180: Zvi Band | Success Is in Your Sphere

Transcript for Zvi Band - Success Is in Your Sphere (Episode 180)

Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer Jason DeFillippo. You already know that relationships are your most important asset, but what are you actually doing about it? It's possible to implement a specific strategy around your relationships that can make them deeper, more productive, and ultimately more beneficial. Zvi Band is the founder and CEO of Contactually, it's a relationship-centric CRM that I've been using for years to maintain hundreds, possibly thousands of important relationships which helped us rebuild the business from zero, starting last year in 2018. I know you've heard me talk about the software before. It's called Contactually. I've used this for a long time to great effect and Zvi is the creator of this and I thought I'd have him on the show because he's basically this introverted software developer. He was the recipient of amazing experiences and opportunities purely by having the right relationships and reputation. And today we'll cover some ground and dive into how and why relationships decay, especially in this day and age. We'll also discuss why and how to prioritize your relationships and not merely organize them. And I also want to pop the bubble and clarify how we can easily add value to our network and relationships. I know people say, "Add value. Got to have added value all the time." And people don't really explain what that means. I also cover a ton of that at a granular level in our Six-Minute Networking course as well. And speaking of Six-Minute Networking, you can go and grab that. It is free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. And we're taking you through a lot of drills and exercises to help you expand your network, make sure you're engaging in just six minutes per day. Again, that's free at jordanharbinger.com/course. All right, here's Zvi Band.

[00:01:41] Zvi, I've talked about networking a lot and I use your product a lot Contactually, and so I was kind of thrilled when I heard that you are going to write a book. Normally, I wouldn't start with someone's story, especially if it's about networking. But you and I have kind of this shared background in a way where the network was what saved our asses. And so I think that's a good place to start with this. Because I think a lot of people go, "Oh yeah, I need to do more networking. I need to know how to do this. I need to know how to do this and that better." Having bounced back from the bottom because of the network, I think is a great way to start an episode to highlight the importance of this and then get into the tactics.

Zvi Band: [00:02:21] Yeah, absolutely. And you're right, I probably would have pictured myself to be the last person to build a company that was exclusively around relationship-building, let alone to write a book about the tactics and strategies behind it. When I first graduated from college, I remembered where I started my job. They gave me this advice of like, "Oh, you should go out and network with other employees." And I was like, "Yeah, that sounds like a terrible idea. I'm not going to do that." But as it turns out, I ended up building that amazing skill set. I didn't really call it networking. More just I was interested in other things beyond what my job offered. There was a growing startup scene here in DC. I didn't want to work for a big company forever as I kind of came to learn. So I wanted to learn more about startups. I didn't really know how to build a network, but I knew how to make friends. So I started showing up at these places where a lot of people that I wanted to work with were hanging out and started just doing what I did. Just walked into a room and just made a beeline to the first person that was standing alone and just made friends with them and repeated that over and over again. And building an amazing network that served me in amazing ways that especially at times when I really, really needed it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:40] Yeah, I liked the idea that networks are there to save your butt. The problem is a lot of people tried to create a network when their butt needs saving and that's not going to work. You know, we always say dig the well before you're thirsty because we jacked that fancy phrase from Harvey Mackay. And it sounds like your start was a little rocky. I mean I know you had a job you didn't like and then you had some illness in the family and it was just like a whole stress bomb and you were able to escape because of the relationships that you had built.

Zvi Band: [00:04:14] Yeah, absolutely. I mean this is back in 2007, 2008-ish. I was working for a job I didn't like. I moved to a startup that ended up being a really bad decision. Just not necessarily the best environment for me. Quit that in the middle of the night and said I have no idea what I'm going to do next. But I guess I'll just start kind of taking some random gigs here and there. Almost at the exact same day, my father had cancer for the past nine years. Turns out he needed to go to the hospital for surgery and would spend the next four months in and out of different hospitals and surgery and care centers over time. And this also happened to be -- I look back and the day I actually incorporated my company was the day that the federal reserve officially declared that we had been in a recession.

[00:05:09] So kind of when you pile that all together. Yeah, it seems like that was pretty much the absolute worst thing that could happen at any one point in time. But I did what I think anyone would do, which is just start firing off emails to anyone that I knew and phone calls and text messages saying, "Hey, you know, I'm on the market right now. I'm a free agent. Just if you have any work for me or have any leads of jobs, please let me know." And within the first couple of days, I got an email, first off saying, "Hey, my dad's construction company needs a new website." "Hey, like I am pitching on a project for Microsoft. You think you can help me out?" "Hey, my design firm is having trouble building out this website. Could you help out?" And so obviously start off with these really small gigs. But I was amazed that again, it wasn't my network back then as I considered it is just people I knew, end up really coming to my aid in amazing ways and kept on repeating over and over again for years to come.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:16] So let me dissect this a little bit because I think I don't want people to be like, "Great. So I don't like my job and I'm going to quit. And then I'll just email people and I'll find jobs." There's a lot that happened here that's not exactly, not exactly going to play out like that. So first of all, you quitting a job in the middle or the beginning, I should say, of a recession. Spur of the moment in kind of an impulsive way, not recommended. Right? Like you wouldn't do that again given the option. Correct?

Zvi Band: [00:06:44] You know, maybe, maybe not. Like I think I didn't have enough worldview to realize how bad the economy was and how that would factor into my jobs. I strongly believe that everyone should wake up in the morning and decide whether or not they want to go into work that day. And for me, I had too many days where I was like, I don't think I can get out of bed. And ended up being kind of enough of a dire situation that it was -- not rage quit but like, "Hey, put in two weeks’ notice, close my email and not check it for another couple of weeks while I let the dust settle." And it ended being a pretty rough experience. But yeah, I mean, I do strongly advise people now that you should always make sure you have your feelers open. Honestly, even for our employees, work totally fine with them, occasionally taking the call with a recruiter, maybe doing an interview or two, just to confirm that this is the right thing for them. Just keep building that network and making sure your options are open.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:48] You say everyone should decide in the morning whether or not they should go into work that day. And I don't mean to harp on the whole quitting the job thing, but what do you mean by that? Because what I'm trying to avoid is people being like, "You know, I've had a rough week, I don't want to keep doing this job." There's got to be a thought process that goes into this and I got to call this out and correct me if I'm wrong, but there's an element of luck that went into you finding other gigs right away that a lot of people might not have.

Zvi Band: [00:08:13] Yeah, I mean, answering that question first, I think there's definitely an aspect of luck absolutely, but one of the concepts that we very much believe in is that luck surface area, right? It's how do you increase the number of chances that you have to get lucky. And for me, that was just knowing a lot of people who happened to work in interesting companies and design firms and startups and things like that. So yeah, like I was definitely lucky too, for example, get connected to someone who the day before had just closed on around finding and needed a CTO to kind of fill in for them. You know that was a lucky moment, but there's a lot of work that went into that luck if that makes sense.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:56] It does, and we'll talk about what that work looks like and how people can do that. In fact, a sneak preview -- I do the Six-Minute Networking course that replaces my old Level One and you know all about those to me but --

Zvi Band: [00:09:08] Yup.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:08] Essentially one of the exercises in there, it's called layoff lifelines and it's making a list of the -- I don't know -- 10 or 15 people whose advice you would seek if you got laid off today or your business implodes and then reaching out to those people now while you don't need anything because there's something to be said for -- your luck surface area was you had a bunch of people in mind. You reached out to those people. They didn't say, "Who are you? Or, Hey, I haven't talked to you in 10 years. Why are you emailing me? You had by the grace of whatever actually been strong enough connection to those people that they replied and some of them had worked for you to do. Many people do not have this. They have not done any work on their network. They'd been heads down networking in your office or whatever, or working on the relationships at work or freelancing from home and don't have the ability, whatever excuse, you can insert here. People have not done any work to create that or those sets of relationships. And so yes, creating that luck surface area is kind of what networking is all about in the first place. Having all those relationships people go, "How did you get that opportunity where you went and you got flown in a jet or you ended up going to this weird country with this set of really cool people." That's luck surface area. That's, "Hey, Jordan, long shot here, but do you want to go to Bhutan and have meetings with all these cool people?" And the reason that they thought of me was because I texted the guy last week and was like, "Hey, you're on my mind or whatever," and we'll get into those tactics in a bit. That's increasing that surface area for luck. But I want to highlight this because I think a lot of people are going, "Great. I hate my job. I'm going to quit. And then what I'll do is I'll sit down and blast everybody who's in my Gmail contacts and I'll be fine." And that's kind of not true.

Zvi Band: [00:10:53] Yeah. Don't get me wrong. What I went through was a do-not-repeat-this-at-home. When we talked to our employees and we talked to other people, yeah, I do very much strongly believe that you have to make that decision that morning of whether you go into work or not. And the default answer should be yes. If for no other reason than like you went in yesterday, you want to make sure you have a career. It doesn't look good. It's just up and quit because you had a bad meeting the day before. But if you find yourself just day in, day out realizing that, "Hey, I don't have the passion and the fire that I'm not excited about what I do and this isn't really meeting my needs, whether the needs for my family, the needs for my career." I do think it's worth, you know, just that check to say, "Hey, is this the right thing, and is there something else out there?" And to your point, that's where you know, you should tap into the relationships you already have or start building those relationships. Maybe it is putting a two-year timeline to say, "Hey, sometime over the next two years I want to switch jobs or switch careers. Who are the people I can meet? Who are the relationships I can build? That works really well."

[00:12:06] I equate this a lot at Contactually we raised $12 million in venture capital and one of the key mantras is that investors invest in lines, not dots. So if I showed up at your door, Jordan and said, "Hey, they'll give me $100,000?" You'd be like, "Who are you? Who's your company? I have no idea why I should trust you or believe in you." But if I had gone to know you when we were a seed-stage company and shared with you what we're doing and got your advice and stayed in touch with you over time and you could see the line of the company start to slip upwards and really start to build momentum. By the time that point comes out where I'm making that ask, then it's then all right, you have that contacts. I think it's the same in relationships or careers as well, right? We're all on the line whether looking backwards at our past or looking forwards at our future trajectory. And it's a matter of being able to share that contacts with people that we know.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:06] Agree and I think I probably told the story enough on the show, but my network was the single number one with a bullet reason why I was able to leave another company in early 2018, just over a year ago and then come back with The Jordan Harbinger Show and end up with Most Downloaded New Shows of 2018 and being more profitable than the old company ever was. It's kind of a miracle honestly. And the miracle that's responsible for that is the fact that I had done all of that digging and increase that surface area, increase those relationships and everything that we're talking about here today and the Six-Minute Networking course, which by the way people can find and there's plenty of info on Contactually in that as well. Our Six-Minute Networking course, jordanharbinger.com/course where we teach a lot of this networking stuff in a course format.

[00:13:57] And I want to talk as well about the idea of having the right people behind you because it's not just knowing the right people externally and having that network. I think people don't think about their team as a network. They don't think about their staff, their employees, their families. Part of the rise, of course, was having people like Jason who's hopefully still with us listening and patting himself on the back. But you get that because you put these networking concepts into action with those that are close to you, not just random connections that are far away from you. And I think a lot of people think of networking as reaching out to random people that you don't know when really you're supposed to be doing this with everyone.

Zvi Band: [00:14:40] Yeah. And I think that's probably one of the bigger falsehoods around networking and that networking is all about generating new relationships and really the aspects around relationship marketing. And that's what we really focus on in the book is not how to work a room, not how to cold email people, but it's how do you maintain and increase the value of the relationships that you already have. So you're right with your employees, right? And the team around you, again they're human beings just like the business development target that you have or the hiring manager at a company you want to work for. They have needs too. And so, again, lifetime employment doesn't really happen anymore, right? We're not going to be in the same jobs for the rest of our lives. And so, therefore, the people that work for us aren't going to be there either. So you were very honest and we say, "Hey, let's be clear, you're probably going to work at this company for maybe three to five years, hopefully, a little bit more, hopefully not less than that." But that's a relationship for three to five years. We really hone in on that relationship and we think about, well, what does this person want out of it? What are their problems? What are they trying to achieve in the next year? And how can we help with that? So it goes beyond just kind of making sure they know what they're doing, but it's understanding their home life. It's understanding the challenge they face. I was meeting with an employee this morning and they were talking around how one of their big goals is they need to get out of debt in the next couple of years, with all their student debt. How can we help and help guide them in some way beyond just giving them a paycheck? Because that's the kind of stuff that creates loyalty for life.

Jason DeFillippo:  [00:16:28] You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Zvi Band. We'll be back right after this.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:33] This episode is sponsored in part by HostGator.

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Jason DeFillippo:  [00:18:36] Don't forget, we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways from Zvi Band. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to Jordan harbinger.com/subscribe. Now back to our show with Zvi Band.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:03] Let's talk a little bit about how and why relationships decay. Because we talk about Dunbar's number and things like that where we can only -- you know, the experts are like, "We can only know 150 people. We can only have 150 people in the tribe," or something like that. Our minds are not very good at maintaining large social networks, which is fine if you grew up in a small town in Montana in the '60s and '70s, you knew all the people around your age and you kind of knew who their parents were and that was good enough. You know, you are solid, good, you're going to work at the local whatever and you're good. Now with the Internet, we kind of have this problem that we're not evolved to handle.

Zvi Band: [00:19:43] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, let's face it, there's this common knowledge that we all know that we forget things, especially over time. And so I can encounter this in my own career, which is one of the reasons why I create a Contactually where computers can't really forget things. I would meet someone for coffee and then two weeks later, not only forget the details about them but even forget who I'm meeting with. Try and think back to what you had for breakfast two weeks ago, and most likely you're not going to know and you're going to be thinking, "Well, who else did I meet with that day?" So it's the same thing. I mean, human beings have always been faced with the issue of memory decay. It's even being more and more accelerated right now with the amount of information being thrown at us. And we're always being interrupted with new information and new people coming in. I have probably like many others or a couple of thousand inbound LinkedIn requests that I haven't responded to. We're all forced around "building" relationships and connections. But the problem is, is that's causing us to feel even weaker and weaker. One of the tests that we always tell your listeners to try this today is to open up LinkedIn and go through all of your connections and think of how many people there you actually know. And even worse yet think of how many people that you know well enough that if they reached out and asked you for 20 bucks, you'd give it to them.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:19] Yeah. That number is significantly smaller than the total number of contacts that I have for sure in LinkedIn or anywhere for that matter. So yeah, what you're illustrating is that we have a lot of really weak contacts that we couldn't -- even if you can't lend or borrow 20 bucks from somebody, how useful is that connection, right?

Zvi Band: [00:21:42] Yeah, absolutely. Again, you, we've, we see all the stats, all the same statistics around loneliness in the world, especially with social media where everyone's broadcasting their best selves and no one's really kind of going deep. I think there's a report by Cigna that came out last year of a study of 20,000 Americans, nearly half said they're lonely. That's kind of scary in a world where we could and should be more connected than ever. We actually feel less and less connected. And again, that's not just on the personal spectrum, that's professionally as well. When it's easy to reach out to anyone and it's easy to respond to anyone. That means it's also harder for us to figure out, well, who should I be working with? Who should I be responding to? Who am I not talking to today that I should today?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:35] Yeah. I think that's important. I also found it fascinating that our brains have a smaller neocortex than apes and apes had larger networks. So basically apes are better than humans at networking, which kind of checks out. Jibes with my experience.

Zvi Band: [00:22:52] Yeah, I mean, but listen, we can't be all doom and gloom. I mean the great thing out there is that with technology and the strategies, including the book we have coming out and your course, there is a solution. I think the challenge is that people need to treat this not as a, "Oh yeah, I want to be better in networking. I want to be better at relationships," or things like that, but it has to be an actual strategy that they implement today.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:20] Yeah, agree and time decay theory essentially that memories dull as time passes. We have to reinforce those connections, so using tools like Six-Minute Networking, using tools like Contactually is a great way to do that. Of course, we can do that using other systems as well, like scrolling to the bottom of our text messages and texting old contacts. I think it's important to note though that just because someone's fresh in our mind doesn't mean we're fresh in theirs if that makes sense. So we have to be re-engaging even if we feel closer to that person because we don't necessarily know if that's reciprocated. And I found that to be true for me over time. A lot of people would be like, "Hey, great meeting you last week." And I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, I went to a conference since then so I have no clue who this is." But they may have met two people last week and I was one of them where I might've met like 200 people last week and they were one of them if that makes sense.

Zvi Band: [00:24:14] Yeah, absolutely. Right. And I think that's why we're always struggling to rebuild that social context between each other. So yeah, I think it's pretty safe that unless you know that person so incredibly well when you're reaching out, you have to do those things sometimes that allows you to rebuild that context. Like even, you just casually like, "Hey Jordan is really great meeting you at that conference last week." Or, "You know, I really appreciate you answering that question for me about blah, blah, blah." And that will hopefully help establish or re-establish that social object between you two. That's why I got one of the key parts of our strategy is to talk about intelligence. Even if it's around people building up that set of intelligence that of what people are really interested in, what people are really excited about, what their challenges are, even their kid's names, their hobbies, what their spouse does for a living -- understanding all of those things can be so important to make sure that you maintain the context of that relationship together.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:17] Yeah. People are going, "Oh great, so follow up with a simple comment. I already knew that." It's different because most people who are following up are sending an email like, "It's great to meet you last week." They're not saying anything of more substance. Like, "Hey, it was great meeting you last week. I saw your talk at this conference and your point about X was really interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way." The more specific the better because then I'm able to attribute something specific. Like that's the guy who was at my talk about podcast advertising in the next 10 years, not some guy I met next week. So it's not just following up. Generally, it's following up as specific as possible.

Zvi Band: [00:25:57] Yeah, absolutely. So that's why every interaction should be meaningful, relevant, and authentic. So that means, the relevant is why should you know this person, why should this person matter, why does this relation matter. It's really kind of giving that relevance, but authenticity is obviously at a core of it. Some people try to be a little bit too exacting and almost giving like -- some people gave me a transcript of our last conversation as a way to jog my memory. That's the kind of stuff that comes off as overly mechanical and at the end of the day, we're human beings and we want to relate to people authentically. So as long as we maintain the authenticity throughout it, we're going to be in good shape.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:44] Yeah. I think it goes beyond authenticity though, right? It goes into specificity and it goes into treating -- realizing that the value of the network, the people in the network are valuable. And not cheapening it by making it or the people in it transactional because I think a lot of people will go, "Okay, great. I'm following up specifically, but I'm following up specifically in that I'm asking for something that I want." And I want to cover this, at least touch on this because it does feel icky to all of the sudden put a value on a relationship. But we also have to balance that with not treating networking as some kind of new year's resolution that we do for two weeks and then forget about it. So I think a lot of people will fall short on improving their relationships because they don't make it specific. But on the other hand, they're making things transactional. How can we balance that? How can we avoid that pitfall?

Zvi Band: [00:27:40] Yeah, I think it's rooted in this belief that people do business with people they know. And so your relationship building is not just about like, hey, you just want them to like you enough that they're going to think about you. The next time they're ready to transact. It is all also about like, "Hey, you want to work with people that you know and like." I know a lot of people that had their clients attend their wedding, and one actually had one of their clients be the godfather of the kids because they built that type of relationship. It's not that we need to go that extreme, but I got this career advice early on that a business has made, not as much by people you work with, but by the people that you don't work with. And so you want to make sure that you're maintaining those relationships with the people that are most interesting and exciting for you. And that's why that kind of open yourself up to have a little bit more of an authentic relationship. I think, per your point, we're not necessarily really fishing for jobs every time we're reaching out. What we're doing is we're making sure we maintain a relationship because we like them because we care about them and we believe that we can provide value from them. So at some point, when they're ready for something that we provide that they think of us.

[00:29:06] Back when I was running a consulting firm -- again, I was building relationships with past clients and entrepreneurs and startups and design firms. And if I were to ping them saying, "Hey, do you have any jobs for me today? Hey, do you have any jobs for me today?" Yeah, that'd be really annoying and they'd send me packing instead. What I would do is I was building a relationship. I was sharing what I was working on. I was really genuinely interested in their business because I cared about them and I wanted them to be successful. And as part of that caring, they'd reach out to me from time to time saying, "Hey, Zvi, we have this problem or we have this project or a developer just quit. Can you kind of help fill in?" And that'd be my opening. I truly believe that relationship building is not about sending pings to your network, hoping for something to come back. But instead, it's maintaining again that luck surface area. So when something strikes, you're ready to go and they think of you.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:05] Yes, that I can appreciate.

Jason DeFillippo:  [00:30:09] You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Zvi Band. We'll be right back after this.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:14] This episode is sponsored in part by TripActions. There's a reason that half of business travelers do not use their company's chosen travel management platform. Booking business travel is ridiculously outdated. It's time-consuming, it's costly. I remember when I was mechanized as a lawyer a lifetime ago -- and things haven't changed much since then by the way -- I had one company that helped me get places for recruiting efforts and one company that helped us get places for the jobs stuff and one company that helped us for like non-client related travel. And one flight would get canceled and you'd call three companies and hold, and you'd find out it wasn't even one of them. It was just totally insane. And I remember renting a car and driving back to Detroit from New York because it was probably faster than staying on hold with everybody. So if you're frustrated with your company's travel management program or lack thereof, look into TripActions, it takes a lot of the pain out of it. The way that they've set this up is pretty nice. They've got 24/7 proactive support around the globe and there are incentives for employees, of course, to save on travel expenses. And companies large and small see over 90 percent adoption and they save up to 34 percent on travel spend when they use TripActions as well. So you've got Lyft, Sarah Lee Frozen Bakery, they trust TripActions with their business travel. And what I love about this is they'll send you push notifications while you're at the gate before the airlines even announce a flight delay or a cancellation, and then they'll connect you to an agent who's local to you, your country, you know, native speaker of English, or like in the country of note, and then they'll get you rebooked. They don't just say like, "Yeah, call United. Good luck buddy." So Jason, tell them how to get TripActions.

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:11] This episode is also sponsored by Ship. Now, this is a dating app, and I know you're thinking like, "Jordan, you're married. You're unqualified to talk about this." What I love about this is -- of course, I'm happily married to Jen -- I never really got the chance to use a lot of dating apps. So I've got some FOMO about that. But also I like picking people for others obviously. And that's kind of why we're stoked about Ship. This is a new dating app that lets you set up your friends and, of course, your family. So the way that it works is if you're single, you sign up, you invite friends to join your crew. If you're not single you just sign up and you invite a single friend that you want to find matches for and you start looking for matches for yourself, whatever for your friend. And the best part is there's a group chat. So of course you know you're seeing the profiles that other people are doing and you can see what they're looking at. You can look at people's profiles together, you can strategize on how to set this all up. And my wife and I are using Ship to set up my brother-in-law and it's really funny to see who my wife likes for him versus who I like for him because she's like looking at the profile and dissecting every line and I'm just like hot, hot, not, not -- you know, I'm just like swipe, swipe left swipe right.

Jason DeFillippo:  [00:33:19] So much love put into it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:20] Yeah. I'm like, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. I mean, I'm just picking -- you know, this is just pure vicarious living and it's really fun. Dating is more fun if you do it with friends and you can download Ship for free, getshipped.com/jordan. That's getshipped.com/jordan and start today. I think this is a fun app, especially for us married folk who are like, "Oh, let me give you a bunch of dates to go on so that I can hear all about them." Getshipped.com/jordan.

Jason DeFillippo:  [00:33:49] Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers is what keeps us on the air. And to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. If you're listening to the show on the Overcast player on iOS, please click that little star button next to the episode. It really helps us out. And now for the conclusion of our show with Zvi Band.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:16] Something that I also find fascinating that you brought up pre-show was none of this is taught in business or law school. And it's so funny because I remember talking with a bunch of business school students. I think I've told this anecdote on the show before, but I was talking with a bunch of Michigan business students, Michigan's one of the top business schools in the nation. And I was like, "Hey, you know, let me come in while I'm here in Michigan and I'll give a talk about networking. It's my Alma mater, Michigan is, and I'll do a talk at the law school as well." And law school was like, "Great, come on in. We really need this." And then I was in the room and I remember the law school was like, "Yeah, you know, we could only get like one club to do this, so we're just going to record it. And I thought like, okay, so aka no one showed up, a failure of promotion. And then the B school students said, "No, you know, we're already pretty social. None of us really need this." And I remember a couple of months after that getting emailed by the B school and they said, "We desperately need someone to teach networking because this is our single biggest failure point of all of our graduates is the network." And I thought how funny all these professors and the career counselors and the recruiters and everybody who works there and the job -- you know where the rubber meets the road area -- they were all like, "Ugh, the networking is just not happening among the students." And all the students were like, "We're so good at this. We don't even need to be instructed."

[00:35:41] And the truth is this isn't taught in business or law school. But then when you get to, let's say a law firm, the people that make the most money, that have the most job security, that are able to choose which projects they work on, that have the choices to opportunities, they're the rainmakers. They're the people that generate business. And the way that they do that is they use these types of networking skills. And yet you'll find that even among those firms that have virtually unlimited resources for training and development, they don't teach this. And I found that the reason -- now that I'm older, and I can ask law partners because I have direct access to them -- the reason is because they, honestly, most people do not believe this can be taught. They think you've got certain people that are good at it and certain people that aren't, and the ones that aren't good at it, they just come in and they keep their head down and they do the work. And the ones that are well, we rely on them for business. So pay them 10 times as much and make them a partner a decade earlier than everyone else.

Zvi Band: [00:36:36] Yeah, you're right and I'm glad you brought up the law profession as an example. I've talked to a lot of lawyers who have this kind of tinfoil hat belief that the reason it's not taught is because the senior partners only want like a few people to figure it out. It's kind of a survival of the fittest that a few people figure out how to become rainmakers and they need all of these kinds of lower-level attorneys to kind of actually do the work for them. I don't really believe that that's the case.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:08] No, me neither. There's no way any bosses like, "I want a limited number of people generating business so that if they leave I'm screwed. That's what I want." No way.

Zvi Band: [00:37:18] Yeah. I think the bigger issue that this is kind of a challenge with just kind of our approach to education as a whole is that we spend so much time focusing on the hard skills, not the soft skills. For example, I went to school for computer science and economics and computer science is all about algorithms and game theory and program language A and program language B and how to solve this problem, this challenge. But when you got in the real world, those challenges are nothing compared to how do you work in a team, how do you deal with executives, and build empathy with users, and build the right product, and test and iterate and refine -- that's almost never taught these days. So I think the big challenge out there, even when it came to networking, is that there are so many people that know what to do, that have figured out how to build and strengthen deep relationships. But it's all via years and years of trial and error. And when I ask them, even just, "All right, well how would you teach someone how to learn?" Now they'd say, "I don't really know." And that's honestly one of the reasons why we decided to write a book over the past couple of years is we didn't see anyone really out there teaching. So how do you build a network?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:41] Yeah, and one of the first principles of building and maintaining relationships and networks is consistency. And that's something we've harped on quite a bit in Six-Minute Networking. It's kind of the foundation of that. The whole point is you spend six minutes a day doing it instead of spending six days doing it. When you get fired in a few years, or when you have a crisis in your life and then you're just doing nothing but that. But relationship, marketing, or creating consistency and networking is a habit -- you can see the impact of relationships in the rearview mirror, but it's really hard to see, understand, realize any short term payoff without being transactional, right? Like you need something, you email people, you get a job. "Oh great. I should do this more often except I don't need a job." So you never do it again. We're really stuck in this, as you put it pre-show, the tyranny of the urgent -- where look, I've got emails, I've got calendar appointments, there's a push notification about this payment thing. I've got instant messengers on whatever, text, Facebook, whatever. I'm losing track of what's urgent, let alone what's actually important. So we have to be intentional about getting important tasks done, not just urgent things, not just stuff that's in our face, not just the next meeting, but block the time off on our calendar. I don't know. A reward mechanism maybe. What do you do to maintain consistency? Because for me, I actually block off, let's say an hour on Monday for Contactually where I go through and email people I haven't talked to in a long time, but I'm also doing the six-minute networking stuff where every day I'm texting people in the morning, I'm shooting emails in the morning. I'm blocking off that time to do it because otherwise, I know it won't get done. It's like going to the gym. I don't really want to go right. I have to, and if I don't, over time I certainly look like I haven't been but that's the same thing with networking and relationship development. What else are you doing to generate consistency?

Zvi Band: [00:40:38] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you hit the nail on the head right there when you gave that gym analogy, right? Just like working out in the gym every day won't make us feel better tomorrow or the day after. In fact, most of the time that makes us feel worse, but years down the line, and it makes us feel better. We're fit. We live longer lives, but when I choose that versus, you know, sitting on the couch eating Netflix and watching ice cream, well, what's going to bring me more value in the short term? And so as human beings, we're more wired for those short-term gains rather than those long-term gains and that's honestly the root of our issue. If that weren't the case, then yeah, of course, everyone would be in the gym for half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening. No one would ever eat McDonald's anymore because you know, we'd all just be eating like salads and lean protein all day long, but the truth is no. We're wired for those short terms. And with relationships, again, the things that will net benefits for us, they will change our lives amazingly as we've all seen looking backwards. But those won't net results for years to come. And that's really again the case seen time and time again. So the question we have to ask ourselves is how do we hack our minds or hack our processes so we're able to do things in the short term that will benefit us for the long term.

[00:42:04] So you know, a couple of the tricks, yeah, I do really love the idea of time blocking. That's probably the most effective thing. If you are a calendar-driven person to have that calendar in place to be able to say, "All right, this is the time of day where I'm not going to answer the phone, I'm not going to answer email. All I'm going to do is be proactive with my relationships rather than reacting to whatever push notification is sent at me." The other trick that we find works pretty well is to actually -- if you're looking and if your mind is wired for a short term reward, then great. Then give yourself that short term reward, right? Say, "Hey, if I reach out to 10 people this morning, then great, I'm going to go down the street and get that really full fat mocha Frappuccino or something like that. Reward yourself for the work that you've done. And that will kind of trick your brain to say, "All right, cool. I did something and I got a reward." Now that reward might be false compared to the real reward. That's years down the line but doing things like that can really work. Other things are to consider having an accountability coach. So I have an accountability coach that calls me every Thursday afternoon and will yell at me if I don't do the task that I've laid out. Other things that you can think about is there's this concept of the tiny habits by a behavioral scientist named BJ Fogg. The whole idea is connecting something you're already doing with a habit you want to build. So after I opened my laptop in the morning, the very first thing I do is I'm going to send two emails to people I wouldn't otherwise. So there are numbers of hacks, but it's all about tricking your brain for lack of a better term, to do something that won't get you results now, but we'll pay off in dividends later on down the line.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:59] Yes. I can absolutely understand. I think creating those habits, creating that consistency is key -- doing this in a certain amount of time. But how do we not seem transactional when we're doing this? How do we prioritize our relationships in a way that doesn't seem like we're picking favorites based on who can help us or do we do that and just not worry about it?

Zvi Band: [00:44:23] Yeah, I mean, I would say one of the key things is that -- there are two aspects of that. I think when it comes to not picking people that may seem that it's all transactional nature, again, we have to think about the goals that we're trying to achieve and who the people are that fit those goals. Now, some people may wash out, right? If you have a past client, for example, that you could tell that they were treating you as a transaction, then great. Maybe that's the person that you choose not to work with. So they get filtered out of your database, they get filtered out of your mind and out of your lists. I think there's nothing wrong with being able to selectively filter people. The core idea behind prioritization is when it comes to identifying who among our thousands of LinkedIn connections or among the thousands of inbound email connections or when you're in a room with who you choose to engage with. We have a tendency as human beings to bring order to the chaos, right? We want to organize the things around us and therefore the people around us. And what we’ve seen with years of the monitoring usage at Contactually is it's not about organizing those relationships, but instead prioritization.

[00:45:40] So oftentimes we might think we want to organize people around like important people are very important people. Like for example, I met Mark Zuckerberg, okay, therefore he's an important person. I should make sure I maintain a relationship with him. But if I were to instead think about my goals and think about what I'm trying to achieve and prioritize around the people that I believe could really be helpful around those goals and I can really be able to provide value to as well, you'd come up with a very different list. So that's why we focus on this whole aspect of priorities, prioritization, not organization.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:18] I think the key here is also to not forget people that don't have a readily available sort of value add. So one of the things that we talk about in Six-Minute Networking as well and also on the show here, is that a lot of opportunities are what is called over the horizon. So if I meet you somewhere, I'm not like, oh, this guy can help me do something specific. If I find that, then great, yes, I will follow up. But even if I don't find that I will still follow up and engage. Because since this process is really scalable and since we've already said we're going to block off an hour, hour and a half a week to focus on this, you can keep in touch with thousands of people regularly. If you're blocking off, let's say 60 to 90 minutes a week and doing this in little gaps, doing the Six-Minute Networking stuff. So you don't have to only decide, oh, I'm only going to follow up with people who can get me a job. You can follow up with everyone. You should not be discounting people because you can't see a readily available sort of transactional value coming back to you. You can focus on the people that you think can help you by maybe following up with them first. Or if they demand more of your attention, giving it to them because you see a reason to do this. But you should not be ignoring people or not following up with people based on the idea that you can't see what they can do for you because that will bite you in the ass.

Zvi Band: [00:47:45] Yeah, absolutely. Don't get me wrong. I don't think that you should just be kind of just robotically saying, "Will this person help me or not?" And kind of choose to toss people in the wastebasket based on that, absolutely not. But at the same time, I think where we have to be careful is that we want to prioritize our relationships around the people that will give us the most energy. Not necessarily take it away or however, you choose to filter it. So, yeah, you can have thousands of people that you choose to engage with. Some of them honestly might be keeping to just stay in touch on social media and being their Facebook friend and checking in with them once every so often if you see something interesting. Whereas on the opposite end, some of them you're reaching out to every couple months, you know everything about their family. You've gone on trips together, you meet up and really understand what's happening in their business and how you can help out with them. So, yeah, absolutely right. I mean, Jordan, you probably even saw this in your own experience, right? You had some people that you had to lose enough relationships with where they were like, "Hey, let me follow your new show and just kind of see like see what Jordan's up to these days." Whereas some people were posting on social, emailing everyone in their database saying, "Hey, Jordan has a new show." Whenever they saw links to your old show, they would email the website owner and say, "Hey, by the way, Jordan has a new show, go here instead." You had some people that you'll vary the level of investment and that is in part because you were selective in terms of who you chose to spend more of your time and more of your attention with around. Right?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:34] Yeah. That is true. I did have actually a lot of success with -- one of the reasons we came back was because of the fan engagement, not just people promoting it who were influencers, but those people who said, "Hey mom, that show we always listened to has a new host and we're unsubscribing, but the host we liked went to The Jordan Harbinger Show. So here's the news feed." I mean that happened a lot and it's still, I still get messages where people were like, "Hey, I was on a boat trip in South Africa and I came back and you're gone. I'm on your new show now. Thank goodness for Google." I mean I find that all the time. I think a lot of people also struggle with how they add value, not just what am I going to get from other people, but how do I add value to some people. And I've seen a lot, some more effective than others. I was just at a conference for podcasting and somebody literally mailed me like a five-dollar Starbucks gift card. Super thoughtful, but like kind -- I hate saying this and look, if this was you, I appreciate it and I did say thank you, of course, but it's a little generic. Something more personalized would have actually been better and cheaper.

Zvi Band: [00:50:39] Yeah. So one of the real challenges here, and this is where it gets really sticky, is that the whole five-dollar gift card kind of thing. At the end of the day, what we're trying to drive is -- we're not trying to deliver value per se alone. For real value, then yes, I just literally just open up the mail and just send everyone 20 bucks on Venmo and say, "Hey, here you go. Here's value," right? It's really more around the feeling that we're trying to drive you. At the heart of it, we're all social creatures so I know most people, we talk around, really understand them and understand their business challenges and understand who can help them and know about their spouse's name and give us and give a gift to them. These are all really, really great things, but let's face it, most of that's really like at a higher, higher level. At core, we're all social creatures and the core thing we're trying to do is just, hey, show we care, deliver the right feeling. And so I have absolutely no problem if someone, for example, just sends me a quick text message saying, "Hey, Zvi just thinking about you." That alone is a really valuable experience because I know for that instant someone truly is thinking about me. And so I think alone, we shouldn't necessarily never engage because we can't figure out the absolute perfect gift to give someone. It's really thinking about, hey, how do I show that person that I care about them and you deliver them some kind of valuable feeling.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:10] So take notes on people when you meet as well. And I do this as well. I'll take notes on my phone. I also add notes to contacts like has a pet pig. And then when I'm looking at the contact I'm like, oh yeah, that's so random. I'll ask him about the pig because I'm sure a lot of people do that. The other thing that we do -- also cherry-picking from Six-Minute Networking here is the social media engagement or opportunistic engagement is more like it. David Burkus has taught us this in the show and essentially what this means is look, if someone has a new baby or gets a new pet or goes on a vacation, we see that in our social media feeds, Facebook, Instagram, whatever. Most people will click like other people will leave a comment. Instead of doing that, send that person an email or a text. It makes it through that social media filter, which people like me just can't even really check a lot of the time anymore because there's too much noise to the signal. There are too many emojis to the actual words that have the time. But if somebody shoots me a text and it's like, "Wow, your trip to Africa looked amazing." That's the person who's getting a conversation. I'll remember that. I'm not going to have the same level of intimacy with somebody who commented on Facebook. "Wow, this trip looked amazing." That's more of a thanks man or I click like on that comment and we're done. It doesn't turn into a conversation. So don't be afraid. Jump away from the place that reminded you that opportunistic place because that News Feed is doing the sifting for you. It's showing you people in your life who are having important things happen generally, sometimes not, but it's showing you those people's life events don't feel the need to only reply on that same platform. Let the platform do the work and then jump into their email, give them a call, shoot them a text.

Zvi Band: [00:53:47] Yeah. I mean there are a number of basic tricks I think you can allow to differentiate yourself. So you're right, switching channels and differentiating yourself by channels is really important. That's why like one of the weird things that a lot of really top users of ours requested very early on that we finally built out was handwritten cards and we're like, "Really? People send handwritten cards." But I get probably like three or four a week and it makes such a bigger impact than just yet another Facebook message or yet another email. Not to say that those are bad per se, but if you're trying to stand out, there are different levels. One of the other tricks that we also recommend is time-shifting. So for example, when you see someone changes jobs, well, of course, you're almost like predetermined on LinkedIn to open LinkedIn, see a new job. There's a button that literally says -- I don't have to type anything that says congratulate them on the new job and that's it. Well instead, why don't you put a note in your calendar for 30 days from now to say, "Hey, check-in with them. It's been 30 days." And when you do even small little things like that that take like 30 seconds more, that can make such a bigger difference because you're now standing out from the crowd and building a real relationship. That's why I hate to say I hate the idea of holiday cards, right? Yes. I think sometimes you just need to do it as a baseline, but you know, instead of sending out yet another holiday gift or yet another card that just goes in the pile at the office. Be the person that a week before Valentine's day, email out your entire network locally, and say, "Hey, I got reservations, you know, six months ago at all these top restaurants. Do you want any of these reservations in case you forgot about them?" Small little things like that can go a huge, huge way and not cost more, not take too much more time, but really show that value in a very unique way.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:55:51] I hate to say it, but whenever I get something handwritten, I always open it. I always read it. I thought this was the dumbest idea in the world and maybe I think it's overused, but I am in touch with a ton of people and frankly, I don't get that much-handwritten stuff. I really don't. And some people really shine through because they'll send that and they're like, "Hey, my kid drew you." And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, it's terrible." Right? But you know, I still, it's still up on the fridge or on the bookshelf. It's kind of funny. I also want to implore people, look, if you're taking notes on people, that's great. You need to put these things in a database. You need to organize your contacts in a database. I know we're a little biased because you started Contactually. I'm going to link to that in the show notes because that's what I recommend. But look, if you don't want to buy that, I get it. Google Docs, Airtable, something you do not use paper. Do not just have some notes on your phone with people. You'll eventually, it'll get so big, you'll stop using it and then you'll either have to stop using it entirely or you'll have to digitize it, which you just won't do because it'll take you like four hours and you won't want to do it. So start now and keep it digital. Just trust me on this one.

Zvi Band: [00:56:57] Yeah. And that goes to the whole idea, like, you know, one of the key parts of the capital strategy in the book is L is for leverage. And it's how do you give yourself -- like how do you increase the likelihood that you're going to do things later on by giving yourself leverage. So yeah, listen, I actually know a lot of really great people that don't need to take notes. They don't need to keep track of who they're talking to because they have that amazing brain, they have like, I think it's called highly superior autobiographical memory. They're able to just remember all these amazing things so they can just reach out to people that they haven't spoken to in six years and act like they spoke to them last week. Most of us aren't like that. If a piece of paper really works for you and you're able to make that work awesome. But yeah, most of us, aren't that effective with that. And so even an Excel spreadsheet or Evernote or CRM can really come into play. And that's why one of the best tips that I've ever received from one of our customers when we were talking around note-taking is he, literally, told a room of Contactually users to have a small bladder. And that's kind of a little weird, but when he kind of went on to explain it -- he was saying that, "Hey, the next time you're at a dinner or cocktail party or something where there's a lot of different people after every conversation, find some way of breaking away and kind of going off to the side and it can be as easy enough to saying, 'Hey, sorry, I have to run to the bathroom." Step to the side and take notes about everything that you just, that you just heard." And yeah, sure, some people may think, "Oh wow, something's really wrong with Jordan." But you know, you're out there taking notes and that becomes incredibly useful fodder. Most of us completely forget the small talk around what they're doing with their kids that weekend or the traffic on the way on the way here or what annoyed them that morning. But capturing those small little things, those are the keys to that really allow you to build a deeper and more authentic relationship.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:17] I will say just take notes right there and say, "Hang on, I'm taking a quick note. I want to remember the name of your pig." "Hang on, I'm taking a quick note. I'll always want to put people's kids' names in my phone so that I don't forget later and have to ask you 10 times." Like, is it better to do that than to go to the bathroom 14 times in a conversation?

Zvi Band: [00:59:36] Yeah, there's definitely -- you may want to not be that who go to the extreme of running to the bathroom 14 times, but you have to think, we have to be careful about is we always want to be present in conversations and so yeah, that is actually, I hate to say where like a piece of paper may work. Like when I'm meeting with my employees, I notice it's very different if I'm taking notes on a computer versus taking notes on a notepad because if I'm taking notes on a notepad, they can clearly see what I'm writing and clearly see, "Okay, you're taking notes from the conversation." If I have my laptop up in front of them, they're like, "Oh, he could just be checking Slack or you know, checking sports scores or something like that." So you do want to make sure you're present in some way.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:15] I agree. Whenever you're writing on paper you will look like you're taking notes on the conversation. Whenever you're writing on your phone, you look like you're texting and whenever you're on your laptop you just look like Gmail, for sure. So I agree with you there. I love the idea of having a small bladder Zvi we are up on time. I really appreciate you coming out teaching us about networking because this is the core skill that saved my business, saved my butt. I really enjoyed doing it now finally, after, I don't know 12 years of doing it and it's just changed everything for me and I think if people dedicate literally six minutes a day to doing this, it's an absolute life-changing type of thing. And so thank you for this. Thank you for the book and thank you for making Contactually, which helps the process flow in the meantime.

Zvi Band: [01:00:58] Thank you so much for your support over the years. It's always great to connect with you because I feel like I'm not talking about anything brand new or different. And thanks for your Six-Minute course.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:01:08] You got it. Thank you.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:01:11] Big thank you to Zvi Band, the book title is Success in Your Sphere: Leverage The Power of Relationships to Achieve Your Business Goals. Normally, I don't do business-related shows, but I really love this networking topic. It is just near and dear to my heart and is extremely powerful as we've seen in the last year just firsthand. And if you want to know how I manage my network, create the systems, create tiny habits, use and leverage Contractually among other drills and exercises, check out our Six-Minute Networking course, which is free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. Now, the problem, if you're going to do it later, which I hear all the time, "I'm just so busy right now." "Oh, I'm getting shiny object syndrome." "I got to do this." The problem with kicking the can down the road, you can't make up for the lost time when it comes to relationships and networking. So yeah, you're busy with your school, your career, your whatever right now, it doesn't matter. If you postpone this, you do not dig the well before you're thirsty -- and I get emails like this all the time. "I never did that. And look at this bind I'm in now," and it's sort of hard to feel that much sympathy when people say they'd been listening for a year and they're in this bind. It's like, well, you knew better. Once you need relationships, you're too late. The drills take a few minutes per day. This is the stuff I wish I knew 10, 15 years ago. It is absolutely crucial and it's all at jordanharbinger.com/course. Speaking of building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Zvi. I'm at @JordanHarbinger on both Twitter and Instagram.

[01:02:31] The show is produced in association with PodcastOne. And this episode is co-produced by Jason "Six Degrees of Separation" DeFillippo and Jen Harbinger. Show notes and worksheets are by Robert Fogarty. I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. Remember, we rise by lifting others, so the fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, certainly should be in this episode, so please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.

[01:03:02] A lot of people ask me what shows I recommend and one show that I love is called Mind Pump. You guys have heard me talk about it before. I've been on there. Those guys had been on my show a bunch. We're friends back from San Jose and one of their episodes recently that I thought was really interesting was John Brenkus is Episode 955. You probably know him as the sports science guy. I'm sitting here with Sal from Mind Pump. Tell us a little bit about that. This guy was really articulate first of all, TV guy, but he also brought up an interesting idea, which is that men and women should actually be put together in sports, which I kind of thought how's he going to get his way out of this one?

Sal Di Stefano: [01:03:36] Oh, I thought I would for sure -- I was 100 percent disagreed with them, but he gets on the show and he makes an extremely compelling case and he explains how in certain athletic endeavors, women compete right alongside with men, especially endurance type sports and also how boys and girls, if you let them compete together at a young age, it just elevates the performance of the girls. And at the highest, highest, highest levels when you're talking about professional athletes, that's the one percent of the one percent, you know, comparing yourself to those people, doesn't matter if they're men or women, they're nothing like us. So really it's about the sports at large, allowing men and women and boys and girls to compete together, giving girls and women the opportunity to compete at higher levels. And of course, giving men the opportunity to compete against women in real ways.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:24] And you know, it's almost, we're so California out right now that I'm like, "Oh, he said if we put women together, they're going to raise their game to the level of men or something like that." But it's like there's also these biological facts that we kind of can't just be it that like guys are strong, but when you're young, girls are better at everything.

Sal Di Stefano: [01:04:39] They are. And not only that -- but the case he makes is -- you're right, men are physiologically stronger than women. However, with a lot of sports, although strength plays a role, it's not the ultimate role. For example, at the highest levels of golf. And you, if you look at how far they can drive the ball, you don't need to be able to drive it super far. You just need to be able to have a certain level of performance and all the female competitors at that level can do so. Now, for talking professional football, that might be a little different, but not all sports are like that. And so he makes a very compelling case. And trust me, I was totally opposed to this idea and he almost convinced me. So you'd have to listen to the episode and hear what he said.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:19] You guys can find that Mind Pump Episode 955. Of course, we'll link to it in the show notes as well. Thanks, Sal.