Speaker 1: People say that your network is your net worth. So in this video, I'm gonna show you some of the best strategies that I have come across when it comes to developing your network for business and making a higher income. Now this is from my personal experience working in sales, then becoming an entrepreneur, doing YouTube and all these types of things. And so through this process, I was able to meet a lot of different type of characters at all different levels. So I'm gonna pass off some of the lessons I've learned with you in hopes that you can build your own network as well. Now I wanna give a huge shout out for Folk App for helping make this video possible, but more on them in a bit. So now when it comes to developing your network, the first thing that actually you need to look at is not externally, not other people, you need to look at first yourself. What kind of person do you want to be? Because a lot of people, they don't even think about that, right? I would say most of the average people, they just kind of live their life. They are probably just similar to the people they grew up around, whether it's their parents, their friends from high school, and then they just continue to live on their life and they don't really think about who they want to be. The reality is in this life, I personally think you can become anyone you want to be. If you wanna be fit, jacked, making a ton of money, everybody loves you. If you want these things, it's actually possible, right? Don't look at the average and be like, oh, other people aren't doing it, I can't do it either. You can actually become who you want to be. The question is how hard you wanna work in order to become that thing? Because most people aren't actually willing to do the work. They can talk and say they want these things, but how many people are actually put in the blood, sweat, and tears to become that person? So for me personally, what I've done is that every three months, I'm constantly re-evaluating what kind of person I want to become. Whatever it is that you care about, whatever it is that you want, however you see yourself, you have to really be very crystal clear on the type of person you wanna be. Because once you define who you want to become, you start creating these values of your morals and ethics and your standards for yourself and the people around you, then you start to hold yourself accountable and you start taking responsibility for yourself. And also when you meet other people, you can see whether or not they fit your values as well. Because if they don't fit your values, it's cool, man. You don't have to hang out with them. You can find other people. And if you find people that do fit your values and you find that it's very difficult to find those type of people, once you actually meet them, you won't want to let go. So clearly defining who you want to be is the most important. Even for me, I put together these vision boards. So I'll find different images on Google and stuff like that, Pinterest, put them together in a board, and I'm like, okay, visually, this is how I want to live my life. I also have a couple core values and things that I personally care about. For example, I want to be one that inspires others. And so that's very core to me. And obviously I'm gonna be more attracted to people who also want to inspire and help other people. And so defining who you are is important, which actually leads to the second thing, which is you want to be very specific on who you spend your time with. You are the average of your five friends. You just can't help but to pick up their habits, even if it's subconscious. I noticed that when I hang out with some people who are more lazier, and even though I'm not that type of person, just because I'm around them, I start to think, oh, maybe it's okay to do this. Maybe it's okay to drink regularly. Maybe it's okay to whatever, right? But when I'm around people who are very disciplined with their health and they take accountability for themselves and their actions, then I start behaving in the same way. I remember there was one instance where I had a really close friend. He was telling me like, he's very into bodybuilding and things like that. And he's like, yeah, I don't drink. Or I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Why don't you drink? He's like, well, if you think about it, drinking doesn't really help me achieve any of my goals that I want. I'm bodybuilding. Alcohol is not helping me. It's actually hurting me. So it doesn't really make me that happy. So why would I do it? I was like, okay, that's pretty interesting. Then I start to reflect on myself. Like, do I need to drink? And of course, you know, like I occasionally here and there going out and stuff like that, but regularly, no, I don't do that, right? It's because this particular person inspired me to make me question my drinking habits. I never had a problem with drinking, but it's just like when you're around people who want to go out all the time, that's what the case is. But when you're around people who are focused on fitness and stuff, then eating junk food, drinking and all that stuff, it just kind of goes out the window, right? So it's just like being around a certain person, you become more like them in a certain capacity. So what I've realized, not everyone's going to be good at everything, right? There's rarely, you're going to find someone who's really great with relationships. They're really good in business. They're really good in the health and they just have that perfect trifecta. There are some people who do have that, but it's very uncommon, but more likely than not, you're going to find people that are good at one or two things, and you could be friends with them and connect with them there. For example, if you're friends with this fitness guy, yeah, maybe that guy in fitness can train you and make your body to the tip of the top shape it could possibly be. But maybe this guy is not the best with finances, right? So you don't take finance advice from this guy. You take fitness advice from this guy, right? For me, I have different friends for different pockets and we relate on different things, right? And because of that, if I were to bring all my friends and put them together in a room, a lot of times they don't have a lot in common because they're just good at different things or they're interested in different things and that's cool. But for me, I can be friends with people individually or friends in different groups because everyone has some type of value, right? Nobody has to be perfect. So if you do actually want to build your network, you're going to want to have a place to keep track of all of your contacts, right? And that's why I want to talk about our sponsors for today's video, which is Folk. Folk is a software that creates an easy way to keep track of all your key contact. Keeps it very simple, streamlined and easy to use. By just kind of looking at the UI of Folk app, you can see that it's a very simple board. That's one thing I like about this software is that they don't overcomplicate it. They don't give you features you don't need and you never use. They're only going to give you the things that you actually want. For Folk, you can actually use it for many different use cases. You can use it as a CRM. You can use it to keep in contact with contacts that you meet. So for this example, right, we put together kind of like a sales pipeline. If we're doing a lot of B2B deals, which we do for our marketing and advising side of the business, we can basically say, okay, these are the contacts that we have talked to. These are people that we want to reach out to. These are people that we are currently in discussion with. These are people that we send an offer to and they know our products and services and that way to make a decision and negotiate. These are people that got to the place where it's like time to sign the contract. These are people that are signed, right? So essentially why Folk is interesting is because you can actually just drag and drop these little boxes to different parts, making it very easy for myself and the whole team to see what actually is going on in the business in the sales cycle. Not only that, but you can actually send emails, right? For example, quote emails, warm emails, right from the platform. So you can say, okay, these are 20 people that I haven't reached out to, but they're on my contact list. We have their name, we have their email, and now we are going to send a bulk email. So that's one of the interesting features that you can do because it's not only a CRM, but a outbound email tool as well. And another interesting feature of Folk is that if you go on LinkedIn and you have the Chrome extension for Folk, what you're able to do is you're basically able to use the Chrome extension and just get this person's contact at a press of a button. So you just go to the person's LinkedIn page, press add client to list, and it's going to add to your list on Folk, which you can email them later. So as you can see, Folk makes it very simple, right? Find the contact, get the contact, get their email address, put them in the boards, send the email to everyone's, people that respond, you move them through the sales process, people that don't respond or they get rejected, you continue the process for outbound prospect if you were to do that. Of course, you know, with this kind of board, it's very flexible. You can use it for different things like investors that you talk to that you want to raise money from, right? The potential is kind of limitless. The most important part is that it's easy to use. The boards are simple. It's easy drag and drop and you can send email. So if you want to check out Folk and try it for yourself, check the link in the description. So now that you know who you want to be, you know what kind of person you want to surround yourself with, the next tip is find where these people hang out so that you can be in the same proximity as them. Proximity is like a concept that I've been really thinking deeply about, right? And that is the idea where if you're just in the certain area as other people you want to hang around, the chances of you actually connecting with them is going to be significantly higher versus if you were just in the middle of nowhere kind of town like for me personally, right? I'm in the whole crypto web three NFT scene because the industry is not as popular as it was before. It's just the market's much smaller. And so there's not as many people working in the space. So for me, I want to meet other entrepreneurs who are continuing to build in this space because I believe there's a future in it. I have to intentionally fly around the world to different type of events, whether it's to South Korea, Singapore, to Japan, to America, right? Wherever the case is, I have to fly to these places just to be in the proximity of the people I want to meet for just a few days so I have an opportunity to meet them. So how I'll do it is like, let's say I'm going to Korea like literally tomorrow, right? You know, I know some people in the industry, but then I haven't really made any plans when going to South Korea. What's going to happen is I'm going to go there. I'm going to text a couple of friends and then go to a couple of events. And then they're going to be like, yo, Patrick, you gotta come here, gotta come here, gotta come here, you gotta meet this guy. So when I go to the events, friends of friends will introduce me to somebody and then I start meeting all these different people that, you know, I had no plans of meeting, but my intention is just to be in a room in the right place and then some magic happens. And a lot of times I'll meet people that I never even thought of wanting to meet them, but then they end up becoming a really close friend just because we connect on certain things. For you, you got to think about like, whatever it is that you want, you have to figure out where these people are hanging out, right? You got to figure out who the connector is. So for me, you know, I'm not like a super glue connector. I know a lot of people, but I'm not the type of person that like connects everybody. There are people who are just like really good at that, right? And so what I try to do is try to find people who love doing that. Like this is their hobby, this is just their passion. They love connecting people, right? And if you're someone of value, they will connect you to other people of value because the second is proximity. Go to these events where there's just a high concentration of people you want to meet, even if it's just for a few days for a conference, because a lot of times, like, I'll go to a conference in like, let's say Japan, and in just in one trip for like one week, I'll meet more people than I did in the last three months, right? Just because of the proximity of being around the right people at the right time. So you can get a lot of done in a short period of time. Don't think you have to like constantly, constantly network throughout the entire year. You can literally just be like work, work, work, work, work. There's an event, get connected with the plug, get connected, meet like a hundred people that are actually relevant to your career, and then bounce, go back home and work, work, work, work, and then do it again for the next event, right? And so for me, that's a strategy that has worked pretty well. And I'm sure a lot of people also do that as well, especially if you're someone who is very busy and you're an entrepreneur, right? The next tip I actually have for you is going to be super important, and that is offer some kind of value. So even if you follow all the tips that I've given you so far, which is define who you want to be, who you want to hang out with, where these people hang out, you actually have to offer some kind of value because if you don't offer any value, even if you follow all these steps, nobody's going to want to hang out with you because there's no reason to. And that doesn't mean that people are superficial. It doesn't mean that they're fake. It just means that you don't have anything to offer, right? For me, I'm pretty good at making content. I have another YouTube channel called The Parallax where I specifically talk about crypto and NFTs and Web3, and I do a lot of interviews with founders. And so with just that YouTube channel, a lot of people want to meet me because they see that I can talk about their projects, I can help promote them, I can do an interview with them and share their story. And a lot of entrepreneurs find value in that because they want to promote whatever it is that they're selling. The second value that I give is that I'm pretty good at marketing, right? And so a lot of people, they will try to hire me as an advisor or consultant to help them with their sales and marketing for their project. And because I have the ability to help them with sales, because that's my specialty, just applying it to a specific industry, people want to work with me or they want free advice. They want to know my opinion on the market and they want to know how I would sell something if I were them. And because I am literally helping people make money by one, giving them more exposure with my YouTube channel, that also gives them a boost of credibility if I talk about them, right? If I actually help them with the marketing, essentially, if you really boil it down, my value is that I help people make money, right? So if you're walking around and everybody knows that you're that guy that helps people make money, of course, they're gonna at least want to shake your hand and meet you. So that's my value that I provide into the market. So you gotta think for yourself, what value is it that you provide? You can't just be like, hey, I'm just here to be a fly on the wall. Nobody wants that because then you're literally no different from any other person that wants to leech off another person. You gotta come in and say like, how can I help you, essentially, right? You just need to be good at one thing. If you can't help them with that one thing, that can literally break you in the doors. I've seen a lot of people who don't have much business skills, but they're really good with the camera and the videography, right? And what they'll do is they'll just try to connect with famous people and be like, hey, I'll take your pictures for you. You don't have to pay me. I just take pictures and videos so that you can use it for B-roll, whatever it is, your YouTube channel. And then they get in the circle. Eventually, they move up the ladder and they get more opportunities because they're just really good at taking pictures, right? Of course, like influencers like me and other people, they want people to come take pictures because we gotta post stuff on social media. So find some kind of value that people actually want. Find the reason for why people will want you to be around. And then you'll find that you're gonna constantly meet people. You'll figure out different ideas of how you can provide more value. And then the next thing you know, you're in the industry, you're one of them, and you're part of the club. Those are gonna be my best tips when it comes to building your network for business. If you enjoyed it, make sure to give this video a like, subscribe, and let me know in the comments what's the one thing that you learned in this video that you want to apply right away. With that said, my name is Patrick Dang, and I will see you in the next one.