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Mining Your Personal Network
So - you’ve stopped reading get-rich-quick course content, turned off the Instagram feed, and resolved never to fall for a fad again.
You’ve woken up - and now it is time to get to the real business of being an entrepreneur.
NO MORE COURSES G!
But - the first advice you hear out of @onechrishanson is what? To mine your network?
But I’m just a young lad - you say. I don’t have a network of business owners and entrepreneurs. I’m not from a great background - I don’t know the people I need to know…
STOP.
You aren’t looking closely enough. You’re giving up too soon!
Where To Look
I created a simple formula/heuristic for mining your network. It works for 17 year old kids, and it also works for a guy like me whose last business “blew up” and has to pick up the pieces from ZERO.
It goes a little bit like this
Identify your family, friends (people whom you talk to once a week - I’m not talking about your ex-girlfriend from high school!)
Identify the places you exist. These can be online spaces like subreddits, or physical spaces like the gym.
Draw lines outward from these bubbles and lay out at least 30-50 people whom you know and interact with. Interaction is as simple as hello/goodbye, you do not even necessarily need to know their name.
For practice purposes, also add who THEY MIGHT KNOW - you can use the same formula, writing out who this person’s friends might be, where they make out. For example - your parents and brother may work for a company, and interact with people in an office who have a business. Your gym partner - may work for a supplement company.
Why Your FIRST CLIENT Must Be Connected To You In Some Way
Of course, if you are a cold email phenom or cold approach phenom like me - you don’t need a network. You can just go out on the street and walk up to any person.
But I’m going to assume most of you aren’t crazy enough, don’t have the patience, or don’t have the good looks to get it done.
Me Circa 2008
Ideally, the person who is your first client should be AS CLOSE to your “inner circle” as possible, without being a random brokie.
The reality is - you are probably going to F this one up - and you are going to need someone you SEE or talk to already regularly, because
a. you already have rapport with them (easier to sell)
b. they will continue to see you/talk to you, and give you opportunities to improve on your milk-toast crappy product
BUT - this person must be BETTER than you in some meaningful way. They have a business, they are farther along in content, more money saved - you need to identify people from whom you can help - and you can learn.
Ranked Choice
Once you have 50-100 names/icons, you should write them on a single piece of paper.
Next to their name - you are going to write TWO numbers, out of 10 each. I like 10s. The first 10, is how much they like you. and the second 10 is well..simply put, how much money/resources they have access to.
Then you are going to CROSS OUT anyone who is OVER 15 (too valuable to waste on your first client) and anyone who is under 10 (not valuable enough) - again, these numbers are relative.
So- people may not like you as much as they like me - they aren’t in love. But the person who likes you the most out of the people you know - is a 10. The person the “most well off” out of the people you know is a 10. and so on and so forth.
Pitching
I’m not PBD. I’m not suggesting you go and sell life insurance to your grandma or your wife’s family.
What I am saying is for the people that “made the cut” from the previous step. You sit them down. You say
I want to be an entrepreneur. I am looking for people who need their problems solved. I am willing to work for free. I see you have (X y z) and I was wondering if (i could save time, make you more money)
Any chance you are willing to do an engagement and write me a good case study?
This could be anything - literally, it could be yard work. But this SERVICE - is the basis of your first business - which you can ultimately turn into an agency, or scale to B2C.
Join our SKOOL - we will be assigning this exercise to our discord members!
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Work and Talk With Our Members (In Similar STAGE to You)