Now we all know what tight connections are. Those are our friends and our circle of friends or family of the circle of people around our family. People we went to school with the people that we know, we know their names, we have their phone numbers. We occasionally see them at parties or social circle, our tribe mostly, and we feel comfortable within that tribe, but today we have the capability of extending that through what I call loose connections and but ongoing, loose relationships, not just contacts. And the distinction is that you put some level of effort, some tiny bit of effort into staying in touch at some level. It doesn't have to be a phone call; it doesn't have to be an email, it can just be a comment, a like a, you know, sharing a picture of what you're doing.
Both business and social and some people encouraged to share your social life on Instagram and Facebook. Um, I, I'd say as long as it's politically correct and socially correct, no one wants. I'm sure your boss doesn't want to see you loaded at a party or anything. Um, nor to, I'm not sure why anyone thinks they're dinner. Is that important to anybody else? But whatever works for you. Um, I don't have a strong opinion on it. I don't do it. Um, because my life isn't that interesting from a, you know, what I'm eating standpoint. Indeed, it's not interesting. I typically share his content about what I do, what the sales, how sales are changing social selling internet tools that I'm using, techniques that I'm using, ways of reaching people and connecting with them without pitching and pushing without, uh, being creepy or stocking.
I share those things on social, like this, like the podcast I share how I do things, how, how I've changed doing things. But the power of loose connections is overlooked because they're like, I'm, you know, putting away 10 percent of your income and savings. You know, then this makes almost no sense in your twenties, right? Because you're, you get tons of bills, you don't have much money, and the idea of saving for four years from now is pretty low on the priority list. You want to have some fun. You want to let you know, get a Netflix or be able to go out to dinner or go away for a weekend. Get his butt and our network. We have to extend it, keep spreading it, keep feeding it because what the research has shown is that most jobs, most opportunities are not from our tight connections.
They're not from so much our family and our tight circle of friends, although they can be most cases they're from a second degree or maybe even a third degree of our circle of friends. So the idea is to continually be expanding that level to of our circle that these are people that we're connected to, but we don't have a consistent communication path. And the way. The reason we need to feed it is that when we need it, we would like it to be there and not just as a take. If people see us as a giver, somebody who, you know, shares some valuable content, gives insightful comments, uh, uh, shares a funny things and spiteful things, inspiring ideas on social, you're seen as somebody who contributes and then when the time comes to, uh, ask, ask for an introduction, ask her advice, ask for help.
People are much more open to doing it, much more open to, uh, you know, speaking up for you to refer you to somebody else to open up their network and their connections to you. Now, this is insanely powerful, and the reason people don't get it is that there's no payoff today to many of us. We look at, you know, stimulus-response, you know, we want, if we do our work, we want an hour of pay and that that's a reasonable way to look at the world. But the problem is that we have to see it more as compounding. And the power of compounding is, you know, the seventh wonder eighth wonder of the world, Warren Buffet said, and if you ever get to see his documentary on HBO, I watch it. And I've got an interesting story about that I've shared on my other podcast when I was a little kid, um, my dad and I were talking and, you know, I was just stupid little kid, you know, second grade or whatever.
And uh, you know, I guessed how much money he made a year, and I think this huge number at that time, whatever it was. And my dad laughed, and he said, well, if I made that much money every year or we could live off of the interest, and I go, oh, what's interest? It goes interest is what banks pay or financial institutions for the use of your money. Like, um, like the inverse of the mortgage. You're paying the mortgage for the use of the bank's capital to own your house. That's your mortgage payment. And then, when you give a financial institution, either the WHO or bond or an interest-bearing account, a, you get paid interest. That's you're a reward your service for letting them use your money for that period. Now that idea stuck with me through my whole life, and it almost became a goal in my thirties where I was like, how much would I have to have that I could live off of the interest?
I could live off of the proceeds of my investments, and that excited me because it seemed like that was so powerful. Now, if you apply that to your network, it's like when can I live off of my web where I can ask my system for favors in exchange for what I've done for them over the years. Ask them for reviews on podcasts, ask them to download my free ebook if they were making them aware of courses that I offer a, make them aware of products that I use and expose them to people, Friends of mine, uh, and become part of my network. Now you, you as listeners are part of my system. I'm providing so some value to you, some ideas, some different ways of looking at life. Some lessons that I've learned that you may not have learned yet or you may have forgotten or needed a little refreshing, maybe a and in exchange for that, uh, you, you share the content, you connect up with me, and we become loose connections, and you know, and I'll also tell you a story about why it's valuable.
Now I get pitched on my other podcast because it's super popular in the sales category. It's number one by far, and the business to business sales category have been doing it for almost nine years now along before podcasting was popular, or anyone even listened. I remember when it was like less than a hundred people listened, uh, because you had to listen on a computer or move it to your iPod, uh, to be able to hear it. And, but I kept doing it because I don't know whether it was practice or I was experimenting and I took a hiatus for a year and then I got back into it because I started listening to podcasts again. And it started growing, and it was doubling every year then tripling. And I liked it, and that compounding effect I enjoyed and I've tried different mechanisms, and that was a way of me building my network.
And then all of a sudden the products that I was using, a people were asking me can you know, share this with the audience. Then I get pitched by authors that want to share their book, and you know, and this is what a typically sounds like. They're not connected to me. They have their PR agency contact me; they give me a standard pitch. They don't know anything about the podcast, they've never listened to it. And I typically I ignore them, um, because mostly because they're not a match, not because I want my ring kissed or anything. But once in a while there'll be the person who gets it, they listened to an episode, they'll reference the episode, they'll send a picture of their review that they gave the podcast, and then they'll share that they have a client that they think will make a great match.
And it. And when I see that certainly gets my attention. And if it's a match, I'm going to go forward a rule of reciprocation that, uh, that, and this is ingrained in us, there's this need for reciprocation has been talked about forever made famous by the book influence by Robert Cialdini. But the studies, you know, it, you know, every picture you look at at a museum where you see two tribes meeting or you know from one community, other, there's one of two things happens. One, they either give each other gifts or two, they'd kill each other. You have the choice. You can either kill each other or give each other gifts, or I guess today we ignore each other or block each other. Um, so that ability to build that network and that example of how even the podcasting of how, you know, the doubling and tripling and being able to reach an audience that, um, you know, in some cases is more significant than dream forest, which is like the conference for salespeople.
When, when it's that big and all of a sudden I can do it from my studio and reach that number of people is pretty compelling. So I have access to loose coupling with the listeners, and I can make them aware of things that could help them, and they can choose to look at them or not. Look at them. That is the power of loose connection. Does that mean you do a podcast? No. Now it doesn't say that you don't have to do a lot. You can be a guest on a podcast; you could share someone else's podcast, you could comment and review someone's podcast. You could discuss and share on other things. If you're in B2b space, you really should have LinkedIn a. I've got a free course on LinkedIn on the website. Just go to b2bRevenue.com, Training, and then click on the very first link at the top on how to crush your number, It's free. It shows you how to do a great profile. It has several reviews of profiles of if you want me to review yours, I'll try and get to it. I can't promise I get like a lot of requests and but most of them have the same issues. Almost all of them have the same problems, so what I tried to do was to do like five or six of them, and they point out all the significant issues, but there you can connect and have these loose connections and build your network. Now, if you're in B2C, probably Facebook and Instagram are better choices for you and you can start expanding your circle of connections and influence so that when the time comes, when you need something, you have some currency to give them, meaning that you've given enough that people are, they know you, and they're aware of you, so don't discount loose connections. I think they're insanely valuable and I believe they are well worth your time. Please connect with me on LinkedIn. If you're not on Linkedin, I'm on Facebook, Brian Burns on Facebook. I've got a welcome your connection there as well as Instagram, a twitter, Brian G. Burns on twitter or listen to the podcast.
Thanks, Brian
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