and it was myself and a friend in my friend’s apartment here in San Francisco. And I’m still connected to two people, at least, who were at that event. So I regularly; I know their names, I connect with them over Facebook still pretty regularly, so it’s a pretty amazing thing to think about how deep those connections go when you are in person with people. So I’ve got 3 tips for you today.

Number one is small local community events. This might be something like a library, it might be something like a health fair. This would be, most likely, something that’s free. I am definitely somebody who thinks that you should be charging for your services; you deserve money for your time and for your expertise; however, to have a mindset that something is too small for you, or you don’t know what the upside is or the potential is, to go in with that mindset limits you from really connecting with people who need what you have to offer the most.

I’ve done events even at my local library where I grew up in a small town in New Jersey. You know, we had a good number of people at some of these events because it was by the time my book was already out so I think we probably had more than 30 people at these events. But as I mentioned, the first class I ever taught was to about 5 people. Then I taught a class on sugar and reducing sugar intake and improving energy to a group of women in business, and I think there might have been 10 or 12 people at that event.

I did a lot of events that were similar to that, and they were free. I did not charge money for those, and the connection, again, that you make, this is something where I’ve talked before about building an emailing list; bring your notebook to your event, put it down on the table and say, leave your email address here. You can manually add those people. When you’re not adding hundreds or thousands of people to a list at a time, you can totally log into your MailChimp, whatever it is, type those names in, and you’ve got people who you’ve met in person. Those people are going to open your emails. It’s a different connection than simply a box on a website that somebody fills in.

So don’t be too proud or big in your britches to get connected with your local community. You want to be the go-to resource. Maybe the local paper is down the road doing a story on whatever it is that you’re known for. They then know who to reach out to, or maybe you just get in touch with somebody at the paper and say; hey, if you guys ever need an article on healthy nutrition for pregnancy, or healthy nutrition for athletes, or any of those types of things, I think it’s important that you reach out and make those connections.

Because honestly, you never know which one person in this small group; it could be 5 people, it could be 3 people; it could be 30 people, or 300. You never know when one person has a reach or a connection so much further beyond, and the way that you’re interacting with them in person is so vastly different from even what we’re doing here through a podcast or a Periscope video. You can get a feeling from me, but if you spend time in a room with me, whether it’s for an hour or a whole day, you have a totally different connection. So critical, critical, critical that you guys are spending time physically with people.

So that’s point number one; small local community events. Maybe they’re free. If somebody asks you, you say yes and you go forward.

The second one; and this one is a little bit more for bloggers, anybody who has a new business really of any sort. This is kind of; well, it doesn’t really have to be a new business. But this tip is knowing your circle, and knowing the timing of your business. Another analogy here would be knowing which class you’re in. and I don’t mean class like upper class, middle class. I mean like freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, graduate level type of class of where are you in growing your business. It’s important to connect with other people who are at the same place growing their business.

So here’s the perfect example; when I first started blogging about paleo years ago, we went to the very first event, the Ancestral Health Symposium was the first event that was in person, in Los Angeles, and a lot of us were new to paleo blogging at the time. I connected very quickly with Bill and Hayley from Primal Palate. We just clicked as people, personality wise. It wasn’t forced. There were tons of people at that event, but we happen to really get along with each other. I remember; I don’t even know what happened, I basically just started talking to them and I just stayed by their side for the whole couple of days. We just really vibed.

We were coming up at the same time, blogging at the same time, and now the development of sort of our reach on social media, the type of work that we’re doing, the books that we’re putting out; all of that we developed at the same time. We’re sort of in parallel, right? And so now there are some of you who are new in your business, and you may be reaching out to people who are like seniors, and you’re a freshman. You may be surprised that the seniors don’t really want to help you that much, because you’re a freshman. It’s not that they don’t want to help you; it’s that they’re so involved with their own business, they’re already helping the other seniors, they’re already connected, whether it’s loosely or whether they’re very good friends with people who are in their same class.

It’s important to connect with people who are coming up who are at the same stage of their business as you are, so that you can sort of equally help each other and mutually help each other. You have similar experiences, similar struggles. Don’t be surprised if you reach out to that senior; even a junior, playing on the same analogy, and they say no. it’s totally fair to reach out to that person who may be a little bit ahead of their business than you are, and maybe you should do that and just reach for it and see what happens.

But I’ll tell you; I have countless emails coming in every single day, and I simply can’t help everyone. And it’s not because I’m rude, and it’s not because I’m trying to withhold support from people; it’s that I’m already supporting so many other people who I have personal connections with, who have helped me. We’ve helped each other coming up in this whole world. So it’s important to connect with people who are coming up at the same time you are, because you’ll just naturally have that vibe. You’ll naturally feel like you can more equally support one another, if that makes sense.

Again, know your circle. Know the timing of your business. Look to connect with other people who are at the same stage of their business. Or; if you feel like you have a new product coming out, for example. I know a couple of people who are writing eBooks right now, for example, and they’re going to promote them most likely over an affiliate network. But reaching out to people, again like myself, who maybe don’t need to look for a lot of things to promote as an affiliate versus somebody who is newer to blogging or newer to growing their business and they don’t have a lot of things to sell, or they don’t have their own product to sell yet; reaching out to those people who are newer in business who are like, oh that sounds great! I’d love to promote that. That’s really where you want to look. So if you’re at your sophomore/junior level, look back to the people who are just starting, and they can help support you, probably much more easily than again, somebody who is further along in their business.

So the third time I have for you on connecting in person is start to say yes as much as possible when it comes to lives events. This is partially back to the first tip of small local community events; but now I’m talking also about events that you might be able to get paid for.

The very first seminar that I taught that I charged money for, somebody called me. It was a gym owner in Arizona, and she said, we had an event at our gym; it was good, but I think you’d be able to do a better job. I don’t know why she thought that; she saw my blog post, she just liked the way that I taught things. So I said, ok, I’ve never taught a seminar before. I’ve never taught a seminar of this nature, I’ve never traveled to teach, I don’t even know what to charge.

I just decided what I thought it would be worth for people to come, or what I thought people might pay, and I want to say I had a 3 or 4-hour event, and I charged $35 early admission, and if they booked it within the last week or 2 it was maybe $45, something like that. I think I had 37 people at that event, and it just was the right time to say yes. And then I figured out what to teach from there. Nine times out of 10 an event that you teach on a topic; keep the topic narrow, people will ask questions. And I’ll tell you what, if people leave having asked their question and you were able to answer it, they’ll walk away feeling like they got what they came for. So always make sure you leave time for questions, which is why at the end of these live Periscope videos that I do, that then appear on the podcast, I leave time for questions at the end. So anybody who hangs with me to the end gets to ask their question personally and directly.

But if you start with an event that’s small, maybe it’s 1-2 hours, you can build from there. I went from doing small cooking classes to free classes, to 3-4 hour events where I just had so much to teach; you guys can tell, I have a gift for gab. I like to talk. But then eventually after getting feedback from people who came to the 3-4 hour events, they were like, I would love for this to be for the whole day. I want to learn for the whole day. So it developed into a full day seminar that then cost around $100 a person to attend. And the business grew from there.

So you can see how that really will snowball, and you’ll build confidence. I talked about building your skill set to build your confidence in a previous episode, and that’s a very critical element to all of this. It’s like, you just basically have to do one thing, do something small, feel success in doing it. Maybe you learn from it; you do it better the next time, and you build it bigger and bigger each time you go.

Alright you guys, those are my 3 tips for connecting in person today. I hope you found that useful. Don’t forget that you can catch these talks live on Periscope. So catch me next time; make sure you download the app!

For those of you who are here on Periscope; we’ve got 60 of you who’ve hung in. what questions do you have. “How can you come up with a pricing compromise without sounding greedy?” Well, pricing anything, you really just have to think about what do you think it’s worth for somebody to pay, and if it turns out that it’s too greedy, that it’s too high, then people just won’t buy it. That’s kind of what happens. I think naturally, over time, what you can charge will increase. So what I would have charged for a seminar 5 years ago versus what I would charge for a seminar now is totally different.

So I think you have to; if you’re not sure, price it a little bit lower. I personally would rather have more people come to an event at a lower price than have the price too high and nobody shows up. You don’t want to do an event that nobody shows up to; that’s depressing. Definitely; I’ve had events where not that many people show up. It’s fine; at the end of the day, it’s great to talk to even 5 people. But I think that, again, you just err on the side of pricing it lower if you’re unsure, because you’d rather have more people come than fewer.

“What’s a good platform for online programs, something like Kajabi or build it on Word Press?” Well, I don’t have a ton of experience with a lot of different platforms. I used Member Mouse for a short period of time on Word Press; but since I collect payments through Clickbank right now; Clickbank is my online retailer that handles all my affiliate stuff as well as the payments, and everything for the 21-Day Sugar Detox. There was a disconnect happening between the Member Mouse purchasing… between the Clickbank purchasing and Member Mouse sending the email for the person to login. And for me, any sort of failure in that loop from purchase to login for the customer was not ok. Like, if somebody was going multiple minutes or even an hour after their purchase without being able to login, that was scaring them. It was making them feel like they made a purchase that wasn’t real.

So I abandoned that and I moved over to Kajabi. We’ve had very few hang-ups or issues, and I use just the standard Kajabi platform because I want to be using the affiliate network that I already have with Clickbank, and Kajabi New or Kajabi Next doesn’t work with Clickbank; they work with their own payment processing, so it’s totally up to you if you want to try it out. But I use Clickbank; I’ve just used them for a very long time. Because I’ve been with them for a long time, and I’ve put a lot of business through them, I was able to negotiate some better rates with them, as well, and I personally am just comfortable with something I know. It’s like, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, so I’m staying there for now.

So I use Kajabi.

I find that the visual side of the membership site that they have is limited. It’s not my favorite, I wish I could structure things differently, but it works. So that’s what I use.

Hey guys, I’m so glad you’re loving the show. Let me ask you to do me a favor; come follow me on Periscope. You can find me; I believe you can search Diane Sanfilippo, or you can search @BalancedBites, which is my Twitter handle, which is the account name over on Periscope. I am going to start doing live sessions, really quick thoughts for the day. I’m not sure if it I will be every day, but it will be pretty often, and some Q&A on business topics and motivation, inspiration, etc. So make sure you’re following me over on Periscope. Download the app in the app store, and I will see you there.

That’s all I’ve got for you guys today. Don’t forget to subscribe in iTunes so you don’t miss an episode. And drop me a review to let me know what’s speaking to you from the show. If you want to get in on the conversation and you haven’t yet joined the group already on Facebook, head on over there and join the Build a Badass Business group. I share insights and tips regularly, as well as answer your questions right there on the page. Do work that you love, and hustle to make your business grow like your life depends on it, because it does. Thanks for listening, and I’ll catch you on the next episode.

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