“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”
– Jeff Bezos
The only thing better than the telephone is live events. If you don’t have the money to join a mastermind, at least attend live events. Go to internet marketing events. At the beginning of my career, I went to every single event to meet as many people as I could. It’s not comfortable. I don’t like talking to strangers. I did it because I knew how valuable it was.
You connect with a person and buy them a drink. They know ten other people that come into the bar that night. Now you have ten connections. It’s obvious yet so simple: “Can I buy you a drink?”
It’s really important not to get caught up in a scarcity mindset, especially at the bar. I always say: “Hey let’s all have a drink” and happily buy a round. The more people you hang out with, you realize how common it is for people to be cheap. You stand at the bar chatting with someone and they buy their own drink without offering you one—or anyone else. And logically you suppose, well, so what? They’re just talking to you. They don’t need to buy you a drink. That’s a completely valid point—if you’re not in the business of making relationships and connecting with people.
Because if you are, that is flat-out bad business.
Buying someone a drink gives you so much weight, particularly at networking events. If you’re talking to two people and ten people are standing there, offer to buy the whole group a drink. What does that cost? A hundred bucks? Now the whole group falls over to connect with you. The currency you build from buying a group of people drinks is insane.
I’m not saying that you have to splash money around. If you can afford it, great. Anyone that knows anything about JVs will say the same thing. Buy people drinks in the bar. If you have the opportunity to pay, pay. A single JV partner pays you back ten times over—or more.
Never be the cheap person in the group, no matter what. Suppose you’re in a group of people at an event and you all decide to go to dinner. Normally, the bill is split evenly among the number of people there. Then you get that one person who claims they only had a salad and didn’t have a drink. They don’t want to pay an equal share. In a normal business setting, that may even seem fair. There’s nothing wrong with paying your own way–unless you are there for the purpose of networking. You cannot afford to appear cheap. People will shy away from you. It is such a scarce way to look at life.
At the end of the day, pay attention to this lesson. Buy drinks and don’t be cheap. Saving a few bucks at the bar or at dinner could end up costing you a fortune.
