0:00:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: Ben, welcome back. Another episode of Friends in Business podcast.
0:00:47 Ben Wright: We made it number 3. 75% of the way to a top performing podcast.
0:00:51 Jemimah Ashleigh: Can you believe that? That’s crazy, right?
0:00:53 Ben Wright: No full podcasts.
0:00:54 Jemimah Ashleigh: Do you think we’ll have. I think we had 19 downloads already once we’ve released this one. Like since we started this episode being uploaded, hopefully 19 people have grabbed that, which would make us equal with almost where every other podcast ends up.
0:01:09 Ben Wright: Yeah, well, the bar’s low. We are definitely, definitely here to raise it. But I think more importantly, we’re speaking about this last episode is what does friends in business mean? I think we decided we were going to spend a little bit more time in that at the start of each episode to say, hey, we’re actually here to help people from our broad backgrounds. And I think that’s the reason that we’re going to get past episode number four.
0:01:29 Ben Wright: Hopefully that’s the reason we’re going to drive to episode number 1000, is we generally actually want to help people do better in their.
0:01:35 Jemimah Ashleigh: And we have a lot to talk about. The one thing was coming up with topics of like, each week we’re like, what are we going to talk about this week? The big thing has been where to start. Like, there’s so much we could help people with and I think we’re genuinely coming from that place, which is really nice.
0:01:47 Ben Wright: Well, last week was social media. I think we hit a big run really early. I liked your thoughts there. And you don’t always agree to on what people say, but you take your lens to it really, and apply. No, I did like what I liked half of what you said. I actually liked all of what you said. And for me, I’ve actually focused a little bit more around those four areas you spoke around, around being an expert, around having personal posts, around having those sharing what you’re learning and exciting. In fact, I didn’t quite get them right, but for me, yeah, I’ve enjoyed that. I’ve made that change to my social media.
0:02:19 Jemimah Ashleigh: You know, we did spend a bit of time on your social media afterwards. And we were having a bit of a plane to some stories. So that was for those who saw that. Yeah, it was amazing. Today, we’re talking about networking.
0:02:28 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:02:28 Jemimah Ashleigh: Networking is one of. It’s like the most loved thing that you do in business or the most hated. And it really doesn’t fall anywhere in between. Did you know, as an example here, more people are scared of, like, death than they are of public speaking. And that can go for, like, those 20 seconds or 42 second elevations.
0:02:49 Ben Wright: More people are scared of death than public speaking. You mean the other way around? More people are scared of public speaking.
0:02:53 Jemimah Ashleigh: That’s 100% what I mean, 100% what I mean. You knew where I was going with this. Yeah. Is the numbers guy. I just am here for the comments.
0:03:00 Ben Wright: We want the facts to be right.
0:03:01 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. Of course my apologies.
0:03:01 Ben Wright: If people are scared of public speaking than death, that just is completely illogical in my mind.
0:03:06 Jemimah Ashleigh: Doing a 40 second pitch is actually more terrifying than getting up and dying. That, to me, sounds okay.
0:03:16 Ben Wright: So morbid.
0:03:18 Jemimah Ashleigh: It’s a choice. It’s not one I would necessarily make, but it’s really interesting because networking, I think, where a lot of people get really stuck with, like, what am I going to say? And they’re going to ask me questions and. Yeah, yeah.
0:03:27 Ben Wright: Well, that’s today’s topic. Tell me, before I get into it, what does networking mean to you?
0:03:32 Jemimah Ashleigh: Networking is, honestly, my net worth has been built by networking.
0:03:38 Ben Wright: Yeah. Yeah. Great saying.
0:03:39 Jemimah Ashleigh: I have, for sure. I have walked into so many rooms. I’m so grateful that I’ve had that opportunity. But I’ve worked for networking groups. I have been part of pretty much every one of the big ones that you can think of. It is how I built my business. And for me, networking comes down to three things. One, going to a place where you’re meeting new people, not necessarily people that you know before, two, places that you’re doing business. And three is that you are there to build relationships. And I think that’s the big part for me.
0:04:08 Jemimah Ashleigh: Have you ever had the experience when someone’s like, hi, do you want to buy a house? And they’re like, fastest car in the west. Do you want to buy a house right now? And you’re like, no, Susan, I don’t want to buy a house from you. Do you want to buy a candle, like the next person? That’s what networking has often felt like to me. Yeah.
0:04:22 Ben Wright: Like, you are in a room and you are speaking dating, but with businesses. So. But I think the piece you said there, around the third bit, around building relationships. For me, that’s the really impactful part around networking. And we’re going to spend a bit of time today talking about bringing some structure to how you network. Because whilst a lot of people do fear public speaking, as you say, networking doesn’t need to be one that we’re fearful of because there are so many ways that we can network that don’t need to include public speaking for sure.
0:04:51 Ben Wright: But also there are a lot of things we can do that prepare us better to network. And whilst we can talk about being thrown into the unknown as something that throws fear for people or builds fear for people, when you’re prepared for anything in life, you are infinitely going to perform better. And where I love to focus my time around networking and what I teach is that you really get clear during your preparation, because if you get that right, you can walk into networking rooms and actually have an agenda all ready to go before you even start.
0:05:21 Jemimah Ashleigh: The preparation part’s really important. Cause I just don’t think I had probably ever thought about, especially early on in my business, I’ve gotta be prepared to go in here. Most people just think you walk into a room, you have a conversation with someone and maybe you might get a lead out of it. But are you telling me there might be more to it than that? Potentially.
0:05:39 Ben Wright: Well, let’s see. Cause I’ve got three things we’re gonna talk about today. Three things. And I like to say them to start, we’re gonna go through each one we have shown on, so you’re going to be able to catch them as well. But certainly you need to hear these pieces because the context is really important. But we’re going to be talking about how to think, what to write or say, and when to engage.
0:05:58 Jemimah Ashleigh: Great.
0:05:59 Ben Wright: They’re the three things we’re going to talk about today.
0:06:01 Jemimah Ashleigh: So here for it, let’s go.
0:06:03 Ben Wright: Buckle in. We’re ready to go. Okay, so how to think. This is all about how you get your brain wired and the preparation that comes with that. Ready to network. And the number one element of networking that I encourage people to get right is to pick your modality. Because we don’t all have to do every type of networking. We don’t all have to go to events or trade shows or cold calls, speed dating, microclimate type of environments where we know nobody. Right. We can network in lots of different ways. In fact, we can even network virtually now.
0:06:40 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, yeah. One of the things I have enjoyed out of COVID was that we now network. We can actually networking groups online and I actually really quite like that because you can look all business at the top and then party at the bottom.
0:06:49 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do have shoes on today,
Jemimah Ashleigh:
Which is a surprise
Ben Wright: But certainly it’s all about. So pick your modality that you want to network. For me, what works really, really well is trade shows, because I know that the people I want to meet are generally very senior in businesses, and at trade shows they’re also there to network.
0:07:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: So let’s go through a couple of these modalities. So one is traditional networking group. So that is one where maybe you have a breakfast or you have a lunch and you sit down, you go around the table and say, this is who I want to be. So let’s call that traditional networking. Next might be trade shows. And so that could be exactly what you’re talking about here, where you’re going to really specifically focused events where your ideal client is already spending time and money. How interesting. Third thing, maybe online, maybe an online networking group, which often are closely related, I think, to the traditional kind of breakfast meetings. What other types of networking are there?
0:07:40 Ben Wright: You’ve covered a hell of a lot of the ones in there. I think when we’re talking about the different types of networking events, broadly, that’s it. But within each, there’s very, very, very significant numbers of different ways you can do it.
0:07:52 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:07:52 Ben Wright: So when we’re talking about going to trade shows, there are trade shows that are industry related to what you do. And they might be, if you are an electrician, they are trade shows that are all for the electrical industry.
0:08:04 Jemimah Ashleigh: I have a client that goes to all the bunnings ones.
0:08:07 Ben Wright: Great.
0:08:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: And he’s like, all he does is work with tradies. I was like, of course, go where the tradies are. That makes sense.
0:08:15 Ben Wright: So if you’re an electrician, great. You can go to your electrical trade shows, but you might also go to where some of your customers hang out. So it might be facility management trade shows, it might be trade shows where procurement managers go to. If you’re in the commercial space, it might be home shows, right? All different types. If you’re looking at industry groups, fantastic covered there. If you’re looking at peer to peer networking, you can have small types of networking, you can have big net types of network, you can have face to face, you can have industry types of groups. Right? There’s lots and lots of different types. But rather than focus on that today, what I actually want to focus on is how you become a great networker once you’ve got the how to think. Right. So for me, I always start with great networkers make lots of introductions.
So it’s not about how many introductions you are given, but it’s how you are at introducing people yourself first. Because once you get that right and you actually know how to introduce someone else, those people start to want to introduce you.
0:09:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: So we might be talking about the law of reciprocity a little bit here.
0:09:13 Ben Wright: The law of reciprocity.
0:09:14 Jemimah Ashleigh: Interesting.
0:09:14 Ben Wright: Absolutely right.
0:09:15 Jemimah Ashleigh: Love it.
0:09:15 Ben Wright: Now, to get that right, to be an effective networker, we actually need to know what we’re going to say and how we’re going to introduce someone to someone else. So when we talk about how to think, it’s about picking your modality, but it’s also about being really clear around how you introduce other people.
0:09:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:09:31 Ben Wright: And I recommend you just have a template for that that says, hi, Bob, I want to introduce you to Jemimah. Bob, meet Jemima. Jemima, meet Bob. I’m introducing you to because Jemima’s great at. Bob’s great. Athenae.
0:09:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah
0:09:46 Ben Wright: Please get in touch with me.
0:09:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: There’s a bit of synergy here. I thought you guys might. Do you think you have to draw the. I don’t answer this. Do you think you have to draw the bow? Do you think you have to go. Well, Bob and Jemimah, I recommend you get on a phone call, and Jemimah, I want you to specifically explain that you do this, this and this and Bob. Or are you treating us like we’re adults and maybe we’ll figure it out by ourselves?
0:10:03 Ben Wright: Yeah. I generally tend to run along the lines of let them figure out a couple of things. One is it makes it really easy to repeat at my end. So all the people that I’m working with, you get to have a format that you’re regularly repeating, so it’s easy for you. The second reason is that you never actually know what they’re going to work through between them. And if you channel the conversation into a certain area, you take away that beautiful element of just exploring white space. Now, when someone says, there’s a red car, you look at red cars. For the rest of the day, you get all the other types of cars. So the third part of that, how to think, is you picked your modality and you’ve got really good at introducing others, is also about making sure you follow through whenever you introduce people, because what that also does is it shows you’re very good at whatever you do. It doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer or an accountant or a service provider or you’re selling.
0:10:51 Jemimah Ashleigh: You’re actually going to do what you say you’re going to do.
0:10:52 Ben Wright: That’s right. And all of a sudden you’re building your own brand.
0:10:56 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:10:57 Ben Wright: People who refer well get referred. So when we’re talking about networking with intention, the number one thing that I talk about is getting clear on how to think.
0:11:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:11:07 Ben Wright: So where you’re going to play and how you’re going to introduce people before you even worry about introductions in return.
0:11:13 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, I love that. I don’t like that going in there intentionally and going, I’m not here necessarily to close business because ultimately that’s going to happen. That’s just how it goes. If you’re a good person, you go to what you do and you aren’t coming from a place of, I’m going to sell to everyone in that room. Do you want to buy a house? Those people. Sharon, calm down. You actually have the ability where you are head and shoulders already above.
0:11:35 Ben Wright: Yep. Agreed. Agreed. So you’ve built trust, how to think. You’ve become someone that people want to make referrals to.
0:11:41 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:11:41 Ben Wright: Then we actually need to start to think about what are we going to write or what are we going to say?
0:11:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:11:45 Ben Wright: So that is making sure that when we are introduced, we’re ready to go. Or more importantly, when we meet people, we have something that we can repeat without having to think about it. We go into autopilot. When I meet Jemimah, I have a two sentence pitch or a two sentence piece of communication that I can say to anyone at any time without needing to think about it and panic.
0:12:09 Jemimah Ashleigh: Elevator pitch.
0:12:10 Ben Wright: Your elevator pitch? Yeah. I don’t call it the elevator pitch because so much of networking now is done outside of.
0:12:17 Jemimah Ashleigh: I live on the 35th floor of an apartment building. So when I go out, like up in my apartment, it’s at least three to four minutes in elevator like, you don’t want me talking that long. So you’ve always referred to as like a couple of centers pitches to me.
0:12:29 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. Why don’t we go through a couple of sentence pitches?
0:12:32 Jemimah Ashleigh: Please, let’s.
0:12:33 Ben Wright: Excellent. So for me, it’s all about saying who I am, what I do, and the value up provide. That is the most important part. Right. It’s not the features and benefits, but it’s that value and outcomes you can provide. So I might share one of mine that I might use.
So for a segment of my market, I’m out at a trade show. Let’s start with small business owners. So I’m meeting Claire and we’re talking about Claire, and we have some small talks that starts to say, what are you doing? Why you’re here? You know, how is life for you? But when we get to that point where it’s really natural to say what you do, we always run with who you are first. I’m Ben. What you do. So I’m a sales strategist. My name’s Ben Wright. I’m a sales strategist who works with small businesses.
0:13:18 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yep.
0:13:18 Ben Wright: It’s clear on what I do. After working with me, small business owners go home and spend less time at night worrying about where their next sale will come from. So straight away I know that if I’m dealing with a small business owner who’s trying to grow their business or has that concern around where’s the next sale going to come from? And it’s classic small business. Right. We are living by the seat of our pants a little bit, but also we have significant ebbs and flows straight away. I’m pre qualifying that anyone who is at home at night, instead of being present with their kids, with their family, with their partner, with whoever special people are in their life, instead of being present at dinner, they’re worried about where their sales are going to come from the next day.
0:13:58 Jemimah Ashleigh: Really hitting a pain point straight away. Or just got like that thing that you’re thinking. Cause one of the things I often say to my clients is, well, it’s great that that’s what you do, but what does it sound like?
0:14:07 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:14:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: What is it like? Because someone might just necessarily go, ah, I need an introduction to a sales strategist. Be really helpful. Yeah, it sounds like something else.
0:14:16 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:14:16 Jemimah Ashleigh: And it often can sound like, I just. I’m not getting any sales coming through the door. I don’t want to do with it. And it’s keeping me up at night. And those are the conversations I think business owners have versus.
0:14:25 Ben Wright: Yeah. So getting that pitch right so you can deliver it on autopilot is the key. Second part of this is to be really easy to refer. So that means you’ve got to be easy to find.
0:14:34 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. Visible, if you will.
0:14:37 Ben Wright: Visible. It’s funny we say that, but when we’re easy to find, when someone introduces us and people can find information on us from easy to find sources, we’re easy to contact. Right. We’re easy to actually get on the phone.
0:14:48 Jemimah Ashleigh: Having a phone number, having an email, a contact booking form, social media. You can have a look at a website that’s up and operational.
0:14:55 Ben Wright: Yep, exactly. Right. So we get that nailed so we get our pitch nailed. We become easy to refer. And the last piece of that is we actually, we’re constantly looking at how we create value. That’s all about what to write and what to say. Because when you’re thinking about others, much like how to think where am I going to network and how am I going to help people when it comes to how I’m going to be introduced, when we’re really clear on the value we provide, we’re easy to find. And we have that in a pitch that we can say time and time again, networking becomes a lot easier.
0:15:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: It does, isn’t it?
0:15:24 Ben Wright: Yeah. We’re not worried about what we’re gonna say.
0:15:26 Jemimah Ashleigh: What am I gonna say? I’m gonna walk in your room, someone’s gonna ask me a question. Yeah. Have you had a conversation before? Hi. How are you? Good, how are you?
0:15:31 Ben Wright: We all know how to talk about our sporting team or our kids or our lives, the things we’re passionate about.
0:15:37 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:15:38 Ben Wright: And because we talk about it so much, we’re prepared. Same here. We gotta be prepared to network with intent.
0:15:42 Jemimah Ashleigh: Bit of practice. Bit of practice.
0:15:44 Ben Wright: So number one was all about how to think.
0:15:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:15:46 Ben Wright: Number two was what to write or what to say. Number three is all about when to engage. So we’ve met someone, met Claire. We had a great conversation.
0:15:57 Jemimah Ashleigh: Hi. How you doing? Love stuff.
0:15:59 Ben Wright: Nice to see you again, Claire. For me, the first part here is all about persistence beats resistance. So that’s about doing the basics really well. As soon as you finish that networking event, logging the customers into your CRM, once they’re in there, they’re visible, they’re visible to you, and you’re going to do something about it.
0:16:16 Jemimah Ashleigh: So did you know, just a little fun fact for a second. If you meet Claire at a sales pitch, right. Or at an event. So if you think about the amount of people who meet an event I can meet, and this isn’t a joke, you know how I feel about networking. I would meet up to 100 people in a week pretty comfortably if I don’t add them to my CRM. Do you know how long it takes for me to forget that they exist?
0:16:37 Ben Wright: Probably less time than it is.
0:16:38 Jemimah Ashleigh: It’s 42 days for me to even forget that person exists on the planet. Like, just not even like an inkling or a faint bell of, I know someone that does that. I’m talking. If there is no further interaction with me and Claire at any point. 42 days of psychology tells us, and it’s not personal. Have you ever met someone? Be honest about this, where you’ve gone, hey, it’s nice to meet you. And they go, we’ve met multiple times.
0:17:01 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. If my wife was listening right now, she’d be going, uh huh, uh huh.
0:17:05 Jemimah Ashleigh: I do the classic one, and I’ve done this too. I’m like, oh, have you met Ben? Just trying to put them in front of you because I’ll forget their name. It’s not personal. It’s because the conversation we’ve often had with them is a little bit memorable. We’ve said something of interest, maybe peaked, maybe like stood in front of the room, potentially presented, which is another one that I get in trouble for, because people feel like they know you when you’ve presented to them and you meet them for 3 seconds.
0:17:28 Jemimah Ashleigh: If you don’t have that follow up process in place 42 days before, people forget you exist on the planet. And that’s how you end up looking like a goose, saying things like, hey.
0:17:39 Ben Wright: Hi, nice to meet you.
0:17:40 Jemimah Ashleigh: Nice to meet you. And they’re like, we’ve methadore multiple times.
0:17:43 Ben Wright: Well, that’s all about persistence, being resistant. So it’s about making sure you’ve got a structure post networking, and you follow up straight away. Connect with these people through social media. Call them if that’s what you’ve agreed to do, but make sure they remember who you are. And those 42 days don’t lapse without you having had meaningful connections. I will go to networking events, and for every introduction I give, I get a 30% return rate around following it up. So for every person, every ten people that I introduce, if I go and introduce ten claires tomorrow, only three of them will follow up. And I’m giving them a referral, a good lead.
0:18:16 Jemimah Ashleigh: And this happens to me too, and it drives me crazy because I’m giving you the best of the best.
0:18:20 Ben Wright: Yeah. So we’ve got to get that process right behind the scenes where we’re making sure that we are following through next part around that is really being clear on what your goals are before you meet. And I talk a lot about goals in everything we do from a strategic point of view. But really importantly here is if you can think about goals that benefit both parties, your conversation becomes a lot smoother because you’re prepared around expanding the pie for both of you rather than just going in around what you need.
0:18:48 Ben Wright: We all know that mutual relationships, they last longer, they are far more prosperous, and they are easier to hold because you’re both getting benefits.
0:18:57 Jemimah Ashleigh: So you and I, let’s use you and I meet so fun fact. We should have probably told us at the start of the podcast, but you and I meet at a networking event. We met at a networking event. I was speaking at that event and you happened to be visiting that specific location in Melbourne and you mentioned you’re from Queensland. And someone said, oh, there’s a guy from Queensland here. And I was like, cool, I’ll go and have a chat. We sat down, had a conversation and I think we probably only spoke five or ten minutes maybe at that meeting, but we both did really good follow up because it was like, oh, it’s really nice to meet you too because we’ve both nailed this pretty well to grow our businesses.
0:19:30 Jemimah Ashleigh: And the conversation was, hey, I’m in town for an extra couple of days. You seemed interesting. Looks like you’re doing cool stuff. Would love to have a chat. And we actually immediately both went into that conversation. I think from, particularly from my perspective, I’d like to hear yours extremely open minded because I knew who you were and I had researched you and I went, had a look and like, is this person who Ben appears to be? Is that who he is?
0:19:52 Jemimah Ashleigh: People had had really good things to say about you. There was really good referrals there. There was good conversation that was had and then we sit down and have a conversation where at that point I think we’re both just exploring if we could work together. And it was either. Is he a good referral partner? First one, absolutely. Tick to this is someone that we share an ideal client with. Yep. Tick three. We actually got along really well despite being wildly different. We were like, oh, this is actually a fun, dynamic.
0:20:17 Jemimah Ashleigh: Tick and then it was like, well, then you can start to explore additional business opportunities.
0:20:21 Ben Wright: Tick and I think you’ve hit the pace around when to engage there around having a system, looking at goals for both parties. But the third piece, the really important piece is to show you care, and that’s about doing your research. So before we had that meeting, I knew your background, so I knew where we could add value together. But also by having spent the time to understand you, you engaged better with me because I came in knowing a bit about you rather than just peddling what was.
0:20:47 Jemimah Ashleigh: Oh, so you used to run a podcast? Yes, I did. Interesting. I’ve been thinking about that and here we are with 75% of podcasts ready to go.
0:20:56 Ben Wright: Absolutely.
0:20:58 Jemimah Ashleigh: Hopefully 19 downloads of this episode.
0:21:00 Ben Wright: So there’s three things really important because I want to round this off today and then we’re going to leave everyone with something really important for today. The first one is around how to think. So that’s getting your modality right and becoming someone that can introduce people really well, see it through and make great connections. You become a known quantity, you become trusted, and people want to do things for you in reverse. So that’s all about how to think.
0:21:21 Ben Wright: Second piece around what to write, say that’s around having an elevator pitch, as we say, ready to go that you don’t allow.
0:21:30 Jemimah Ashleigh: Ben doesn’t say that everyone else will.
0:21:32 Ben Wright: We definitely don’t have elevators here, but it’s also been really easy to refer, so you’re easy to find, you follow through, and you know how to create value, because when you can create that, you’re going to win. Third, and as important as any other, isn’t knowing when to engage. So that’s having systems there. You know, once you meet people, you take the time to put them in your CRM.
0:21:52 Jemimah Ashleigh: Hi, nice to meet you. Thanks so much. And this is all automated because if we’re meeting 100 people, I don’t have time for that.
0:21:57 Ben Wright: That’s right. We follow up strategically or systematically. We know that we can create value for both sides. We’re expanding the pie and really, really importantly is we’re doing preparation before we meet people. We don’t just rock up to a meeting post networking, ready to fly by the seat of our pants. Right. We’re ready to know exactly what we need to achieve, get that right. And what we have is a structure ready to network.
0:22:19 Ben Wright: We are going to talk lead generation. It’s about two or three episodes time. We’re going to have a really good look about how you then go and generate leads. But I think really importantly is we’ve got to know how to prospect first.
0:22:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: And figuring out where those people are.
0:22:33 Ben Wright: That’s right. Yeah. So more to come on that. But that, for me, is the key elements of networking that we need to get right before we get started.
0:22:40 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, 100%. When you had talked to me about, I’ve got this idea for modality and this is what we’re doing, and there’s a pie involved. There was just this moment where I went, I think Ben knows what he’s talking about with networking. We’re both met at networking, but I will say this process for me, and it’s so interesting because one of the key things that we said that we’re going to talk about is systems. And this is just a very unsexy system that makes it so much easier to get all of this done.
0:23:04 Jemimah Ashleigh: Like, this is the stuff that this is the extra zeros on paychex, this is the extra zeros on the bank account. If you’re constantly doing good referrals, meeting people, going in with no agenda, but having an understanding of who they are, figuring out who they are in advance, what they can do to help you, what you can do to help them, you suddenly have. Every single person can always almost be allocated as a referral partner or a potential customer, or a lead generator or a mate.
0:23:30 Ben Wright: Sometimes we do make friends in business.
0:23:32 Jemimah Ashleigh: Do we?
0:23:33 Ben Wright: Right.
0:23:34 Jemimah Ashleigh: That was like. I really just wanted that to be the end. We need to do the wrap up. That was the greatest ending. We’ve done it.
0:23:41 Ben Wright: Yes.
0:23:41 Jemimah Ashleigh: Before we go.
0:23:42 Ben Wright: Well, I’m not going to let us go because one thing that we have promised is at the end of every podcast, one thing. The most important thing from, yeah, why don’t I kick off today, please. So for me, the single most important piece is that we need to know how to introduce ourselves.
0:23:54 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:23:55 Ben Wright: Just spend the time to be able to comfortably say who you are and what you do, which includes who you help and the value of the outcomes you provide. Because when you get that, you are so much more comfortable. In any event, that’s me.
0:24:09 Jemimah Ashleigh: My number one takeaway is the right modality, like figuring out what rooms you need to be in. I think, and I’m going to talk about this from a perspective of being a female entrepreneur here. One of the hardest rooms that I’ve ever walked into are particularly women’s networking groups. I find them very difficult to be in the, from a networking perspective because it often is what I have found a little bit more of our environment where we’re celebrating being together and it’s just a circle celebration of that versus the business stuff.
0:24:38 Jemimah Ashleigh: So from my perspective, like the modality of like, what rooms are you in, what choices and like, who is in that room is the number one thing if you’re looking at growing your business, because I have been derailed many times by going to the wrong rooms, many of you will have been to the wrong rooms as well. Also really important of like what quality of that person and what are you looking to do out of that? Setting your attention is really important there, too.
0:25:00 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. I love it. I love it that today is almost a silver board episode where if you can take the right chunks, you really can make a difference. I can’t wait for the next episode. We’re not far away. Until then, let’s remember that we can make friends in business. We’re your friends, and when we can help you, we’d love to hear from you.
0:25:17 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’ve been trying and you know I’ve been tested.
0:25:24 B: Thank you for listening to the Friends in Business podcast. This episode was brought to you by your hosts, Ben Wright and Jemima Ashley, recorded in beautiful Noosa, Queensland. For more insights and resources, visit [email protected] and jemimaemimashley.com. if todays podcast has helped you, wed be so grateful. If you could leave a review and share with someone you know, this will help more people in the world benefit from the hard work we are putting in to bring you the
