008: Open Any Door

Invest your fucks selectively, but (when the time is right) do so abundantly.

I was planning to talk about how ‘engagement is content’ and share how producing less, focusing more, and engaging deeply creates a fantastic platform for profitable relationships. I was going to give tangible examples like how a playful conversation about my terrible spelling / grammar built a relationship and landed a client.

That was the plan, right until Christian D. took dynamite to the tracks and derailed the train with a more impactful example that you can leverage… right fucking now.

“When I was done reading this (‘Priceless Real Estate‘) email, I got a strange feeling that I somehow recognized parts of it.”

“You have used those things on me during our conversations and I never noticed it until you presented it like this :D”

Why is this significant? For one very powerful reason, I told Christian he was being manipulated… and he was happy about it. Were my responses strategic? Absolutely. Did that make my enthusiasm any less genuine? Absolutely not.

Marketing is a bit like doing magic. You can trick someone, but you have to do it in a way that when they find out — they’re inclined to say “well done” not “you must die.”

Christian D. continued to share how he had leveraged those same methods:

66.66% response rate within 24 hours?! Thems conversion rates of a God!!

Instead of sending endless outreach emails that attempt to not be a template, he identified the three people he wanted to connect with most and spoke directly to them with sincere gratitude and appreciation for their work — it begged a response.

Don’t build leads, build relationships.

Now imagine if you sent three emails like this every day for a month… or a year?! Two emails, finding moments of appreciation for strangers you encounter of the web and speaking your mind as expressively as possible — twenty minutes a day max.

That was my aim when I left a business partnership in April and I’ve stopped meeting new people… all the cool ones just seem to gravitate (or be introduced) organically.

It turned me into a magnet for all the people I (in many cases) didn’t even know I wanted to meet… and it led to a lot of profitable opportunities in the process.

For example, I fostered a dog for a month last year. I was trying to find her a home and posted on a Venice Facebook group with about 2K members. One commenter was notably cute and as I stalked her profile (don’t judge) I saw she had written for nearly every publisher in the social / tech space. I complimented her ability to create such leverage in the press while also being the partner in a big marketing agency.

That led to a coffee, an invite to a mastermind, and several new friendships. Months later while at lunch with her I recommended a book and she excitedly told me she knew the author. She introduced us, we had coffee, he invited me to a different mastermind (where I met the founder of Atari, among others) and later introduced me to an entrepreneur I “had to meet”. he later became the most pleasant client I’ve had in a decade and it’s been an extremely profitable relationship for us both.

Unexpressed gratitude is like shielding your garden from both sun and rain.

Thank you Christian D. for sharing your gratitude so expressively and inspiring such a vivid example for others in the process. Keep building relationships!

P.S. In regards to managing relationships (your brain can only hold so much information) I spent two years looking for the perfect tool and, about two months ago, fell in love with Full Contact. It syncs all your address books and pulls info from the web, but the most important feature for me is tagging. I can tag people as I see them in my mind like ‘ux designer’ and ‘mobile developer’ or ‘raver’ (for when I need a rave buddy and can’t remember who’s down to boogie). It’s magnificently useful.