Motivational hour: Why I never eat alone

[Music] uh so great to be here with you all in Abu Dhabi uh let me start by telling you a little bit about myself in the last since 2016 myself and my team have taken cigar from 400 million to 15 billion of assets that is largely due to the power of networks and today I want to talk to you about that our tagline as a firm is capital culture and Network and that is really important let me start by asking you all a question who here in the last kind of three hours has gone up to a random person and introduce yourself raise your hands so very few of you you know and that's a big mistake because you've literally paid to be here and the people in this area have all paid to be here and they're paying to be here in order to meet each other so you have a huge opportunity after this to go up introduce yourselves to random people and that will be to your own benefit why is my presentation called Never Eat Alone I'm hoping to leave you with a few takeaways here that will change your ability to network first of all there is a book it's called Never Eat Alone by Keith ferazzi if you have not bought it I recommend you buy it it is a fantastic book it is my Bible of networking and so that is Insight number one for you Insight number two is what we spoke to early about a second ago which is the biggest impediment to networking is ultimately fear it's the fear of being rejected it's a fear of embarrassment and ultimately what I would tell you is it takes practice to network it Brees takes practice to overcome that fear and so go up say hi to random people introduce you yourself there is no shame actually some lady over there in red introduced herself to me earlier and that I thought that was great because I now have her business card and if I'm looking to recruit someone in this country I'm going to talk to her and so unbelievable it's really important to have that courage and so ultimately I'm hoping to leave you with W with a few takeaways firstly though is why is networking important Network networking is important because you're going to learn through networks every person you meet most likely knows something or knows more about something than you do and so networking is an incredible opportunity to learn it's also a great source of friendships the amount of people I have randomly met on LinkedIn that have become friends is kind of remarkable and so it's an incredible source of friendships and ultimately you know the worst thing in life is to be stuck with the same people your entire life being allowing new people to enter your life is deeply enriching and then it's fun you you know ultimately networks expand your horizons you end up doing new things I met some person randomly who asked me to walk to the North Pole with him and I ended up doing it and you know what it was incredible it was a very enriching experience and ultimately networking drives success right ultimately what is success but a combination of the people you meet and what you end up doing with them and so many many many reasons on why networking is important but there's a time in life for networking and this is really really important early on in your career it's really about what you know to do and later on in your career it's about who you know and so timing this is actually really important so now let's get down to the basics right there are really four things I want to leave you with in terms of how to build successful networks the first is to be deliberate and have a plan I like to say be deliberate and hustle the second is to be curious and generous the third is to get ready to get lucky and finally probably the most important one is followup and so I'm going to go through each one of these in a bit of detail and but if there's one thing you could take away it's probably this slide in terms of being deliberate and having a plan too many people and I'm I'm ready to bet most of you do this is you set up your meetings based on the order of emails in your inbox someone sends you an email and basically you respond you say oh it' be great to connect and then all of a sudden you or your assistant set up a meeting and it has nothing to do with what your objectives are and everything to do with the order in box that is a huge mistake and so what I do and what my process is is at the beginning of every year I think about like what are my objectives what what are the few things I really need to accomplish this year to be successful and those I do in the form of okrs and so I write those objectives I then think of who do I know that is going to help me meet those objectives and those will be the people that I prioritize meetings with then I think about who do I not know that I think could help me meet my objectives and I figure out a strategy to get to those people and then find fin there are people that are just super connectors and that are incredible energy givers that you are not certain they are going to be able to help you meet your objectives but ultimately you know that if you share your objectives with them they may be able to help and they're actually quite likely to be able to to help and I think one of the really important things in networking is when you're going out and you're meeting people sharing your objectives sharing your challenges is one of the most important things you could do because ultimately you do not know necessarily who is ultimately going to be able to help so being deliberate is really really really important now being deliberate doesn't get you anywhere unless you hustle and so this is a fun message I get I'm ready to bet not many of you have gotten this message I get kicked off of LinkedIn on a regular basis for the sheer amount of cold outreaches I do and this is the note you get from LinkedIn when they view you of having reached out to too many people and so ultimately cold Outreach it takes a lot of NOS to get to a yes when you have objectives one of the things I've learned is you have to get desensitized to nose most people that you meet in your life are going to say no to you but it takes 99 NOS to get to a yes and so ultimately hustling is incredibly valuable and today in the world of social media the tools we have that allow us to hustle are incredible incredible and Linkedin being one of the most important ones and so if any of you want to reach out to me on LinkedIn I actually respond to 100% of my LinkedIn messages it's something that we do uh and it's proved to be very helpful to me in life for example a group here called adq bought 15% of my firm last year we found them on LinkedIn and so that's pretty incredible uh my largest shareholder and one of my largest investors today found on LinkedIn and by the way many many many of our largest investors we sourced off of LinkedIn Details Matter and so when you do cold outreaches on LinkedIn there are ways to have an effective Outreach and there are ways to have an ineffective Outreach the dues of cold outreaches clear subject line mention a person familiar you know always look at like who are the common connections and mention that common connection you have be vulnerable like sharing a weakness or sharing a lack of knowledge is actually a great way to build a network because ultimately people want to feel like they're smart they want to share their intelligence with you and so being vulnerable and saying that you want to learn something from them is really useful uh be ready to compromise you know many people like if you reach out to me I'll often say hey instead of meeting me you'll meet my chief of staff that's a great entryway into my organization be ready to compromise don't be worried if the person you actually reach out to passes you on to someone else that is something that is very normal and then keep the emails or keep the LinkedIn to a reasonable length there is nothing worse than receiving a 10 paragraph email you know it is awful and so avoid that and then the don'ts spelling mistakes massive pet peeve of mine spelling mistakes are terrible no value proposition just saying Hey I want to add you to my network terrible idea terrible idea because you know that's just generic nobody kind of gets it um and then being aggressive I've literally had people that I've said hey you know I can't spend time like start yelling at me and Linkedin I'm like oh you know that is not cool and so the dos and dos of cold Outreach but the key here is volume you know get a lot of volume out because that's how lucky things will happen how to network being delivered and owning your calendar you know too many people only do one hour meetings it is a huge uge mistake it is a very bad use of your time to only do one hour meetings you got to break down your day into time increments in my case I do 15minute time increments and so that means you could have 15minute meetings you could have 30 minute meetings you have 45 minute meetings you could have one hour meetings and basically organize your day that way that is really really really valuable because it allows you to fit much more in your day and then it also allows you to think about like what is the optimal setting what is the optim optimal tool to build this relationship is it going to be a lunch is it a dinner is it a group lunch do you bring the person I'm Canadian so do you bring the person to a hockey game um you know all of these things are tools and you should really put a list of all the different tools you have because you'd be surprised at how many tools you have I've even taken people to church with me and so there's a lot of different things you could do that will be kind of interesting volunteer activity that's that's a great one you know we go and we make pies it's really fun and great way to build a deep connection with with someone because ultimately if you take someone out of their comfort zone They will always be actually quite grateful for you the other thing is you'll see in my agenda I got all these little blue boxes that's really important that's really important and it actually goes to one of the next things which is being curious and generous being curious before you meet someone is really important all those little blue boxes are prepar note Preparatory notes for all my meetings you really got to maximize the time you have with an individual so try doing as much homework on that person ahead of time it's really really really valuable because ultimately the person you're meeting with may be way more than who you think they are you know ultimately if you look at my business card it only says CEO of cigar it doesn't capture the boards I'm on the Charities I'm involved in the groups and clubs I'm part of all those things matter and figuring that out is really important because ultimately you may think you're meeting a person for something but realize that that person is actually the key to three other objectives that you have because of his other activities especially in places like these where a lot of people are on a lot of boards their business card captures only the tip of the iceberg of who they actually are so doing your homework is really important finally I'd say one of the most important things to networking is actually generosity you should think think about a network as an energy exchange you're bringing information you're bringing connections you're receiving information and connections it's really an energy transfer and ultimately you want to be with people that are going to be generous you want to be people that are givers because there's nothing worse than a negative energy person and so if you enter every relationship by saying hey I've read that you do this by the way I think I could improve your life by introducing you to this person or this organiz ation all of a sudden your ability to build a meaningful relationship has increased meaningfully so entering every interaction with generosity is extremely important and it is one of the things I would tell you the most when you meet someone you think about it as an opportunity for an energy exchange get ready to get lucky this is actually probably the thing that has the most important impact in my life is luck but luck actually in my mind is a are really two things it's about being prepared for luck and being positioned for luck you know you you look at this Bear right he's like well positioned the fish are literally jumping in his mouth you know coming to events like these coming to little conferences that are focused on your industry there are literally things you could do in your life that is like that Bear's positioning you know positioning for luck is really important preparing for luck is also really important and preparing for luck is basically everything else I've spoken about today it's about being deliberate it's about being having done your homework it's about understanding the full context of an individual or an event that combination will mean that you will constantly bump into the people you want to meet most you know for example there's one person I've been W to meet here for months and I've been reaching out to tons of people and last night at the last minute I said yes to a dinner by by the way there's no better way to position yourself for luck than saying yes to as many things as possible and so I went to a dinner and by luck the person I've been chasing for months was sat directly in front of me at dinner and you know that happens to me continuously but it happens to me continuously because I prepare I'm positioned and I always say yes and that is something that's really important yes should be the most so many people say no if you could say yes it's going to be way better for your life and then finally you know be grateful and follow up you know this is my this was actually my pile of business cards last week that that i' collected over the last few months and you know you look at the pile and you're like God this is daunting like I can't believe I need to follow up with all these people but even if you follow up late it's okay like people are impressed by the fact that you follow up because so many people don't follow up so many people you meet with say hey I'll introduce you to this person or that person I think never do it and so the fact of you following up already differentiates you it gives you a massive competitive Advantage one of the kind of leaders in the world of private Equity once told me you know Paul you know the way I judge a person's office is by the speed of followup and you know ultimately his view is that within a week of an important meeting a handwritten note or some kind of gift is really really valuable and so following up is is really really great there is no limit to how much you can compliment or praise a person in a meeting you've just had you know there's no limit telling people hey this is the most amazing meeting I've had this week you know great way to make someone happy and so there's no limit of being overly thankful be thankful be praiseful it's incredible do lots of favors you you know one of the most important things is in your life tons of people ask you hey can you introduce me to this person and and the biggest mistake people make is they think of their Network as a finite finite resource a network is exponential the more you help build your friends build their Network the more your network grows and so being as generous as possible with introductions that take five minutes is one of the easiest things you could do and so do lots of five minute favors actually in fact schedule five minute favors in your day there's another really easy thing to do which is wish people happy birthday you know Facebook and social media channels tell you you know happy birthday like the birthday of all your friends in your network use that and send them a little note because you'll be incredible by the amount of people that then look you up on LinkedIn and say huh I've not seen Paul in like 10 years but you know he and I are now doing the same thing maybe we should connect so sending people little happy birthdays sending people gifts what I do is I send people books on their birthday you know I send them a book of something I've read recently it really matters people really appreciate it and what ends up happening is that they're willing to give back they're willing to invest time with you and again I have always follow up twice because it's that important you know you follow up follow up follow up it's one of the things that I really hope that after today you really take this away follow up make sure that you bring value to the people you know so that leaves it to our conclusion which is really four things that'll really make you effective at building networks firstly be deliberate have a plan hustle second be curious and generous networking is an energy transfer third get ready to be lucky be prepared and positioned for luck you'll be amazed at how lucky you get and finally be grateful and follow up I wish you all an amazing conference and I hope that you all take the chance to go say hello to someone Rand thank you