Your Network Is Your Net Worth

Austin gave me something I didn’t expect.

It wasn’t one big moment. It was the conversations in between everything else. The ones after the panels, when people stop performing and start being real. The late nights where people actually tell you what’s working, what’s not, and what it really takes to build something that lasts.

And I came back with one thing that I can’t get out of my head.

Your network is not built on how many people you know. It is built on how many people trust you.

In this episode, I talk about what that actually means when you’re in it for real. Not just adding connections or sending messages. I’m talking about how relationships actually form in business and why the people who win long term are the ones people believe in, not just the ones who shout the loudest.

I go into the stuff I see all the time on LinkedIn. Cold messages that go straight into a pitch without even trying to understand the person on the other side. No context, no effort, no care. Just hoping something sticks. It doesn’t work. And if anything, it pushes people further away.

We break down what I call the shift from cold to warm. That moment where someone stops seeing you as another message in their inbox and starts seeing you as someone worth listening to. That only happens when you bring something to the table first. Real value. Clear thinking. Proof that you can actually solve problems, not just talk about them.

I also get into how being in the right rooms changes your direction completely. One conversation can save you months. The right partnership can move you forward faster than trying to do everything on your own. When you stop competing with everyone and start building with the right people, things start to open up.

This one is about playing the long game. Showing up properly. Doing what you say you’re going to do. Building a name that actually means something when you’re not in the room.

If you’re building a business, this is the work that sits underneath everything else.

If it resonates, share it with someone who’s on the same path, and leave a review so we can get it out to more people who need it.

And have a think about this while you’re listening…

Where are you trying to force results instead of building real trust?

Transcript

Austin Trip And Big Lesson

SPEAKER_00 0:06

I've been searching in the quantum.

Trust And Referrals Drive Growth

Build Value Before You Add

Why Cold Outreach Backfires

Four Ways To Create Value

The Right Rooms Create Leads

Partnerships Reputation And Integrity

Introductions And Consistency Compound

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Wills Way podcast. Hope everyone's keeping blessed. I have just had the craziest week in Texas, Austin, and wow, what a city it's been. But it's kind of inspired me this week. I've actually been invited down to Austin from a partner called Fluke Reliability. And if anyone knows like engineering or electrical, everyone will know the Fluke Mulemy, it's the yellow multi me, it's the iconic brand that everybody uses. It kind of represents a level of uh of quality and premium. And I'm very blessed to say that we actually partnered up with these guys within my business. And it's a blessing to actually say this. But again, you know, what we've built and maintained reliability and the engineering business has allowed us to be able to have these opportunities. And it got me thinking this week, you know, because it's been very inspiring. I think when you get invited somewhere like this, and you get invited down, they pay for the trip, they pay for the flights, and we spoke on some really cool subjects, but they really, really loved the philosophy, especially in the US of the English way of doing things in the UK, and you know, understanding the the way that we market and understand exactly how we can solve problems for our customers. It's been a big blessing, and networking is so huge, man, and it's it's such a big important part of business. And you have to remember when we're buying products, we're buying from people that sell them. You know, we're not actually buying, you know, a physical thing, we're buying a solution to what could solve our problems. Networking is so important. So today's podcast, we're gonna talk about you like your networking and how your net worth becomes your network. And I've got eight real key points that I've kind of put on my phone here that I want to kind of talk about. I want to reference it back to my business and to anyone that may be starting a business. I know that we had a podcast a few weeks ago about starting a business and stuff like that. That one of the key reasons for success as well, for most startups as well, is the ability to be able to make yourself known within the industry, and that's a very difficult thing if you're starting from scratch. And I really think it's really important that people understand that opportunities will flow through people. Okay, so again, I know when everyone starts a business, they want to make their brand look good, and I do think it's very important that you do look good and you look like you can solve the problems and you look professional and you look like you have value to provide, but also without really meeting people and driving through you know, people and and and making that network really stable and strong, it's really difficult. And I think a lot of businesses do fail like the first year, not down to the fact they can't do what they can do. I do really think it's down to the fact they just don't know enough people and they haven't built their network big enough to be able to survive and you know communicate around the realms of you know opportunity, if that makes sense. So, what is a network? What is a network? So a network is a layer of people or a layer of opportunities that you find within starting a business, and we need to understand that business growth rarely comes from ads or advertising yourself, it comes from trust. Do you know what I mean? People that trust to do what you can do, and also that people that recommend you, right? Recommendations are probably the first line I would say of word of mouth when you first start, when someone, you know, you do a good service for someone or you provide or s or solve a problem for someone, when that person that you've provided a problem or solved the problem for really trusts you after that, they are quite highly going to recommend you to other people. And if that person is in a position of power or has some form of kind of clout, we could call it, or or layer of um, shall we say, um, hierarchy within their business model, they can carry a lot of positives for you, if that makes sense as well. We have to remember, you know, reputation always travels through people, right? And it'll always be faster to go through people than what marketing can do. So marketing is more awareness about kind of who you are and what you can do. But when you've actually solved the problem for someone and you've done business for someone and you can convert that relationship into a network, that's what becomes really, really, really valuable. Okay, so what we need to do is focus on value before you know we get contacts, right? It's great to be able to go out and build a network, okay, and it is really important that you go out there and start doing that. But where's the value first? And this is chicken and egg situation, it's really difficult because you want to start adding people, but if you haven't got anything to show them or add any you know value to them when you start adding them, you know, you might have a connection on LinkedIn, for example, but if you've got no case studies or you're not posting anything, they're not going to start to gain to trust you. It's just it's just a contact within a social media feed, if that makes sense. You know, you can add a thousand people, but if you're not posting anything of any relevance, it's really difficult. So before we start going on that huge spree of adding people and all the rest of it, we need to make sure that we've got some sort of communication line into the products and value propositions that we offer and also some case studies. And this is really difficult for people that don't have you know initial work initially or you're starting up, but the case studies need to be built around what you can do and the value you can provide, okay? And people and the medium of that and accelerating that is really important. Once you've got your real value proposition and you start going out to the marketplace and adding people, they're gonna see your feed, they're gonna do what they need to do, okay. We also have to remember marketing doesn't just come digitally, right? I think this day and age, everything is digital now. We've got social media, everyone's trying to obviously post and promote their businesses through a digital networking medium because we can reach more people, but that we have to understand the wider the network. Sorry, apologies for that. The wider the network, okay, the less impactful it can be, okay. So we also need to remember that the marketing efforts and the people that we talk to is not just purely online, right? We've got to be face to face with the people that we're gonna talk to. So is that conferences? Do you know what I mean? Can you go to a conference where you know where a lot of people are gonna be? So one thing that we did very early on is there's a conference called Main Tech for our engineering business. We didn't have a stand there first initially, we didn't do that. We went actually attended the show. We actually started talking to people, talking to suppliers, talking to people that were actually doing what we wanted to do at the show. You know, asking, was it worth it? How many people do you meet? Where's the networks? What type of people are you talking to? And even through that point of where we went, we met customers there and we weren't even exhibiting, if that makes sense. And we were letting people know who we are, what we're doing, and all the rest of it. And we obviously went there, branded t-shirts, went there to have good conversations with people. And that particular year, I end up ended up getting a really lucrative speaking slot at the event. So albeit we weren't exhibiting, I spoke to the uh event organizer and said, Look, we're gonna be here. Please can we go up and talk? Have you got a little slot that we can go up and talk at? And again, you know, some of these slots you have to pay for, some that you don't. But again, if you don't ask, you don't get. And at the at the time, a lot of these were advertised to be paid for speaking gigs. And when we spoke to Jos, um, Joss Diamond, she's she's a lovely lady. We we know her very well now, and we actually have had free shows and we pay to be there. She's a great, great person in the network as well. Do you know what I mean? She knows many people, and we've developed a really good relationship with her. But that was the start of that relationship, if that makes sense. And we actually, when we presented there, we had like four or five people really interested in what we were doing just from one presentation. I don't think any business came directly from it, but it was just about getting your message out in terms of what are we here to do. And we spoke in that first initial kind of starting the business section. What is your value proposition? What are you out there to actually solve? You know, what is your business doing in terms of solving other people's problems and their pain point? And this is another thing I want to kind of elaborate on. This is more of a sales thing, but we have to understand the bigger the pain it is for the people, and how much your solution can solve that pain point, the bigger the impact in terms of trust when you deliver that, okay? And when that is the biggest maximum amount of pain that you've you've you've saved that customer or that person, the biggest impact then becomes on a word of mouth spectrum where they're able to then promote what you're doing, okay? So even when we've initially first started, we didn't have a huge amount of people in within our network, and it was the first two years was grow the network. Grow how many people we added, engineer managers, people that needed our business model within the network, and post as many case studies and testimonials about how we've solved them problems. And what we were doing was very clever because we weren't directly going out adding these people and straight away messaging them on the cold call message saying, Do you need any business or do you need any condition monitoring or do you need any vibration services? That's a huge no-no. And if you're doing that, you're actually potentially damaging your reputation. And I know it is a little bit of a sales rule where you can reach out to people and you know, X amount of people, and you might get one yes out of 20 no's. But remember, some of these contacts and people there may contact you in the future when they feel like you've A got something to offer them, or B, they can trust that the solutions that you've got are able to help. And sometimes that means being patient and adding these people and in the background, knowing knowing that your posts and some of the case studies and the things that you're doing is going to help them, okay? And that has happened for us as well. A lot of the connections that we've added have come maybe a year later on, you know, within the inbox or reached out to us saying, Oh, that that was a really cool case that you put on there. Can you help us? Or is there any way you can do a trial or elaborate a little bit further on how this could work for our company? Because remember, not everyone's the same. Remember, when we're looking at customer base, you might get some customers that do very similar things, but they may have different problems. Then they may not have the same, some do, right? And and that that's the beautiful thing. When you solve a problem for one customer, what you can do is put them case studies and them reference pieces out in terms of how you've solved that. And the way that you want to do that is do that through a medium that catches their attention. Okay. And I get a case study can be really good, but it can be quite wordy, and they're gonna have to read that, and not many people have time. This is where the podcast for us is got leaps and bounds because on the podcast we talk very much, you know, the reliability gang podcast, not this podcast I'm doing here. That is the engineering podcast. And I would say as well, if you've got a business, no matter what it is, if you have not got a podcast and you're talking about the things you're solving, you are missing out entirely. Okay, we have to understand that the the nature of how we talk and how we communicate is changing. This is the medium now, okay. I'm talking to you through this camera, I'm talking to you through these through this microphone, and this is outputted to a place where everyone can receive this information, but no one's just gonna stumble across it. This needs to go on my social media, which it will do. This is probably where you're gonna hear one of these clips right now, one of the clips that I I snip out for this. I can guarantee this will be one of them, okay? This is the type of clip that needs to grab people's attention in terms of this is how we solve your problems, this is what we can do. So for me, this is in two avenues. Obviously, for the engineering business and trying to solve people's problems through maintenance and proactive maintenance and trying to save the money with downtime so the plants don't fail or the assets don't fail, and we can predict them failures before they happen, which can save millions of pounds in downtime costs. Whereas this particular podcast is to help you guys start a business in terms of how do I actually generate a network that's worth having, and how do I generate a network that's going to be able for, you know, for me to convey a message for you guys to solve other people's problems as well, if that makes sense. So focusing on the value before the contacts is really important, and knowing exactly what your value propositions are is really important as well. You need to have somewhere where you add someone, you know, say for example you add 10 people and they go back to your page and you haven't got a single post on how you can help. How does that look? You know, it looks like almost a cold call, doesn't it? You know what I'm saying? When you've got content on your page, when you've added someone and they're intrigued by why they've added you, if they land on your page, what have you got there that's gonna offer them something valuable? Okay. Remember, first impressions really count. We've got to understand that. And when you make a wrong first impression, it can be very damaging. You know, if you can, if you add someone or you in mail them without even having them as a connection, it's gonna very much be seen as a sales call, okay? And don't get me wrong, I'm an engineer, um you know, I'm an engineer and director of my own business. Do you know how many of these messages I get a day? I probably get about five to ten messages a day of unsolicited cold calls. And do you know what they get ignored? They do because no one has managed to even draw a warm connection with me, right? And they also don't do their research. I mean, some of these people that are are messaging me are messaging me for foreign exchange. I know we're doing business in Europe, I get that. But this was three or four years ago when we weren't doing any business abroad. Do you know what I mean? Some people are messaging me completely, you know, it's not even within my stratosphere to think about some of the services they're offering. Does that make sense? So they haven't really done their research on who I am and what I'm doing before they've even messaged me. And that comes across lazy, okay? It does. And you can understand when you know when someone's created an automatic message and fired it out to a million people without any impact, you can read the messages and you know that's been generated by AI, right? And don't get me wrong, AI does generate a lot of these messages, and AI can do it very well. But when you have just got an inbox randomly, you don't know who the person is, there's no introduction, and they're trying to straight sell you something, it's a poor strategy, it's not going to work. I can tell you that now. So here's another thing with networking. Don't be fooled by it. Remember that networking is building some meaningful, trustworthy relationships. It's not about spamming a hundred people and then spamming out and expecting you to be able to get a fan or whatever. And even when I used to do music, how many times have other artists just messaged me out of the blue a link to their music without even saying hello? Do you think I'm gonna listen to that music? Of course I'm not. And you've got to think of how many people they've done this to, just you know, without even generating a conversation, without even understanding who I am and how their music adds value to me. So when I was on the music circuit, it was very much build these relationships first, have conversations with people, understand who they are and how your music can actually impact them. And when you do that, you start to build some better connections and you start to build trust, okay? You've got to understand that trust is almost like a scale, like it's like a meter, okay? When you meet someone, it's cold, and when you get to the end, it's hot. That's how you need to see the scale. You need to understand that are you are you entering that conversation at a cold point? And how are you warming them up until you actually ask them to do something? Okay, if you're asking them to do something on the colder end of the scale, I guarantee you will not get a response. You just won't, okay? And you're wasting your time. If you can try to build that relationship so it's warm, the chances of you getting a response or something out of it are ten times more likely to happen. Okay. So we need to understand ways to create value, okay? We need to understand what that value is. So there's four things that are really important when we're trying to create content around that, right? And we need to break them into four things, okay? Because these are really important, okay. Number one, right, sharing knowledge, okay, whether that's within my industry or whether what I'm doing, it's kind of what I'm doing now. I'm sharing something that I have learned from experience that is gonna save other people either time, money, or it's gonna save them embarrassment, okay. Them three things. If you can share something like that within your content, it is gonna be deemed valuable, okay. Make an introductions as well. Okay, so understand how you can make introductions and how can you make introductions to who you are, how can you start to create a story or narrative that isn't buy this, right? You want to be able to set a scene and introduce yourself to who you are, what your values are within business, and how can you help other people? But remember, don't go straight into to try and help people, go into in into understanding what your value is. Who are you as a person? Because that is what's gonna generate the trust between you and the person that you're dealing with, if that makes sense. And that is so inherently vital that you do that because remember, trust is what we need to build more meaningful relationships, okay? Give advice. Okay, giving advice isn't necessarily sharing knowledge, okay? It's different. Sharing knowledge is sharing something about your industry that you know of that other people don't. Advice is more about you know your experience, a bit like what I'm doing now. I'm sharing my advice, and advice needs to be generated through story, it needs to be generated through experience, okay? So when I give advice, it's generally I fucked up in the past, this was the impact and it hurt me. Pain point. Remember, we're leveraging on that pain point, and here's what I did to get around it, and here's what you can do so you don't make the same mistake. So advice is always really key. And remember, advice needs to always be rooted in experience in terms of saying this is what I did wrong, and this is how I'm going to make it better. This is how I made it better, and this is how I improved it, but also saying to other people, you don't have to make the same mistakes as what I did, okay? And also, I'd say, again, another way to create value is helping someone win. How can you help them win? Like a lot of people out there want to be able to progress and move forward, right? Whether that's within their industry or whether what it even in life in general, okay? And obviously sharing knowledge and giving advice can help someone win, but show them and tell them how they can get there, okay? Again, like we said with the experience, if you've gone through something that can add value to someone, people are going to be able to relate to the story. And if you can create that connection in terms of relatability, that's when you can build trust. So we have to always remember, we're always trying to build that trust, and we're always trying to take someone down the cold end of the spectrum all the way to the warm end. The warmer they get, the more likely it is for you to be able to build a strong connection. And remember, networks doesn't like for me, we don't just want one off sale. That's not how you scale, that's not how you sustain the business. One off sale is great, but what about repeated sales? What about repeated things? So remember, when you do deliver something and someone is interested, you've got them into a really warm place. And if you don't keep them there at that warm scale and they start to gradually come down the scale, they're gonna lose trust with you again. So how do you keep them warm? Okay, but also you want to understand you want a customer for life. So is what you're offering able to give them something more, or is it just a one-stop shop sale and repeat? Because if that is the case with your business, you're gonna really struggle because you're gonna have to find more people to sell to, right? And and you're gonna have to keep building that bar up to that person just to sell them one thing. You want to build that bar up with that one person and sell them multiple things that can add value and help them within what they're doing. Okay, so maintain reliability. We've got three divisions. We've got detect, solve, and improve. So detect is about finding the problems, finding the issues with predictive maintenance technologies and predictive, you know, predictive tech tech like vibration analysis, and we can test mowers and gearboxes and pumps so we can tell the customer when they're gonna fail before they do. But when we've told them this information, we've got the solve division that can come in and actually repair these things, but in a precision way, you know, in a way that nobody else does, in a way that you know keeps the asset running and moving for longer, so they don't have to keep getting interrupted. There's a value proposition. Then you've got improve, which is how do we actually find the root cause of these problems when we've actually detected the issue, and how do we ensure it doesn't happen again? So there's another value proposition for the customer, knowing that once we've dealt with that, the asset is gonna live longer, they don't have to go through this distressful cycle again in terms of what they're doing. So, really important that we give value first and opportunity will follow later. Okay, we need to really think about that. Number three, the right rooms change everything, and this is so so true. Okay, when I was at Accelerate this week in Austin, it was the right room, okay. There were so many customers there that we could help, and again, you know, it does help that I was British, it helped that I was from England because I love the English accent, but it wasn't the fact that that was the only valuable thing. If I had been talking a load of stuff that they're not really necessarily interested in, it wouldn't have made a difference at all, okay. The fact is, it made a difference because there's a lot of value that I was talking about, and it was very relatable to their plans in terms of what I was doing. So when I was on a couple of the polls, I was very strategic in terms of what am I going to talk about here? How am I gonna be able to talk to this audience? But also how am I able to highlight some of these problems that they probably all have, and and that was from experience, but how did I solve them? Okay, in what way did I solve them? How was it unique that I solved the problem through my problem-solving abilities? And because I did that after the actual poll in the evening when we had a little networking event, everyone was having a few drinks, it was a good vibe, everybody was, you know, really bouncing off the day, and everybody was really, you know, it's great when everyone's in the same industry and everyone's talking the same things. But what is more beautiful about the fact is that it already sowed a seed of a lot of these customers, okay? So after that, we come up we come away with 10 leads, 10 people I spoke to that night that were interested in what we can do for them in the U.S. Okay, this opens up a whole new country for us. Do you know what I mean? And we can help anyone anywhere with our business. I know that. We've experienced that last nine years. And I'm so confident what we can do because we've already delivered these results. But a lot of the conversations I was having with these people was emphasizing the pain points, really bringing out what is hurting you right now, then saying, look, this is what we've done to solve this problem for multiple customers. And if you come with us, we can solve these problems, all right? And this is what it's about is solving the problems. But in between these conversations, I'm also asking them about themselves. You know what I mean? Do you have any kids? You know, what are you into? What do you love? What sport are you into? This is where you have to become interested in them. And this is really careful, you have to be careful as well, because it's great when you know you can solve a problem of theirs, but you can become a little bit, you know, if you get carried away, you can say, oh, well, we can do this, we can sell you this, and it then becomes a bit of a sales pitch, right? What we're trying to do is almost get them to ask you how it can how the problem can be solved. But also what you need to do as well is start to understand who they are as a person as well. Do you know what I'm saying? You know, what do they like? Do you know have they got any pets? Are they dog lovers? You're now starting to ask them questions to understand who they are, and when you do that, you start to gain trust, okay? Because you're starting to understand who they are and you're starting to be interested, not in the sale, but who they are as people, okay? When you start to build these things, you know, uh for example, sport is a really good one in our industry and and football as well, you know. And sometimes, even I'm an Arsenal supporter, I've got a few customers that are uh Spurs supporters. Big up the Arsenal, by the way, we're doing very well right now. Not gonna jinx anything. But these conversations might cause a bit of banner, but they can also really strengthen a relationship, even though if you support opposite teams, because it also has something that you both have something in common with. Does that make sense? And also it's a great conversational starter when you're when you're a customer. And this is something that you also have to do when you're with your customer and you start to gain and and they're yours and you're you're doing services with them, you need to know who they are because the conversations that you have can't be all on business, okay? You've got to be able to have a hook line that you can tie into or ask them about something, you know, how's the family? How are the kids getting on going on any holidays this year? You know, they might like a few interests and you might understand, and you might not be in you might not have them same interests, but you need to remember what they like and what they're into, okay? This is all about generating a good relationship with people, and because I've done this, I've made so many great friends with some of our customers. Do you know what I mean? And you do, you end up becoming friends with these people because you are genuinely having good conversations with them. There's certain things that you have in common, and that's what networking is really about, okay? You know, and and it's about also being around the right people, and this is difficult to start off with. I I've got to say, you know, when you start out, you're not necessarily around everyone and the people above, and you have to work your way up to that point. But when you are around the right people, you start to have bigger conversations, okay? The solutions you have solve bigger problems as well, okay. You also surround yourself with better strategies, okay, because these people have bigger problems. Well, if you've got a bigger problem, you need a bigger strategy to solve the problem. Does that make sense? Your expansion of thinking changes, okay? Now it's not just small time, you're starting to think how much bigger can we expand to be able to solve some of these problems as well, okay? Faster solutions as well. Like when you speak to people that are no bullshit and they're ready to go, you can get to the solution quicker, okay? And the quicker you can do that, and the more trust you're also going to be able to bring if you're in the right room and new opportunities as well. A bit like this networking event I've just gone to. This has opened up the door for us to break through into another country just from one event. And it's it's phenomenal, it's crazy, it's really good. But remember, the only reason we're doing that is because of the conversations I had in the panel and them understanding where our value propositions are and being very clear on what we do as a business and how it can save other people money or how it can add other people value. Okay, value is the word, okay. Number four, collaboration scales faster than competition. Okay, so you don't need to build everything yourself, okay. Again, strategic partnerships can give you so much access to other things, and within our industry, the strategic partner setup has been very successful for us, and it's something that we will continue to do depending on what work that we're trying to bring in. Okay, you have to remember you have certain people within your space that you can collaborate with, okay? They may not solely offer your service offering, but they might have a customer base that you can directly sell into. Okay, this is called strategic partnerships, and it can work both ways, but with strategic partnerships, you still need to be careful, but you need to understand what's the value proposition for A side, which is yourself, and B side, which is them. Okay, you need to be able to offer them something because people are not going to be able to buy into something if if if the scales are unbalanced, all right? There needs to be value both sides of the table, and it needs to be fair enough, the equal, okay, or it needs to be beneficial to both parties, okay. I see a lot of people setting up these kind of you know collaborations, and and and the scales are not even and they don't end well. Do you know what I mean? They don't end up surviving for the long term because there's no equal kind of payback with them. But remember, it is very handy when you can tap into someone else's network of customers. And if you're starting out, this is a very good strategy, okay? But what you have to do is offer that company something that you can offer their customers or you can solve problems again, and this good and and and that's gonna benefit that company as well, okay? So we also gives access to technology, they might be using something that we can use that but we don't. Distribution as well, you not might not be able to deliver where they can actually resource some of them things, and expertise as well, which is you know, who in that market has the the shark decision line making decisions, and if you're far away from that and your your strategic partners have that, could be a way for you to be able to get in as well. Okay, so we remember, you know, what is really also valuable is that when you start out, you don't have your own ecosystem, you might be able to tap into somebody else's, but you know what as well? It's learn time, man. It's understanding how they do they operate, how do they get business, how do they work. Like you've got to be so curious in this game, man. I see so many people are trying to go out there and figure out themselves. You've got to go and talk to people, you know, even set up a meeting with a strategic partner and just have the meeting. Do you know what I mean? Do you know how much value you can get out of just that one meeting? It's it's it's endless value, okay? Number five, reputation is the currency of your network, which is so true, okay? That you know that saying your net worth is your your network is your net worth. It's true. It's true. There's a direct correlation to how much money you make and how many people you know within your industry. It's a direct correlation whether you're successful or not, okay? And remember, it only works if people trust you. You don't want a reputation to have, you know, you don't want to have everyone to know you as a bad guy. Do you know what I mean? Because you might have a network there, but it's a very negative one. Do you know what I mean? You want to have your network to be very trustworthy and you want to be able to stand up within that field of work very reputable. And this is why it's really also important to make sure that we're looking after our customers. Because one bad customer or one bad, you know, mess up with one customer can have a huge impact on that reputation and network, if that makes sense. And reputation is hand in hand with them people that you are because the the bigger your network, the more damaging it could possibly be if that gets spread around that you can't do the job or you're not providing the value, if that makes sense. Okay. Remember, we also need to understand that networking O really works if we're delivering consistently, okay? Can't pop on LinkedIn one day and not pop on the next. You can't pop on LinkedIn for one day and add 20 connections and then post nothing the next five days. What is the point in adding people if they're not going to see anything? You've got to be really consistent in terms of what are we actually doing here. How we how the people that we're adding, what is what is our what's the point in adding them if we can't deliver a message to these people, if that makes sense as well. Okay. Also solving the problems. You know, we've got to solve, like we talked about it before. Everything that you do has got to be how do you solve the people's problems from that network. Okay. And even if you're not directly solving problems, how can you add some information to that network that's valuable? Okay. And you don't have to directly sell to people here, right? We don't really do that. We don't really go and say, buy these sensors, they're very good, they're technical, they have this frequency response. You need to buy from us because they're cheaper. That is not value proposition. Whereas what we do is say, talk about real problems we've solved. This is how we've done, and this is how we can solve yours, because this is the strategy that we're in, and this is how we can drive value to what you're doing as well. Okay. Also, like I said before, acting with integrity is very important. Okay. At some point within any business, if you are not being, you know, if you're not conducting your business with integrity and good morals, you will lose, my friend, eventually. Okay. And you hear about the big businesses that don't do the right thing, you see the impact it has, okay? And karma is very real. Alright, I'm telling you now, okay, and I've learned I've learned from this as well. Like, I've always been very had a very good integrity ever since I started maintaining. Okay. There may be a few occasions where I didn't think through properly, and a few things maybe fell through the net. And I tell you now, you will get burnt from those situations, and you need to learn very fast. Because if you don't, your business can be ruined quicker than you can build it. That's all I'm saying. Okay, it takes years to build this business as it is, and it can be taken away from you very quickly if you don't start to operate in the right way. Okay. Scaling also, if you want to scale your business, you can't get any bigger if your network doesn't grow. Okay. So what I mean by that is we've just hit 10,000. Well, me personally, I've hit 10,000 people on LinkedIn. Okay, so I've I've done that. That's taken me nearly nearly nine years to do. Okay. For someone to follow you, it's different than than having a connection. Okay. Someone follows you, they there's something there they want to see. Okay. If you just add a connection, it's different. That's completely different. Connection to followers. Okay, you have to remember that. When someone follows you, they're looking for value. But when they do follow you, are you consistently showing up with the value so they carry on following you? Okay, got to give people a reason as well, even when you want to scale and what you need to do. Okay, so you need connections to talent, so important. Strategic partners, people within industry that can help, larger customers as well. So as you start to grow and you solve bigger problems, you start to attract bigger customers because the problems you solve are bigger. Okay. Also, industry leaders, this is so important. So you might not directly want to network with people that are just customers. You want to get involved with suppliers, networks like Fluke, for example. You know, I've got to know a lot of people at Fluke over the years, and it was getting in touch with the marketing team. The people that are doing the work, and they're not direct customers for me, but they're strategic partners that have helped us grow massively. But is there value for them? Of course there is. I've got 10,000 followers. If we start showing their products on our page and videos and we get hundreds of thousands of views across all the platforms and everything, it's exposure, exposure to them products. But remember, I talked about the scale, the balance. Well, look what we're adding here. There's two value propositions. I'm giving them exposure and they're giving me something back in return. Okay, that the balance is key, but both parties benefit, okay? But remember, if I didn't have a network to show that, they ain't gonna work with me because there's nothing that I can give them. All right, I've got to be able to offer them something. Okay, they're not doing this for free. No one's doing anything for free. You have to remember that, okay? There's always got to be a fair exchange of value in the end, okay? As well. So remember, you can't scale alone either, okay? And remember, when you grow a business as well, and you grow that network, people are gonna want to work with you. Like, I've how many people message me saying there's any jobs going? And uh mate, some of them I'd love to give them jobs, but we can't give everyone a job. We've got to scale at a certain time frame. But if you're getting people coming and approaching you because they want to work with you, because they can see a very good company culture and they can see success from the other side, this is huge value, absolutely massive value. And it also goes to show as a metric, you're doing the right things out there because you're you're you're posting the right stuff and you're attracting the right people, okay? Which again is network. You remember it's great when we connect with customers, but we need we need engineers to be able to deliver this work as well. So our network also doesn't need to be grounded in who we're trying to sell to, it needs to be grounded in who can work with us to be able to deliver to the customer, if that makes sense. Okay, so we need to really understand that you know to scale a bigger business, we also need to scale bigger value, bigger problems need to be more shared as well through the industry. Okay. Number seven, introductions are the real power. So most opportunities come through second degree relationships, which is very true. Okay, someone's saying, You need to meet this guy. Ah, I know, ah, you've got that problem. Well, this guy might be able to solve it, will you? Or oh, I know a guy that you could uh do know, I got the guy's got a factory, right? And he keeps having this bearing defect for that, it keeps happening all the time. I'll get you in touch with him. So this is also a knock-on effect. You have to remember when you meet one person, that one person can lead you to ten, all right. It's not just about meeting one, it's a link, it's a chain, it's a tree, it's it's it's roots. It's like you go down one route, you open up five, right? And remember, meeting one guy, I'll give you an example. I met one guy at a biogas site, really good guy, got on really well. Okay, he's a Spurs fan, I'm an Arsenal fan, we banner about it all the time, you know, which is really good. But he had connections to another guy, okay, and he brought him in technical manager, and now we look after 10 of his sites because he's the technical manager, and now every single one of them sites we've gained a network relationship with, they might know four or five people. It's a growth game, but you get it through building good relationships, okay? So I hear a lot of people saying, Oh, I can't be bothered to make that one relationship or whatever, I can't be bothered to ask him about kind of you know anything else. I just want to I just want to send him something. That's the wrong attitude. You're not thinking long term enough, you're thinking too short term, you need to think long-term in this game. Do you know what I'm saying? Remember, these things can compound, do you know what I mean? In terms of where you are and where you're at. Okay, so the network can expand exponentially through one person. But you might have tried to chase three or four people and not got no luck, but then found one guy that's that's able to give you networks into so many more people, okay? Okay, on to the last one consistency, it compounds. And I've talked about this so many times, and I'll keep repeating the same crap because the same crap is so relevant and it works. All right. I don't want so many people out there is like, oh, it's not rocket science this game, but the reason why people can't make it work because they're not consistent and they can't do it daily. Do you know what I mean? Remember, over time, you don't put one LinkedIn post out and you'd be successful. That one post that I first put out, I think it was one like didn't even get seen. But I had to start, you know, I've got to start any somewhere, and I've probably posted about 200 times since then, all right? And some posts have got no engagement whatsoever. But did it stop me? No, it didn't, because it's accumulation of the time and the journey and what you're doing. So it doesn't matter even when you do, and even when you do get to this level of having lots of people within your network, you can't stop then either. You've got to keep them engaged, you've got to keep them interested. So you have to remember this is an ongoing game when you're when you're networking, when you're trying to build this to. And just to say as well, this podcast relates to everyone. This ain't specifically to my industry. This this applies to every single industry. This applies to everything. This applies to sports. Say if you're trying to get into a team, that they say it, don't you? It's not what you know, it's who you know. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes it's right place, right time, but sometimes it's the right place, right time with the right guy that knows the other guy that has taken you on. How many times have we experienced that? You've got a job somewhere and it's just timing. You just meet a guy in the bar and he's like, Oh, I need this, and you you've got the right credentials, and it's like, wow, how did that work, right? Because it's the person that's able to give you an opportunity somewhere and be able to generate that through just sometimes good timing and good faith. Okay, so wow, this has been great. This has been absolutely great. I usually only go about 20 minutes to half an hour, but there's so many points here. But here's a closing one. I don't want to ramble on too long about this. I want to keep it very value-driven, I think every point is very valuable. But a simple closing line is your network is not just the people that you know, it's the people that you trust enough to open doors to, and people that trust you enough to be able to render business with you, okay? And I keep saying it, it's about trust. How do you build the trust? How do you get them down this line of cold to warm? And how do you really consistently keep the button on it? And this is why business is hard, y'all. I say y'all, because I'll be in the uh in the states. It's so funny. Uh I'm speaking like an American. This is why business is so hard, because it requires a level of consistency every single day. And a lot of people haven't got the mindset to be able to do it daily, right? Nothing special is required here. Okay, no, you need to know what you're doing, you need to have that value, but generally it's generated within the consistency that we go every single day. Okay. So, guys, thank you for tuning in. Really appreciate it. More podcasts to come. I'm gonna get a few guests on here in the next few months, man. I've been inspired from America, can't lie, and I'm really, really blessed to have gone there. So thank you, Fluke, for inviting me down there. And yeah, you watch the space, you know. We want to be able to talk about this soon and when we break into the US and also talk about, you know, sometimes as well, maybe another podcast is how do different cultures deal with networking differently? Because America was insane, you know, it was such an engaging place, and it seemed like we could convert our message there a little bit easier, and it'll be really interesting to see also how other countries play into that culture change as well. So, guys, thank you so much for tuning in. It's been a blessing. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

I've been searching in the quantum.