#92： How to Network Without Networking With John Corcoran
Episode Stats
Summary
John Corcoran is a regular contributor on The Art of Manliness and owns a website called Smart Business Revolution, where he writes content about how to be an effective networker. He also worked in the Clinton administration as a speechwriter in the Office of Letters and Messages.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Now, when people say you got to network to be successful in life, right, successful in your
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career, people really don't know what that means. Like when they do network, they usually do it in
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a way that's sort of not effective where they just take business cards and just hand them out
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to anyone and everyone who will take one. They'll go to these networking events and just hand out
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their business card and just talk about themselves and say, here's my idea. Let's network and let's
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do lunch. And it never really goes anywhere. And it seems a lot of people, because they had such
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bad experiences with networking, they just give up on it because I think it's a waste of time.
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Well, our guest today has spent his career mastering, studying how to be a better networker.
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His name is John Corcoran. He is an attorney, but he also owns a website called Smart Business
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Revolution, where he writes content, has a podcast about how to be an effective networker. So you
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have more success, not only in your career, but also in your personal life. John is also a regular
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contributor on the Art of Manliness. You've probably seen some of his articles on our site about
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networking and social skills and things like that. They're always do really well on the site.
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So today we're going to talk about how to be an effective networker and how to do it in a way
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that it's not annoying. It doesn't seem sleazy. It's comfortable for all those who are involved
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and how to do it in a way that it actually make a difference in your life and the life of the other
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person. We're going to talk about how you can systemize your networking so you can keep track of
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all your contacts. We'll discuss why even if you have a quote unquote blue collar job,
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you should also be networking because you often associate networking with sort of office white
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collar jobs. And we'll also discuss why college age men who are still in college, still in school,
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should start networking now so they can have more opportunities presented to them when they
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get out into the workforce. So just a podcast that's just jam packed with actionable information.
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I think you're really going to enjoy this. So let's get on with the show.
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Hey, happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Brett.
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Hey, well, it's a pleasure. You've been a contributor for the Art of Manage for a while
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now, so we've always enjoyed your content there. And it's nice to get you on the podcast to actually
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Yeah, I've listened for a long time, so I'm happy to be here.
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So before we get into talking about your expertise, which is networking, you kind of have a really
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interesting background because right now you're an attorney and you also run your
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website, Smart Business Revolution. But before that, you worked in the Clinton administration
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and you were like the Office of Letters and Management, right?
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Letters and Messages. Can you describe what that job was and how old were you when you
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I was 12 years old, actually. No, I was 23. And yeah, I was a writer in Presidential
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Letters and Messages. I kind of describe it as I was like a second-tier speechwriter or
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if one of the speechwriters pulled a hamstring, then we'd have to step in, basically. We wrote
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everything that the speechwriters didn't want to write, like letters, messages, video scripts,
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proclamations, which are kind of a historic importance and paid people who have less attention
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to them now. You know, letters to VIPs, that kind of thing. And I had previously been in
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the speechwriting office during college, actually. During college, I did an internship in the
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White House Speechwriting Office in the fall of 97, which was right before the whole Monica
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Lewinsky scandal hit. I went back, graduated from college, kept in touch with people, and
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I can get into the whole story of how I ended up getting a job there, but ended up coming
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Better believe it, yeah. So it was basically keeping in touch with, you know, the other
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speechwriters who were there, other people who worked at the White House, keeping in touch
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with people in Washington, D.C. What happened was I graduated from college. I knew I'd like
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to get a job back there at the White House, but not everyone who interns is able to get
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a job there. They take, you know, hundreds and hundreds of interns each year, and there are
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not a lot of people who get those coveted jobs at the White House. So I was on the lookout
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for it, but, you know, you can't just, like, pester people regularly, like, send them emails
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or call them and say, so is their job, is their job. So, you know, I just tried to be of use
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to the speechwriters. I would clip out things and send things to them, you know, speeches
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that I saw that I thought were helpful or quotes or articles, you know, just keeping in touch
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with people and trying to be of use to them. And then what happened was, it's kind of a funny
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story. I heard from one of the speechwriters that there was this job opening for a writer,
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and I'd been an English major in college, and I'd been a writer my entire life, so I
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wanted to be a writer, so I was very excited about it. And so I knew I might be getting
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a call one of these days from the person who was hiring for it, and so one day I do get
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this call out of the blue from the woman who eventually ended up hiring me, and she calls
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me up and says, yeah, you know, I just wanted to see if I get a resume and a writing sample
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and find some more information about you. And I said, sure, that's great. I'll send you
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my resume. And actually, if you want to see a writing sample, you can open up today's New
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York Times. I have a letter to the editor in today's op-ed page of the New York Times.
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It was a bit of a coincidence, but I knew that they might be calling around them then, and
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I'd sent that letter to the editor a couple of days earlier. It just happened to hit on
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the very same day that I got that phone call. And the reason I tell that story is because
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if you have an opportunity that's coming along, then you can position yourself. You can do things
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in order to create opportunities for yourself so that you look the best that you can. You
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put your best foot forward, so to speak. So after that, I ended up interviewing for the
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job, doing a writing test, all that kind of stuff, and ended up getting into the job.
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Okay. So you started, you kind of mastered, or started mastering networking at a pretty young
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age. Now you're an attorney, but you also have your website, Smart Business Revolution,
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where you talk about networking. And why did you decide to devote an entire blog to networking
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I'd love to say that there's this master plan behind it, but it was more of an evolution. So
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what happened was I've always written for the web. I've always enjoyed writing. And so I started
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blogging years and years ago, and it kind of evolved. And what happened was I would write
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related to my legal practice, because I'm a lawyer. I'm still a practicing lawyer. And
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my clients are mostly entrepreneurs and small business owners. And I would write for that
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audience. And eventually, I realized that writing about legal topics was too disorganized. People
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would come and go. There was no way of creating a sense of community or anything like that. So
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I pivoted. I rebranded. I changed it. And I started writing more aimed towards entrepreneurs.
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But I also found that at that point, it was too broad. Also, I was talking about a lot of
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different topics that were of interest to entrepreneurs, but not narrowly focused enough.
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And at the same time, actually, Antonio Centino was one of the big influencers, who also writes
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for Art of Manlias. He kept on saying to me, you're really good at using relationships and
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knowing how to develop relationships with people. You should do more on that. You should tell people
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more about that. And another of other friends had done the same thing. They said, you know,
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they're constantly asking me questions about, you know, networking, building relationships,
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that sort of thing. And so finally, you know, it's like one of those things, you got to listen to what
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other people say. And sometimes I think we're drawn to the thing that we struggle with more rather
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than the thing that we're better at. And so eventually, I pivoted and I started focusing more
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on, as I call it, relationship building. And, and that's when things really kind of started to
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pick up for me. Okay. So let's talk about that. Like you're, you're calling it relationship building.
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Most people would call it networking. And yeah, I think most people, when they hear the word
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networking, they're like, that sounds, I just, they just put up the, that sucks. That's so lame.
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Yeah. Like they, images of like, you know, networking events and like hotel lobbies where they're
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handing out near their business card and like shaking hands and giving their elevator pitches.
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That's what comes to mind. Yep. Um, I mean, so, I mean, what are the biggest myths about networking
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and what would you tell someone who's like, yeah, that's stupid. I'm not going to network or
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relationship build. It doesn't matter what you, if you rebranded relationship building,
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I'm not going to do that. What would you tell them to convince them that you need to start doing this?
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Yeah. So, um, I think it does have a negative connotation. I think exactly because
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there's so many people that do it wrong. There's so many people that turn it into a sales pitch
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immediately, you know, and we've all been in that situation where we're at some event and we meet
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some person and they're immediately trying to sell us on something. And that's not the way to do it
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anywhere in any circumstances. In, in any circumstances, when you meet someone, you got to
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take some time to get to know them. I mean, it takes a while for these things to unfold,
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you know, whether we're talking about building a relationship through someone,
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through the media or online or offline or in person or whatever, it takes a while. And so
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the people who do networking bad, and the reason that networking has a bad connotation
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is because of people who try and force it, try and, and make it happen too quickly.
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I advocate a slower approach. I mean, I could even call it slow networking or something like that.
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Maybe that's a word I need to use is because honestly, you need to take some time to build a
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relationship with someone. And how do you do that? You do that by being of use to them, being
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a friend, being useful, providing value to them. And we can get into what that means exactly. But
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as far as what networking myths are, what common networking myths are out there? Well, one, I think
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is a big myth is that you don't need to do it. The fact is we're all building relationships. We're adding
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people into our lives and we're dropping people into our lives over the course of our life. So over the
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next 12 months, whether you like it or not, you will add some people into your network and you'll
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drop some people into your network. It just happens organically. What I advocate is taking a more
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proactive approach, a more deliberate and intentional approach, and actually thinking in advance, much
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like you would choose a major in college, thinking in advance about the types of people that you want
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to surround yourself with, the types of people that you want to develop a relationship with,
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rather than just letting it happen completely organically, which is what a lot of people do.
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I'm not talking about friendship, of course. When it comes to friends, it's fine to let things
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evolve organically. But when it comes to business, when it comes to your career,
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I think you should be more intentional about it. The other common networking myth that I think we
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hear really frequently is that either you're born good at it or you're not born good at it,
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and so you don't do it. I actually think that you can get better at it. And some introverts are very
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good at, quote unquote, networking, very good at building relationships. And it's because they put
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effort into it. And really, building a network is not about being the most outspoken, most effusive,
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most social animal, social butterfly at a networking event. It's really about building relationships
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with people in that initial meeting and then following up and continuing to follow up with
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that person and keeping them in your life. And one other example I give is oftentimes people,
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they say, I don't like going out to networking events, and that's fine. But this is what people end up
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doing. They go because people have to go because you have to build relationships. You can't just
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live like a hermit in your home at all times. So they go to events, but they don't follow up with
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people. They just let it drop. And what that does is like dooming yourself to the hamster wheel of
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networking for the rest of your life. Because you don't take relationships, the relationships that you
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do develop at events, and you don't do anything with them, you end up having to go back again and again
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and again to all these different events. So even though you don't like it, you're dooming yourself
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to continue to do it. So I think being intentional on the front end, deciding in advance who you want
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to develop relationships with, and then on the back end, after you've met people, continuing to be
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in touch with them and continuing to remain in touch with them with the people who are really of value to
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your career, to your business, are the two real big important points there.
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Okay. I thought it was a really interesting point. You said you don't have to be an extrovert to
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network well, because I think a lot of people stay away from networking because they're like,
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oh, it just, it frightens them. Like I got to go and like talk to these strangers and I have a
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minute, right. To make that first impression. It's going to be like, it's, if I don't get the deal
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there, if I don't get the job interview offer there, then it's, it's all, it's all done for.
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Just like, there's so much pressure. Like they're already sort of like, you know, have social anxiety
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and then just the, the, the, the, the scepter of having to like make something happen. And that this
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one moment just like makes it even more, you know, anxiety, um, producing, uh, thing even more.
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Yeah, no, I totally get that. People put too much pressure on themselves. And the reality is,
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is that it's a lot longer process than that. Yeah. I don't think you need to worry about
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getting everything, you know, smushed into the initial meeting. You can actually, that can take
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a little bit of the pressure off. In fact, one of the tools that I advocate that people use
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is called a conversations list. And conversations list is basically just taking the time to define
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in advance the 50 plus people who you'd like to develop a relationship and deepen a relationship
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with over the course of the next 12 months. And there's a couple of things I do intentionally
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there. I call it a conversations list because I want you to think about it as an ongoing conversation
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with you're going to have, which you're going to have with these 50 people over the course of the
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next 12 months. The reason I say 12 months is because that way you don't worry about trying
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to get everything accomplished in the first meeting or the first couple of weeks, you realize
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you can take your time with that. And if you do that over time, over the course of a couple of years,
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you can really radically revamp the circle of people that you have around you, which is something
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that I've just done naturally throughout my career. I looking back on my career now, and I realized
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that I did it over and over again. I did it in politics. I actually worked in the entertainment
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industry. I worked, I was an early employee for DreamWorks. So I worked for both Bill Clinton and
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Steven Spielberg at different times in my career. After that, I went and worked in Silicon Valley for
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a couple of years. And now, of course, I'm an attorney and I depend on relationships in order to get
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clients. So I've actually done it over and over again with these different types of circles. But
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if you, let's say you're listening to this and you're not happy in the job that you have right
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now, or not happy in the career that you have right now, or you want to start a business or
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something like that, you can evolve your circle of connections around you by being deliberate and
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intentional using a tool like the conversations list and deciding who are the people that you want
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to develop relationships with and then going out and doing it proactively.
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Exactly. So you decide you want to be proactive and network and do all that stuff. But how do you do
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it in a way that's not annoying, right? And that it just doesn't, you know, just doesn't, because I
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mean, there's, there's, I mean, I get approached all the time with people who want something with
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like, they want to work with the art of manliness and they want to network, but like, there's always,
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it's, it's a lot of times it's just very annoying. Like they just, it's just ask, ask, ask. And it's like,
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I only, you know, I, I only have so much time and energy, so I can't give myself all, you know,
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to these people. So like, how do you do in a way where it's just like, it's useful, like, as you
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say? Yeah. Well, um, the, the first thing I'd recommend is checking out the book, how to win
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friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie, which a lot of people have heard of, but a lot of people
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haven't read. So I'd recommend reading that book. The book is almost a hundred years old. And yet the
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reason it sold tens of millions of copies is because the advice in it is timeless. And the
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advice is that if you're meeting someone, if you're developing a relationship with someone
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to be attuned to what they're interested in and to be inquisitive and to learn about that person.
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So that's the first thing that I think that you should do and, and, and, um, uh, should be doing
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when you're should do and should do. That makes a lot of sense. Uh, you should be doing when you're
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developing a relationship with someone. You should be learning what is going on in their
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life, learning about them, learning what their interests are, learning what's going on with
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their family. If they want to share that learning what they, what their goals are. And only once
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you learn those things, can you not be annoying? I mean, the people who are annoying and the people
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who are just interested in themselves, right? You know, and I mean, in, in Dale Carnegie's book,
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there's this classic, there's a number of classic examples, but there's an example of a guy who goes
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to a dinner party and he ends up having this conversation with, I think it was a biologist
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or Marine biologist or something like that. And he has this great conversation and, and the person
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was asking questions of the biologist all night, like question after question, because he'd never met
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a biologist before. And he was really interested in the topic. And he was, he was using the Dale
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Carnegie strategies, which is to ask questions of people. And then at the end of the night,
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the biologist goes to the host and says, you know, I had this great conversation with this guy.
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He was a great conversationalist. And what's so funny about that is that the guy who was asking
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questions wasn't really making conversation. He was actually just asking questions and taking
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interest in that person. And most people really enjoy talking about themselves and they really
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enjoy talking about things that are of interest to them. So the lesson in that is you don't need to
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be the world's greatest conversationalist. You just need to take an interest in that person and
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then to pick up on details about them, what's going on in their life, and then find ways in
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which you can add value to that person's life. You know, and so what I try and do when I meet
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someone new is just try and find out what's going on with them, what's going on with their business,
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what's going on with their life. Do they have a son or daughter who's about to go off to college?
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Maybe I can give them some advice on colleges that they're considering. Do they have a favorite
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type of food? Maybe there's a restaurant that they haven't heard of nearby that I can recommend to
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them. Maybe they're going on vacation sometime next month to some place that I've been to before.
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Like Brett, you and I have both been to Vermont on vacation. Maybe they're going to Vermont. We can
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give some recommendation of somewhere they can go to in Vermont. You know, something like that.
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I think that is the way that you ensure that you're not annoying.
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Okay. And but even when you start, so you start, the whole goal is to be provide value,
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be useful in any way. Right. But you, I guess there's a point like you shouldn't like provide
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value than like, Hey, follow up with, can you help me out with this? Like sort of the give and take.
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I mean, should you just be more like give stuff and then wait? Like, how do you know when you call
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in that favor? I mean, it sounds very like godfather mafioso, but like, how do you know when you're,
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it's a good time to, you know, capitalize on this relationship that you're developing?
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Yeah, I think it's, I think it varies with each person and with each relationship. You know,
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if you develop a tighter bond with that person, then they're probably more likely quicker to
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come to you for whatever service it is you provide or think of you. I think that you need
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to weave into the conversation, um, things that, that are helpful, but that are also remind the
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person of what it is you do. So if you're a service provider like myself, then one thing you can do is
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just provide helpful advice. So let's say that you're a photographer listening to this and you
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want to get photography clients. Well, you could just weave in advice and tips. Like maybe you're
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talking to someone who, who you've met and they just, you know, they mentioned that they just had,
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uh, pictures taken, formal portraits or something. Maybe you can give a little tip,
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like you can say, oh, by the way, you know, um, it's fall right now. So the colors are, uh, you know,
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browns and oranges and greens. So, uh, you know, before you have your photo session, you should try and
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wear, um, uh, a sweater that matches that palette. If you do an outside, outside a photo shoot, you
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know, that's one way that you could be of use to that person. And it's not saying like hire me to be
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your photographer. It's actually the opposite. It's actually just being useful to them. And if you prove
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that worth, if you prove that you're so useful, then that they're going to immediately think of
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you either. They're going to think, wow, we should really hire this person. They gave me this great
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piece of advice, which is a really good tip. Or if they have a brother-in-law, a sister-in-law,
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something like that, some friend who needs to hire a photographer, even if they don't hire you,
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they might refer you out to that person. That sounds an awfully like, uh, like what's that
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from miracle on 34th street where like Macy's was like recommending customers go to gimbals if
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there's like a cheaper price or something like that. Do you remember that scene? I've heard people
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reference that before and I haven't seen that movie in so long, so, but I should check it out.
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Yeah. You should check it out. I think it's very similar. So like, yeah, the, the Santa Claus at Macy's
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starts telling, uh, parents like where they can go buy presents that weren't at Macy's.
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And like at first, like the, the managers were like, Oh, why are you doing that? But all the
00:21:21.800
customers loved it. They're like, Oh, you know, thank you so much for doing that. And I'm going
00:21:24.460
to keep coming back to Macy's because you guys are so useful.
00:21:27.500
Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the Nordstrom's approach. Nordstrom's is famous for providing
00:21:32.200
amazing customer service and to the point where they will provide all kinds of recommendations or
00:21:37.220
Zappos, a more modern contemporary reference. Zappos is famous for if they don't have the shoes,
00:21:42.440
their customer service people are trained to get on the web and start helping to find people,
00:21:46.940
uh, where the shoes can be bought. Um, but I think there's truth to that. I think that,
00:21:52.100
you know, that establishes credibility that establishes trust. When you do something like
00:21:57.920
that, it shows that you have confidence in your own skills, that you're not worried about the
00:22:03.480
competition. In fact, for me as an attorney, I found that the clients that are most likely to
00:22:09.280
become really attached to me are the ones that I've tried to talk out of hiring me in the first
00:22:13.940
place. You know, I've had conversations where I explain why they shouldn't hire me for whatever
00:22:18.980
reason, maybe because I don't think they should pursue a certain path, or maybe I think there's
00:22:23.000
another attorney can help them with something. And then it's inevitably they turn around and they're
00:22:27.740
like, Oh, we really want to hire you. It's like, yeah, I guess you weren't listening or else
00:22:32.180
like you'd rather hire me. That's fine. All right. So I guess the key to networking,
00:22:37.660
or as you call it, relationship building is first, uh, pay attention to the needs of others,
00:22:43.780
right? Be attuned to that. Um, and then second, just find small ways to add value, uh, in any way
00:22:51.840
you can. And even if that means referring them to someone else or it's a competition, or even they
00:22:57.600
don't use your service immediately, be valuable. Um, but here's the question I have, how do you
00:23:02.680
make time for that? Right? Cause like you only have so much time in the day. You only have so
00:23:05.720
much energy. Um, and if you're spending all that time helping others who, you know, you might not
00:23:11.520
be able to, you know, this is your thing about your business, right? You're making an investment
00:23:14.340
in your business and they might not, uh, you know, might not have any return on investment at all,
00:23:20.560
or for a long time. I mean, how do you manage that? How do you decide, okay, I'm going to spend my time
00:23:25.740
helping this person as opposed to not helping that person. Yeah. And this is a common objection
00:23:31.580
that I hear from people, um, that are worried about the amount of time that it takes. You know,
00:23:36.900
I don't advocate taking a ton of time, spending hours and hours of your day, um, devoting to this
00:23:42.940
really, it can be, it can be very, um, not time consuming. One of the problems is, is, and the reason
00:23:51.180
I advocate using conversations list strategy is that people are developing relationships with the
00:23:55.160
wrong people. They're sometimes it's because they're pursuing someone who they see is successful
00:24:00.540
and they're trying to build a relationship with that person when there's no conceivable value to
00:24:04.380
them, or they're not aligned with their business goal, or they're not aligned with their career
00:24:09.360
goals. So they're just pursuing the wrong person. So I think taking the time to define who are the
00:24:14.760
people that you want to build relationships with will help to prevent that from happening. And then
00:24:19.820
you'll focus on building the relationships with the people who really matter to your goals.
00:24:24.180
But I think you need to take the long game. You need to decide that I'm going to devote a little
00:24:28.520
bit of time throughout my week to doing these sorts of relationship building activities,
00:24:34.240
you know, going to coffee with someone or going to lunch with someone or connecting with them,
00:24:38.460
interviewing. I mean, what we're doing right now is a great tool for building relationships,
00:24:42.260
interviewing someone, whether it's for a podcast or whether it's for an article that you write in
00:24:47.140
the newspaper. Um, it's a lot better than asking someone for an informational interview,
00:24:51.100
which is actually asking them for a favor, doing an interview where you're going to publish it to
00:24:56.780
a podcast, to an article, to a blog or whatever is actually not asking them to do a favor. You're
00:25:01.840
actually doing, you're actually doing something nice for them because you're giving them a bit of
00:25:05.720
publicity, but there are also tools that you can use. And one that I advocate is called a CRM
00:25:12.520
program. It stands for customer relationship management. And typically, historically salespeople use
00:25:18.080
them because they were for building relationships with people. Well, as we, our economy has become
00:25:22.760
more entrepreneur focused and jobs have become more temporary, people tend to jump from job to job
00:25:29.920
from company to company now, whereas people used to stick with the same job. It's more important that
00:25:35.740
you put effort into building these relationships if you want to be serious about your career. So you can
00:25:41.480
use a CRM program, which are a relatively, relatively modest investment. You know, they can be anywhere
00:25:47.840
from, you know, zero to a hundred dollars a month. You think of like Salesforce, uh, Zoho, Podio,
00:25:54.380
there's a bunch of new ones out there. Insightly, I use one called Contactually, which I'm a big fan of.
00:25:59.040
And, and like they have a suite of, of basically different tools that are involved, but I'll just
00:26:05.000
mention one of them is like introductions. I love doing introductions to people because anyone who's
00:26:09.840
listening to this right now, I guarantee you, there are two people in your network who would benefit
00:26:13.960
from knowing each other and you are the one who can do it. And if you introduce two people and they
00:26:18.760
get along, they hit it off, they do business together or whatever, they will always remember
00:26:23.520
it. And then that is a great way for you to get introduced to other people as well. So Contactually
00:26:29.500
and probably every CRM out there has a tool for doing introductions where you can, in a couple of
00:26:35.380
clicks, like very quickly make an introduction is some of the best use of your time period.
00:26:41.960
Because if you make an introduction, they hit it off. Just people are just tremendously grateful. So
00:26:47.360
that's one tool that you can use that, that would be helpful. There's another one called
00:26:51.620
intros.to, which is another website, which is actually free. So I think it's an open source
00:26:57.300
platform for tracking introductions is another one you can use.
00:27:01.420
Does, uh, speaking of, you know, like systems you can use, I mean, you, I guess you, to be really
00:27:06.800
effective with this, you need to systemize and organize your networking, um, besides, you know,
00:27:12.840
organizing your introductions, I mean, what else should you be keeping track of, uh, with your
00:27:18.200
relationship building? Um, what else should be keeping, well, one big one is, and this really is
00:27:25.500
dependent on, um, how, what it is you do. So if you are a, this works best probably for a service
00:27:35.180
provider, um, someone who's providing a service and just trying to get clients. But I have a tool
00:27:41.700
that I talk about. It's in a free ebook on my site, um, called the, the ebook isn't, but the, the tool is
00:27:47.080
called the results and revenue worksheet. And basically it's, it's basically tracking all of the incoming,
00:27:52.880
uh, business that comes into you and where it came from. And this is a tool that over time you can
00:28:00.220
see patterns emerge. So let's say we'll use the photographer example again, or let's say you're a
00:28:05.440
plumber or something like that. And you get phone calls throughout the year from different people,
00:28:09.780
new clients. Well, every time a new client comes in, you just write down the name of the person who
00:28:15.620
came in and what their source was. It could be from a person who referred them. It could be from an
00:28:20.160
organization that you belong to, like a BNI or something like that, or a chamber of commerce,
00:28:24.020
or it could be an event that you attended, like a conference or some kind of quarterly event or
00:28:29.080
something like that. It could be from your kid's preschool, whatever you write it down over time.
00:28:33.500
You'll be able to see patterns emerge. You'll be able to see that. Oh, Hey, look, this one person
00:28:37.640
referred me three times back in March and they haven't referred me since then. Well, what has happened
00:28:43.780
in the interim? Oh, well, it turns out I haven't communicated with that person in the last six months.
00:28:47.840
So what that tells you is you need to really reach out to that person again and make sure that you
00:28:53.260
keep a strong connection with that person. This isn't rocket science, but if you implement a strategy
00:28:58.760
like that, it will help you to be efficient and to be smart about the relationships that are really
00:29:06.700
important to your business, your career. Okay. Let's go back to introductions because this is
00:29:10.980
something you and I have talked about in emails back and forth before. Like what's the etiquette of
00:29:16.100
introduction making? Because I have lots of people who make introductions to me, uh, all the time.
00:29:20.880
I know they're trying to be useful, but oftentimes what happens is that the person that, um, they're
00:29:25.780
introduced me to, like, there's just, I don't see any value. Like I just, there's nothing there.
00:29:29.580
Like I'm like, this is not, this isn't a good fit. And so it's always awkward. It's like, uh, nice to
00:29:34.820
meet you, but no thanks. Cause I mean, I don't want to seem like I'm a jerk. Right. Yeah. Um, so like,
00:29:40.120
what is, I mean, should you ask before, like you say, can I introduce you to someone or she just
00:29:45.280
make the introduction? Yeah. It's funny. Cause you and I have talked about this and, and my
00:29:49.900
opinion on it has evolved a little bit. Initially I did feel like, you know, just go out there and
00:29:55.760
make the introductions. And if, you know, if it's not a good fit, it's not a good fit. But then
00:30:00.940
after talking to you about it, talking to some other people about it. And, and also honestly,
00:30:05.000
I get more introductions now than I did a couple of months ago than I did a year ago. And so I've
00:30:09.840
been on the, on the other end of those as well, where you get an introduction and you're kind of
00:30:14.240
like, ah, I'm not sure what, you know, why this benefits, you know, that's kind of on the other
00:30:20.220
person. It's the person who's doing the introduction. Um, they're the one who's, you know, a little
00:30:26.660
not attuned to what it is you need. And there's a couple of things you could do. You could say,
00:30:30.860
you could email back or, or just say to the other person who's done the introduction to you,
00:30:35.300
this is kind of what I'm looking for right now. I'm looking for, you know, or this is what I'm
00:30:40.360
working on. This is what I'm focused on so that they don't make the same mistake again later.
00:30:44.220
You can do it in a polite way. Um, uh, or, you know, another thing you can do is if you get an,
00:30:49.780
if you get an introduction to someone where you can't really see what the benefit is, what the value
00:30:53.900
is to you, you can just say, great to meet you. And how can I, how can I help? Or if there's
00:31:00.040
any way I can help, just let me know. And it might be something tiny, you know, even if you can't see
00:31:05.120
any benefit from that person whatsoever, at least initially, just based on their vocation or whatever
00:31:10.660
it is they do, maybe they have some tiny little question. Maybe they have some tiny little request
00:31:16.660
that takes very little amount of your time. And actually there's a great, um, strategy is called
00:31:22.760
the five minute favor. There's a guy named Adam Rifkin who was named by fortune magazine as their,
00:31:28.020
uh, best networker of 2011, I think. Um, and he does what he calls a five minute favor,
00:31:34.280
which basically if anyone asks him for a favor, he'll, he'll do it as long as it takes less than
00:31:37.980
five minutes. And so sometimes I'm not saying you have to commit five minutes, but it could be 30
00:31:42.640
seconds. I mean, like sometimes people will, it turns out they just have some like tiny little
00:31:46.820
question. And with you, Brett, I mean, you're, you have the advantage of you've been putting out
00:31:53.140
advice for five, six years now. And, and a lot of your advice is out there. So, um, someone might
00:32:00.000
ask you a question and you probably answered it in 2000 words or more, um, you know, at some point
00:32:07.380
in the last five years. And so you can, you can think off the top of your head, you know, I know
00:32:11.700
exactly where the answer is this, and you could send an article to that person that doesn't take
00:32:15.600
much of your time, but you never know what will come from that result. You know, that person might be
00:32:20.520
so grateful from that personal touch, you know, from getting that from you that then they go and
00:32:26.880
refer their next 20 friends to read art of manliness every month, you know? So that's how I would
00:32:33.460
probably approach it. But I do agree with you that I think that, um, you have to perceive on the,
00:32:40.100
first you have to be attuned to what the other people need. And anytime you make an induction,
00:32:44.480
it needs to be mutual. It needs to be, there's benefit to both sides. That's what I always try and
00:32:50.460
do. I don't know if it always works out, but that's what I always try to do. And then the other
00:32:53.900
thing is I also try and judge how busy the other people are and the busier the person, the more
00:32:59.140
likely I'm going to send an email in advance. It says, Hey, I'd like to introduce you to so-and-so
00:33:04.440
here's why I think it could be a benefit to you. Would you like me to make that introduction? If not,
00:33:09.600
no harm, no foul. And I've done that with you. I've done that with lots of other people before,
00:33:13.840
and it takes a little bit more of your effort, but even if you don't actually make the introduction,
00:33:18.140
the person that you've offered to make the introduction to is grateful that you offered
00:33:22.880
to make the introduction, even if they respond and say, that's okay. I don't think I need the
00:33:28.080
introduction. Um, I think that they're, they're so grateful that you, that you, uh, put out the
00:33:33.860
gesture that you wanted to make the introduction. Okay. Here's another question that, um, I have. So
00:33:38.680
you, you, you, you're, you're putting yourself out there. You're trying to build relationships,
00:33:43.260
add value. Um, I mean, how do you deal with like rejection, right? Like someone says, no, thank you.
00:33:50.060
I don't want your help. Uh, cause I'm sure that happens a lot. Right. Um, so what, and for some
00:33:56.140
people or for some guys that could be like sort of devastating, um, because for whatever reason,
00:34:01.180
right. Uh, so how, what's your advice on handling rejection in the networking process?
00:34:07.700
Yeah. Um, that's tough. Um, you know, it, it's part of the process. I mean, you have to recognize
00:34:15.500
that you're gonna experience some rejection and you're gonna have to be a bit resilient. There
00:34:22.320
could be a number of reasons why you're experiencing rejection or why someone doesn't, oftentimes the,
00:34:28.460
the rejection doesn't come in the form of no, sorry, I'm not interested in meeting you.
00:34:33.420
It might come in the form of them not responding to your email. Um, you know, you, you send an email,
00:34:39.500
you don't receive a response, which there could be a lot of different reasons for that. It could be
00:34:43.820
the person just is really busy. It could be their business is busy. It could be, they have some
00:34:47.480
personal thing going on in their life. You never know what's going on in someone's life. So the first
00:34:52.420
thing I would say is don't take it personally. You know, a lot of people receive a lot of email,
00:34:57.880
or they just are very busy or the timing isn't right. I mean, the oftentimes it's just the timing's
00:35:05.280
not right for you at that time or with that person. You can't expect every connection to be
00:35:12.860
dynamite. You know, even if it's someone who maybe you're really excited about meeting or really excited
00:35:18.080
about the potential of getting to know, you know, maybe that person has lots and lots of people in
00:35:24.540
their life. They, of the category that you fall into. So, you know, getting back to like, if you're
00:35:29.720
a photographer, maybe that person has lots of photographers in their life. And so they just don't
00:35:34.840
have a need for another photographer in their life. And so, you know, you got to take the approach of,
00:35:40.400
well, it won't always work out or maybe, you know, I've had lots of great relationships work out
00:35:45.160
where the first time we connected for whatever reason on my side or their side, it was, the timing
00:35:51.440
was not right. Something was going on in one of our lives where we didn't make the connection. And
00:35:56.700
then something happens later. You circle back a month or two later, you email each other once again,
00:36:02.240
or you meet at another event and then a nice relationship blossoms. So take the long game,
00:36:07.780
like I mentioned earlier, take the long game and realize that sometimes there are going to be
00:36:11.480
little minor setbacks and you, you know, might, the tying might just not be right.
00:36:16.300
Okay. So a lot of our listeners are in college or in grad school. How can college age guys start
00:36:26.220
Yeah, that's a great question. And yeah, I know because I get a lot of emails from college age
00:36:30.920
guys after I write articles. So, so I hear this a lot and I got a great example. There's a guy who's
00:36:37.900
in college who emailed me a couple of months ago, I think it was after reading one of my articles on
00:36:44.560
art or manliness and said, um, I'm interested in developing a relationship with the president of
00:36:50.480
my school. And so I, and they have open office hours. So I was just going to go in and introduce
00:36:55.640
myself. What should I talk about? And it was kind of funny. It was like, okay. And, um,
00:37:03.060
first of all, I was like, good for you for doing that. I mean, I guarantee you this president's
00:37:08.500
probably sitting in the office hours and very few people take the, uh, initiative to come in
00:37:14.500
and introduce themselves. And then the second thing I said is think about what perspective you
00:37:20.400
can provide that can be of help to that president. And you'd be surprised. There's probably a lot you
00:37:26.620
can do. And so I said, think about, you know, maybe there's some initiative that that president is
00:37:30.920
really passionate about on that campus that they want to get going. Or maybe they, they just want to
00:37:36.420
want some feedback from what the pulse of the students is. They want to know what the word is
00:37:41.900
on the street, so to speak in the college. They want to know, you know, what it's like, or they,
00:37:46.280
maybe they're interested in what if we were to, you know, do bands in the plaza at lunch on Fridays,
00:37:52.020
would that go over well? Is it worth the investment? Would that improve morale? Um, you know,
00:37:57.500
something like that. And so I said, go in with an attitude of that and just offer, you know,
00:38:02.240
to, to be a liaison to the students or to, to, um, inform the president about things that are going
00:38:09.820
on that the president might not know about. So this guy ends up going and doing that ends up and
00:38:14.440
emails me a couple of months later and said, it went fabulously. They ended up having this great
00:38:18.680
conversation. Um, and the president, you know, wanted a ton of feedback on these exact things that
00:38:24.680
we talked about. So you might have more perspective than you think, and you can do the same thing out in
00:38:31.040
the real world where you can provide perspective to people, you know, basically on, on, you know,
00:38:36.860
what your, your view of the world is. The other thing I would offer is again, introductions,
00:38:41.320
getting back to introductions, no matter how much you think your network isn't worth anything,
00:38:46.280
there probably is someone that you know already, even if you're in college, who you can introduce
00:38:51.300
to someone else. You don't need to start with your dad's friend, who's a partner at a big law firm
00:38:57.320
downtown. You know, you can probably start smaller. You can start with a couple of people
00:39:03.200
within your network. Just start the practice of, it turns out that, you know, my friend who goes to
00:39:08.640
this other college, you know, maybe you've got a, maybe you've got a friend who went to UCLA and
00:39:13.200
another friend who went to UCLA and it turns out that they don't know each other and you can
00:39:16.760
introduce them. That's it. You could start by doing that and then you can build it as a practice
00:39:21.780
throughout your life and just continue doing that. Eventually you work your way up the scale.
00:39:25.740
Eventually you find yourself introducing more and more people at higher and higher levels.
00:39:31.220
And I mean, I've had amazing results from introducing people. I've had people
00:39:34.300
start businesses together. I've received emails from people. I had an email from a guy
00:39:38.900
a couple of months ago who I'd introduced to someone else. He said, I probably got $10,000
00:39:43.400
out of that introduction because we did business together. And I get that sort of thing and I am
00:39:48.240
just so glad. And then the second thing I say is, great, next round of drinks is on you.
00:39:52.260
Yeah. And that, that's a really, I mean, just find ways to be, I'm sure, even though you're
00:39:57.980
in college, you can probably find ways to be useful for people that, you know, you want to
00:40:03.280
work for eventually or within the, you know, university administration. Have you, do you know,
00:40:12.180
Yeah. Like he's the big advocate. This is what he did with his, like when he was in college,
00:40:15.340
he basically like worked for free for these, just these big tech people. Right. And he ended
00:40:20.900
up landing a job, uh, being like Tim Ferriss's body man, basically. Uh, and he did really well,
00:40:28.140
like made a lot of money from it, but it all started with just like being useful. He just
00:40:31.860
says like email out of the blue here, I want to help you with this. There you go. I'll do it for free.
00:40:37.960
Yeah. And I mean, oftentimes it's, it's just being aware of what's going on with them. So with
00:40:42.040
Charlie Hohen, I think he might've connected with Tim around the time of one of his books launching,
00:40:46.420
but you know, if you know, someone has a book coming out, there's a lot of things you can do.
00:40:50.160
You can help to promote it. You can introduce them to other people who might buy it. Um, I just thought
00:40:55.800
of another example of someone in college who contacted me probably through another Art of
00:40:59.120
Manly's post. This is a guy who was in a band. He was in a band and he wanted to do more, his band to
00:41:06.860
do more gigs in the local concert venues around the college town that he lived in. And he said,
00:41:11.600
how can I, what do I have to offer these people who own these concert venues around town? What can
00:41:17.120
I, what benefit can I provide to them? And I said, well, you are a student at the college. They want
00:41:23.060
to get more students into their venues. So maybe what you could do is you could do a profile feature.
00:41:28.900
You could interview the owner of one of these venues, interview them and write a profile and
00:41:34.040
then publish it in the local newspaper. They'd probably love that. If you go and do that,
00:41:39.040
that vent, you know, that then you're building a relationship with that particular venue owner
00:41:43.960
and they're probably, you know, next question after that's probably going to be, so what's
00:41:47.700
going on with you? And you're like, Oh, by the way, I have a van, I have a band and, uh, you know,
00:41:51.540
and pretty soon you've got a gig, right? So, you know, thinking from their perspective,
00:41:56.500
oftentimes we have more assets at our disposal than we think we do.
00:42:00.880
Okay. Uh, what about guys who are in blue collar jobs? Cause I, we often think of
00:42:04.180
networking as sort of like this white, you know, middle manager thing that you do. Um,
00:42:09.620
but, uh, how can blue collar guy guys use networking to improve their career?
00:42:15.140
Yeah, I think it starts with what your goal is. So what you want to do with your career
00:42:21.200
and blue collar can, it runs the gamut. It can be a lot of different types of jobs,
00:42:25.300
but if you're self-employed and you want to get more customers, then it's going to be one kind
00:42:31.900
of goal. Or if you're working in an organization, maybe you're a mechanic and you want to work your
00:42:37.720
way up to head mechanic, then that's going to be a different set of goals. Um, I think it starts with
00:42:43.000
the conversations strategy that I talked about. Another thing you can do is create a conversations
00:42:48.400
list of the organizations that you could join that would be helpful to your vocation as well.
00:42:55.980
So let's say you're, uh, an apprentice, uh, learning to be an electrician or a plumber or something
00:43:01.360
like that. Well, there are probably organizations in your local community where you could build
00:43:06.420
relationships. So it would be helpful to that career to help you work your way up your lap up
00:43:10.180
the ladder and get more income. So you, you could identify, you could brainstorm a list of 10 different
00:43:16.220
organizations that you could join. It could be like a local chamber of commerce. It could be like
00:43:20.680
a BNI group, business network international. It could be like a, uh, electricians union that you
00:43:26.680
could get involved in. And then how can you deepen your involvement with that organization?
00:43:30.340
And I'm talking like, what I think a lot of people make the mistake of is they join 20 different
00:43:35.620
groups and then they don't attend or they go as one attendee of amongst a hundred people or a thousand
00:43:40.900
people to some event. I don't think that's a great strategy. What I think you should do is actually
00:43:44.800
focus on a handful of organizations and then deepen your involvement with that organization. So maybe you
00:43:50.060
join the board or maybe you organize an event for them, uh, or maybe you organize a training or you
00:43:55.540
speak or something like that. So doing those sorts of things, even if you're in a blue collar job by
00:44:01.060
first identifying what your goals are, whether it's, you know, adding, getting more clients or
00:44:06.220
customers, or whether it's working your way up the ladder, it starts with that. And then identifying
00:44:11.180
the people, the events and the organizations that you can involve yourself with, and then starting to
00:44:18.520
do that. And you can also test it over time. So you could take 12 months, say, I'm going to send 12
00:44:22.620
months deepening my involvement in these two to three groups and then see if it works. And if it
00:44:28.740
doesn't work, then you try something else at the end of the next year. Awesome. Um, do you have any
00:44:33.660
tips? Cause you've written about this before, but what are your tips for connecting with VIPs? I mean,
00:44:37.140
let's say on your, your conversation list, you want to connect with the president of some corporation,
00:44:42.240
some, you know, high profile journalist, a politician. What, what are your tips for connecting with
00:44:48.800
those types of people? Okay. So one of the things that this has been, uh, this is a little
00:44:54.360
controversial. Sometimes I have a strategy that I talk about, which is keep it personal, stupid.
00:45:00.400
You've heard of keep it simple, stupid. So this is keep it personal, stupid. So if you have the right
00:45:06.300
opening, the right opportunity, you should look for an opportunity to have a conversation with someone
00:45:12.300
about something, uh, having to do with, um, their personal life rather than their vocation.
00:45:19.600
Personally, I find it very boring when I meet someone and we immediately launch into talking
00:45:24.880
just about vocation. It's not a great way to get to know someone better, but you have to look for
00:45:30.660
the opportunity. So you have to wait for someone to open the door. Maybe they mentioned something,
00:45:35.220
you know, maybe you're at an event and you're talking to someone and they mentioned, oh, you know,
00:45:38.440
I have to leave in a little bit cause I'm going to my daughter's volleyball game. And then that's
00:45:42.900
an opening for you to say, oh, really your daughter plays volleyball. What level of college,
00:45:47.380
high school, take interest in it and then follow up with it. And maybe you have some connection to
00:45:51.640
volleyball that you can follow up with them as well. Um, and I, you know, I'll give an example.
00:45:57.140
Like I asked an example on, on social media a couple of months ago, I asked people, what would you
00:46:03.620
say to Oprah, if you met Oprah and it doesn't need to be Oprah? It could be someone else who's of equal
00:46:09.560
accomplishment within your industry. I just use her as an example cause she's famous. But if you
00:46:14.040
were to meet Oprah, what would you say to someone who's of that level, the caliber of success and the
00:46:20.140
types of questions that people responded were these deep, deep questions. Like, you know, like how do I
00:46:25.940
get started in starting my own TV network? And like, how, how do you publish your own magazine? And how do I
00:46:32.220
break into the TV industry? And you know, honestly, if I was talking to Oprah Winfrey, I wouldn't talk
00:46:37.540
about any of those things. The handful of things that I know about Oprah Winfrey, which admittedly
00:46:42.180
are not that much, would be that she likes Yellow Labs. I've read that somewhere. She has a house in
00:46:46.620
Santa Barbara, which is where I went to college and a few other things. And I'd probably just end up
00:46:51.140
talking about those little personal things cause that's so much, it's so much, you're so much more
00:46:57.280
likely to build a personal bond with them. And I'll just tell one quick story about working at the
00:47:02.020
White House. So one of the perks, I guess you can call it, when I worked at the White House,
00:47:07.420
I don't know if they still do this, but they, the president would record the historic radio address
00:47:14.240
in the Oval Office on weekends, on either Saturday or Sunday morning. And they would invite some VIPs
00:47:19.460
down and employees down to, if you get it on the list, it wasn't a lot of people, down to listen to
00:47:25.900
him record it. And then they do a very quick photo line where you get a picture with the president.
00:47:29.320
And so I did this around the time I was leaving and my family came in from out of town and in order
00:47:35.900
to do it, because when do you get a picture in the Oval Office? And I'd been given a tip beforehand
00:47:40.480
about, um, that if you want to get a little extra time with him, bring him a gift. And at that time,
00:47:46.720
he was actually, President Clinton was actually collecting DVDs. He was building up his DVD
00:47:50.320
collection and he liked old Westerns. So we go and get a couple of old Westerns. We put a bow on them.
00:47:54.560
We bring him with us. We go down the Oval Office. He, he comes in at the last minute, walks in,
00:47:59.280
records the radio, radio address without a beat, without skipping a beat. And then immediately does
00:48:04.660
the photo line. And they're like members of Congress and like Hollywood directors and famous
00:48:09.260
people and stuff. And everyone's going by really quickly. And they get up to us and we hand over
00:48:13.260
this gift to him and he immediately looks at it. And then we end up having like a five,
00:48:19.080
10 minute conversation about old Westerns, about like, you know, going to see movies as a kid in
00:48:24.860
Arkansas. My dad actually was a TV, uh, film critic on when I was a kid. And so he can talk about
00:48:30.700
movies with anyone. And so we have this, you know, just like a very normal human conversation
00:48:36.560
with the leader of the free world, standing in the heart of power in the Oval Office with all these
00:48:41.800
other VIPs behind us waiting in line. And the reason I tell that story is because if you can,
00:48:48.820
if I can have a very personal conversation with the leader of the free world in that circumstances,
00:48:53.500
then you can have a very personal conversation about a quote unquote mundane topic with someone
00:49:00.640
who's very successful in your industry, be it a CEO, be it the president of your company,
00:49:06.260
be it a very successful salesperson, whoever it is, find that commonality, find that thing,
00:49:11.540
old Western movies, whatever it is, find that thing that you can talk about and then just have
00:49:16.240
a normal human conversation with them. And then that's the way that you start to build the bonds
00:49:20.700
of a relationship. Awesome. So keep it personal. Yes. Okay. All right. So it's our last question.
00:49:26.560
Uh, it's been a lot of great information here. Uh, but what can listeners start doing today? Like
00:49:31.740
as soon as they get done listening to this podcast, what can they start doing to be a better networker
00:49:35.700
or relationship builder? Excuse me. I'm not going to live that down, am I? Yeah, no,
00:49:41.220
it's, it's a really, it's a really good way to reframe it. I mean, it's nice. I like it.
00:49:44.920
Yeah. I mean, I think most people like building relationships. They don't like networking and
00:49:48.000
that's fine. Yeah. You know, I mean, what I would start with is the conversations list strategy that
00:49:52.440
I talked about, you know, taking 20 minutes to sit down and define the net, the 50 people you'd like
00:50:00.380
to either deepen an existing relationship or start a new relationship with, cause you haven't met them
00:50:06.740
yet over the course of the next 12 months, that 20 minutes. And honestly, you don't need to take
00:50:11.700
more than 20 minutes could take you 15, um, could save you 20 years of wasted effort. And that's not
00:50:18.600
an exaggeration. So often people do not take the time to decide and to define who are the people who
00:50:26.600
I want to surround myself with, who engage and inspire me, who are the people who I want to be my ideal
00:50:33.440
circle, my ideal network of friends and confidants and people who I can just pick up the phone and
00:50:39.240
talk to a couple of years from now. Who are those people? Define who those people are and then start
00:50:45.260
taking steps over the course of the next few months to start to build those relationships. If it's
00:50:51.780
someone that you know already, then just be sure to remain in touch with them every once in a while,
00:50:56.920
get to get together with them for lunch or a drink or coffee or go for a walk or go for a hike.
00:51:03.400
Or play a pickup basketball game together or whatever, do whatever it takes to in order to deepen
00:51:08.120
that relationship. Um, I think that's the best thing that you can do to be intentional about building
00:51:14.160
the network that you'd like to have in the future. Awesome. Well, John Corcoran, thank you so much for
00:51:18.060
your time. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Brett. Our guest today was John Corcoran. He is the owner of
00:51:23.320
smartbusinessrevolution.com. Uh, go check it out. It's a great blog with lots of great, useful
00:51:28.720
information about how to be an effective networker. He also has a great podcast where he talks about
00:51:34.220
how to be a networker, has guests who are experts in that field. Uh, if you go there, sign up for his
00:51:39.360
free email newsletter, you'll get a free ebook called double your income by building relationships
00:51:43.700
with influencers, uh, with just jam packed with information on how to connect with VIPs and
00:51:49.480
influencers who can help you progress in your career. So great ebook, smartbusinessrevolution.com.
00:51:54.920
Go check it out. Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For
00:52:01.020
more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com.
00:52:06.440
And if you enjoy the podcast, you're getting something out of it. I'd really appreciate it.
00:52:10.420
If you would go to iTunes, Stitcher, whatever it is used to listen to the podcast, give us a rating.
00:52:15.700
I don't care what it is. It's just the more ratings, the better. And I'll get the word out about the
00:52:20.260
show. And also just to let you know, we have started transcribing our podcasts. So if you
00:52:25.700
want to go back and you're more of a reader, you can go read through all of our past episodes. Just
00:52:31.400
go to artofmanliness.com slash category slash podcast. Um, you'll have the archives of all of
00:52:37.460
our podcasts and you'll be able to access the transcripts of all those shows. So that's
00:52:41.880
something else to check out until next time. This is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.