Detailed Notes
In this episode of the Building Better Developers podcast’s “Building Better Businesses” season, hosts Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche explore business networking strategies that go far beyond the typical card-swapping routine. If you’re tired of awkward mixers and forced conversations, this episode offers a refreshing take on how to grow your business by forming authentic, lasting connections.
Read more: https://develpreneur.com/business-networking-strategies-how-to-build-real-relationships-that-grow-your-business/
*Weekly Challenge: Put Your Business Networking Strategy into Practice*
Think about your favorite activity outside of work. This week, find just one opportunity to casually mention your business during that activity. Whether it’s in the form of a funny story, a branded shirt, or a natural mention in conversation—test the waters.
If you already do this, challenge yourself to find a new activity or social space to expand your reach. Authentic visibility is key.
Want more ideas like this? Visit Develpreneur.com, subscribe to the Building Better Developers podcast, or find them on YouTube and social media.
Whether you’re in a major metro or a small town, these business networking strategies are your secret weapon for building real connections—and a better business.
*Additional Resources*
* Business Networking For Introverts (https://develpreneur.com/business-networking-for-introverts/) * Passive Networking and Building Trust (https://develpreneur.com/passive-networking-building-trust/) * Events, Parties and Networking for Passive Income (https://develpreneur.com/passive-networking-building-trust/)
*Follow-us on:*
* https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOuFN_LhczvGyT2KSItH_g/featured * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://twitter.com/develpreneur * http://linkedin.com/develpreneur
Transcript Text
[Music] there. That should work a little bit better. Say hi. Hi. There we go. Okay, cool. techn mic is a little too much in my face or on my head or something like that. Wondered why you weren't responding to me. Yeah, I had like I had gone to headphones so it wouldn't get I wouldn't get echo in our prior meeting because I could hear her like two rooms away and vice versa. So, I was just like screw it. I'm going to put headphones on so we can have two people on a Zoom call in the same you know same house essentially. So, hello everybody. um joining us right after it has been a day day of calls right now. So this is not one of those early morning ones. This is one of those where it's not about having too much caffeine. It's about possibly not having enough caffeine. So let's see. Did we have a topic? I didn't see any topics out there. Um, so I was thinking one, we haven't talked about doing like a podcast or anything in a while. I was thinking maybe like how to promote your business. Uh, kind of other ways outside of marketing. That was one. Uh, another could be marketing. I could get into like some heavier stuff like SEO, websites, uh, you know. Um, I wasn't sure if we wanted to delve into that yet or exactly how uh together. I think fun ways to promote your business, some of the thoughts on that would be good. Um, because you've got some good stuff, too. I think promoting your business, networking. So, I'm thinking one would be this maybe a good little twofer is do it from a networking point of view and a like real world and stuff like that and then separately maybe more of a like um yeah web SEO type stuff uh content. All right, now that I found my notepad, what was that first one again? Maybe one's like promote promoting your business um networking things like that. So more like I guess real world things you can do versus uh then we'll do a second one will be more like web SEO content production stuff like that would be more um digital way to do it. Oh, okay. That might be a good little combo of stuff I think. All right, it is time to take a deep breath, everybody. Deep cleansing breath and breathe out. Okay, there we go. You know, that's the cool thing. Side note, this little bonus stuff. If you have not on a regular basis, like probably each day taken a deep breath big enough to like fill your lungs, do like two or three of those. Um, it's just actually a really good thing. It's a really good exercise because you don't realize how little you actually use your lungs and how much your lungs probably they think there's probably parts of your lungs haven't touched oxygen in a couple of days if you don't do like a really like it like suck all of it then go and then suck even a little more in and then you blow it all. So now like you've really exploded the expanded the balloon. I did that in a one of these like you know healthy uh this is one of those uh uh cold water plunge type classes. They were talking about breathing techniques and all this stuff and that's one of the things I was like, "Wow, I guess I don't very do that very often." But it is actually very uh refreshing to do. So, so there you go. Healthy bonus knowing is half the battle and we'll do our countdown to a three two. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of building better businesses. We're building better developers. We are developer, but building better developers is easier to say. So, we're going to go with that. My name, not that hard to say. I'm Rob. Robadhead. I'm one of the founders of developer, also a founder of RB Consulting, where we we help you solve problems basically is is the nub of what we do is we work with you to understand your business. We talk through how you do it. It's basically educational you as well because you're going to explain to us what is, you know, what are the ins and outs of your businesses. What is it that makes it valuable? Where do you add value? Where are you separating yourself from the competition? And then we take our knowledge of technology and all the tools that are out there and how to deal build technology teams. Look at what you have and then find a way to craft a specific recipe for you to move forward in a better way with technology leveraging that so that you can be more productive and make better use of that huge investment that we call it. Now, good things and bad things. Um, so still in the midst of it. I think I mentioned this one before was that we got a we got a cash offer on our house, but we had to be out in 2 weeks. It is almost that time. Another like good thing, bad thing that's a part of that is we're going on a cruise in like hours from now and we'll be out, we've had it planned for a while. We're going to cruise for a couple of days. We're going to be mostly out of touch. So, lots of work stuff that silly I'm not going to be able to get to for a few days. There's a lot of like other stuff that I'm sure is going to be going on. We've had inspectors at our house. We had all kinds of crap going on trying to move, trying to get everything out of the way. So, it's very good because we're going to be able to like get all this stuff done quickly and we're going to have a little vacation here and all that kind of stuff. But, it's also bad because stress. The other thing that makes it bad is Michael. He's over here. He's stressed me out because he hasn't introduced himself yet. So, I'm going to let him do that and take a little bit off my plate. Introduce yourself, Mr. Michael. Hey, everyone. My name is Michael Malash. I'm one of the co-founders of developer building better developers. I'm also the founder of a company called Envision QA where we take test-driven development approaches to building software. We work with small to mid-size businesses, clinicians, essentially anyone who has software that's not really working for them, for their business, for their product. We come in, we help you uh assess your current situation, figure out the ins and outs of your uh processes, and we help you work through a plan to basically make the software work for you, not you work for your software. So, if you find yourself where you're working, writing notes on papers or putting post-it notes all over the place because your computer doesn't do it or it makes it easier, you have a failed process. We will help you fix that. Today I want to focus on this episode. I want to focus on promoting your business and and really it's just a little bit about it's a little bit about networking, but I want to talk a little bit about maybe thinking outside of the box because this is one of the things that I think we get we miss way too often. We think about networking is like we've got to get a bunch of business cards and we've got to go to some, you know, some lunch. We eat some rubber chicken. We have like the same crap that everybody else has. We shake some hands, everybody swaps business cards, and hopefully magically everything happens. And as you may have learned because we have talked about uh we've introduc uh interviewed some really good networking people in the past. Uh there's several sites we've talked through. So you can go back through the interview season, the epics that it was or like 80 some odd episodes or whatever it was that we did that were all interviews and there were a lot in there that were really good about taking different approaches to networking. Now, some of them were digitally based. So, we talked about like podcasting and writing books and all these other little things that were out there, but this one I want to talk a little bit more about the in-person kinds of things. Now, one of the things that I think we we don't consider often enough is just getting out there and doing something that, you know, you're wearing your business shirt or you've got you may have a business card or somebody may, you know, may talk about your business, but you're not really there directly to network. So, one of the things that happens on a regular basis that everywhere, no matter where you're at, they're going to be things they're going to be some sort of uh usually they're charity events of some sort. So maybe a work day or something like that. So it could be uh and it could be something like very hands-on. You could be working at a soup kitchen and maybe they want to get, you know, the local community in there or uh around Christmas time a lot of times you'll get people will go together and they'll they'll purchase gifts and then take them to certain places. Or maybe during the summer when kids are out of school, they'll go deliver, you know, lunches and stuff to, you know, low to the neighborhoods that are, you know, the poverty neighborhoods and stuff like that. or you it goes on and on and on. There's a lot of stuff out there and a lot of it is it's it's related to some, you know, community building event of some sort. So, it's really what interests you. So, if you're interested in, I don't know, helping cancer patients or if you're interested in teaching more people about baseball or whatever it is, there's a wide range of stuff you can do that all of these are they're really they're giving back. It is, you know, an idea of some sort of community service in some way, form or fashion. The bonus is that if you're one, I mean, you're going to get you're going to feel good doing this and it's something that you can you can do, you can give back, like I said. But the other thing is this gives you really an opportunity if you're thinking about it to talk about your business, to get to learn what other people are doing, and to see where you may fit in and to get to know your community. Particularly if you're some sort of a, you know, more of a traditional bricks and mortar kind of a a company. If you're somebody like me and you're completely virtual, then you know it may be a little different. But in those cases, we'll talk about that a little different more in the next episode, but there it may be something where you want to do more um you know online gatherings or or virtual meetups and things like that. But in person there are obviously there's the meetups. You can go to meetup.com even though they are you know they're charging now. There's a lot of stuff they've they've switched around in that. Uh but you can also find stuff through Facebook groups. You can find uh there's going to be some LinkedIn things and stuff like that. Some companies you'll find that they will do uh happy hours or some will do virtual happy hours, things like that where you can uh you can sort of hang out and and get to know some people. And those are the things I think that you really want to look for. It's the one that it is um not repetitive sounds, you know, bad like redundant or something, but it's no, it's more like it is a repeating event of some sort. So yes, you will see the same faces over time will start to recirculate. But the nice thing is then you get to actually have time to know these people and it's not like the the speed dating things that are out there in a normal one where you're like you got 30 seconds, bam, go. All right, we do everything in the world. Pay us a lot of money. Awesome. And everybody else is like, hey, we do the same thing. Great. Okay, swap a business card and you're done. No, this is something where you actually get to, you know, spend some time, get to learn what they do and whether they are even a customer because some won't be. There'll be a lot of people out there that have nothing to do with you as a customer, but maybe there's somebody that you can refer somebody else to and that eventually does get you to a customer. And we've talked about that before in some of our interviews where we talk about having sort of these expanding rings of where you there's some people that are like ideal and you really need those, but then as you get further out, those people you really your business doesn't need them, but that doesn't mean you don't want to talk to them because they may connect you to somebody that's in that that inner circle, that inner ring. So, whatever you do on a regular basis that is social and hopefully there's at least something you do. It could be as easy as simple as like you know or as antisocial I guess is like going to a library. Maybe you go to a library on a regular basis and you go to like a book club um or a crocheting club or something like that. I mean you can do something that's very milktoast not usually connected to networking or anything like that. But those are actually sometimes some of the best things to go to if you're going to any kind of a a hobbyist thing. Um, if you're into like cars, you go to a car show. Or if you're, you know, if you're um, if you go to like, you name it. If you like to go to circuses, if you see like to go to, uh, movies, or if you like to go to, you know, shows like concerts and stuff like that, there's groups that will do this, and you will find groups that are within the genres of whatever it is you're doing. You know, I don't know that there's like heavy metal crochet groups, but you never know. There's probably like, you know, the hardcore grandma crocheters and then there's like the young kids that are just like, "Hey, I want to try it." Those are the kinds of threads, for lack of a better term. Those are sort of like the themes that you want to look for in your groups because you want to find something you connect to. And this is just what we talked about when we talked about like writing a book or doing a podcast or anything. Find something that interests you enough that it's like, "Okay, this is something I I enjoy doing anyways." And then while you're there, think about how you can introduce your company into it. Now, you can be, you know, obvious and you can have like a hat and a coat and a shirt and shoes and sho strings and, you know, have a little laser that points in people's eyes and it burns the image of their, you know, logo or something like that. Okay, don't do that. But there's a lot of ways that you can get people's attention and some of it can be very subtle and some of it can be not so subtle. The subtle approach I personally prefer is like if you have just like you know you happen to have wear your company shirt from time to time or just occasionally drop that well you know the company I work at which sometimes will you know often enough will lead to well what is the company you work at what do you guys do thinking about those things one is going to be a way to get genuine kinds of networking going is to really get to know people and get that going but the other thing is just thinking about how you will approach that. How will you talk about your company when it's with, you know, your drinking buddies or somebody like that? It's like, how do you do it when you're not selling? You're not really like you're not really selling your services directly to this person. You're really telling them about your company. And guess what? A lot of times that that approach is going to be one of the best ways that you can turn, you know, create that into a an elevator pitch of some sort. So, there's a couple things I want to throw out there and let's see where Michael's mind is wandering. Thanks, Rob. So, right off the bat, you know, you talked about, you know, promote your business, going to community events, um, you know, maybe volunteer, do things like that. Um the and you talked about meetups which is very important as well but if you are in an area that where meetups might not work for you or Facebook groups and that aren't really like if you're in a small town or you're not like Nashville but maybe like Jackson, Tennessee which is a little bit smaller but growing massively. There are other outlets to look at and if you have no idea where to go, go out and just walk the town. So, one of the first things I did, cuz me and my wife moved to Jackson in the middle of COVID, everything's closed. You know, no one's around, nothing's open, you don't know anything. Well, as the world reopens, first thing we did was we went to town outlets and just started walking around seeing what's there, what businesses are there, who's open, you know, what is there to do. And then we found local magazines. So, don't always go digital. You can also find like a lot of towns or uh businesses have local flyers. You know, you have the penny saver, you have the the Nashville uh scene or the Rage, if it's even still around. Uh Jackson has a couple of different magazines. They've got like the um the Jackson uh magazine. There's another one uh for Pwick and a couple others. But what's interesting about these is it highlights those social events that Rob was talking about. There's like these uh gallas that go on all the time for charity benefits, sound options, golf tournaments. These are great little things. If you find something that you're into, go to these. Just go check them out. If you like them, just start talking to people. And then one, you might find a social scene that you might you didn't know that was there that you find is uh fulfilling. Two, you may make some new friends. But three, the best part is as you're at these events, talk to people, listen to them, ask them, "Hey, what it is that what do you do?" "Oh, you have a company. What is it that they do?" Um, going this route, it actually reconnected me with the Chamber of Commerce again. Uh, I used to be a member out in uh, Williamson County, and that chamber wasn't really great at networking, but the one here in Jackson is fabulous. They host once a month uh free happy hour meetings where everyone goes to a different business once a month and you spend two hours networking, free food, drinks, and all that. Look for things like that. It doesn't always have to cost you money to go out and network. And if you go to something like that, you also get to meet other like-minded business members in your community. Plus, that also introduces you to those other events like Rob was talking about because it's like, oh, through the chamber, hey, we're offering this or we're doing this uh benefits drive or hey, we're doing this volunteer drive. Things like that. It it can grow from there. Uh other things to kind of think about that I kind of stepped into is look at your local community or uh I guess we work type offices. Some of those offer networking hours or free hours where you can just go in, hang out, check out the area. Those are interesting places to network because if you go through that period, uh, when it's like the open hours, it's more open. People are more talkative. It's not always as, you know, everyone's heads down working. So, that's another place to kind of check out because you might run into someone that is like-minded like you that, hey, they could use my services or, hey, I could use theirs. Uh some other things to think about too, uh like restaurants, you know, you mentioned happy hour. Uh if you do want to go out and network and find areas around businesses, uh one of the areas uh in Jackson anyway, that's interesting is this new little um restaurant pub that opened right across from the courthouse. And interestingly enough, all the lawyers tend to go over there right after uh court gets out of session or uh they go to another local restaurant right around the corner. If you want to kind of engage with other businesses or lawyers or depending upon who your target market is, go to those areas where they frequently hang out. If you're looking for, you know, to help lawyers, go to places where lawyers hang out after work. If you're looking for baseball fin, go to like your local town's baseball games, go to a high school game, go to a college game, or go to like aa or uh you know, smaller venues are usually better. Um, I actually find like the um what what's the sound that's like what uh AAA or some of the um they're more open. They're more family friendly. People are more engaged in talking and enjoying the game. But it's more of a social time than just watch the game and you know drink some beer or eat some hot dogs. So there's a lot of areas and ways that you can network yourself in your business. And there's also other ways where you can just go out and kind of immerse yourself in your community in these groups to listen to what it is that they're talking about. What are their problems? Are these your customers? Are these your target customers? If they are, great. You're in the right area. If they aren't, could they potentially be or should you shift and go to a different type of meeting or a different type of networking or social event to get yourself in a little more situation where you're talking to the right people? I think this, you know, that brings in up to mind the the classic uh I guess it were if you go back, you know, now a couple of decades where everybody would go play golf and get a lot of business deals done out while golfing, which is honestly when you think about it, it's it's like the perfect way to do those kinds of things because you're with a small group for hours, you're walking around, you're just, you know, you're chitchatting about whatever. So it's a it's a captive audience to some extent and actually very valuable to very good way to do that. And so anything you can think of that is in that vein which includes you know if certain people or you know hanging out at the close local places for happy hour or you if everybody goes to Friday night they go hang out at a certain restaurant or Saturday night they go and you know go to dance at the local dance hall or whatever it happens to be is you're going to be able to find people that will probably do this on a regular enough basis. You get to know some people you'll see the same kind of faces. Um an example that we I'll use out of my own experience which is a little different is that we actually have a whole uh you know a little group of friends that the only reason we know each other is because we went to concerts that we went to local that's local bands and you go to enough shows and you get to see the same faces and sooner or later you start talking to people and there's all these people we know that we would never know except we've gone to a bunch of different shows. they've gone to a bunch of shows and now we've actually expanded and it's amazing how many people have expanded the the relationship outside of that. So you'll meet, you know, maybe meet people for dinner before a show or you'll go somewhere after a show or you'll talk about another group that you found and then everybody will go to another show together. There's things like that that you you find that commonality, you get to know some people and then you can sort of work in some of your networking. It is a slow burn. This is not something where you're going to like just go out there and say like this week I'm gonna get 500 contacts doing this. This is a little different approach, but I think it's a very valuable one because what you're doing is you're building true relationships and not just swapping business cards and shaking hands. You're actually going to have people that you you get to know and they're going to feel, you know, people buy from those that they know, like, and trust. And so that's where you're going to get, you know, definitely the no, but you're going to give the investment. so that they like and trust you. And that's where you're going to start getting some really good customers somewhere along the way. Now, not everybody's going to be, but you don't need that many for this to be a worthwhile investment. Challenge for the week. What is your favorite thing to do outside of work? Because we love our work. What's your favorite thing to do? And then if you do it weekly, find one way, just one time, strike up a conversation about your work with somebody, some way, form or fashion. Even if all you're doing is you just like, you know, s in a silly way almost or like, hey, guess what happened at my work the other day or where I work this happened or yesterday at work where you're just like beating that drum so that eventually somebody's like, fine, I'll bite. where do you work or something like that. Um, you know, test some test the waters to see and and be sensitive to how conversations go where they may actually be an opportunity for you to sort of like stick your foot in the door and say, "Oh, by the way, you know, that's something that I do or that my company does or that we are building or something along those lines." I think it'll be a very uh it's one of those things it'll be a very insightful uh good learning experience as a challenge if you don't do this already and if you do do it twice as much I don't know pick a number do a multiplier um but I think it is something it's like see if there's maybe a different way if you do this on a regular basis let's say you you play golf and you do networking while you golf pick something else see if there's something else that you do that you can now expand that into a different uh venue or line of work whatever it happens to That being said, first shoot us an email because that is always the best way to just like make this better each time. Give us an email at [email protected]. You can leave us contact form, any kind of contact information you want on our contact form out on developer.com. You can hit us up, follow us, respond to us, send us all kinds of suggestions of that on X. We are developer uh Facebook, we have a developer page. You can go out to developing our channel out on YouTube and you can see this and hundreds literally hundreds of other content and pieces of work that we've done over the last I think it's like seven or eight years that we've been on YouTube that's now becoming something that we like have been there. We are established. We've been there a while. Um and of course our website tons and tons of content there. Always looking for feedback. Let us know. But for now, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Bonus material. So, one of the things neither of us really touched on was also uh like conferences, trade shows, uh local uh like community events. Uh those are great places to go interact with the community, interact with different businesses and even possibly people within your sector of business. if you go to like a trade show or a conference. Uh other things I found even going to like the local craft fair um or little special events out in parks and that there's hundreds of vendors out there. You never know who you talk to that might end up needing your product or your services. So really the sky's is the limit and it doesn't really always have to cost you know you to go out and eat. It's just a matter of driving somewhere and interacting with people. And I think that's the key is is the interacting with people because I I cannot even begin to count how many of my customers over the years. Their primary the work that we did for them was not their primary job. It was not what they identified as. You know, they would be like I I spent a year working for a guy that basically was a lawyer. He he did contract law, but we were building a social web a social networking site for him. And this is way back in the day, but still it's like it's a guy that you wouldn't expect would be in that line of business and yet he is. And that was I think if you want good examples of that is go back and again this seems self- serving but it's really not. Go back and listen to the interviews that we did um a couple seasons back because I was and this one of the things always amazed me is that I would start into the conversation most time did not know the person we were talking to. Like sometimes it was like the 5 minutes before I hit record was the first time I'd ever spoken to them. I I did a little bit of research to get some background and then like off and running and had some incredible conversations because we would just let the conversation flow. And like I said, there were I've said there were a couple of times that we I stopped recording and talked to those people for an hour afterwards. It took a long time for us to actually wrap up our conversation because we had all of these commonalities and all these things that we wanted to talk about and all of these different ways that, you know, we could explore a a relationship of sorts. Um, you know, and it even goes back to, you know, even the most simple stuff. Like my my favorite of the, you know, way back, one of my favorite things that you've now heard several times. went through those was when uh we had the interview and he wrote a song at the end, spent two minutes and he's, you know, he talked about how this was a great little brand and marketing thing that they do is they go out there, they create a song based on somebody and the nice thing is it's like they're going to remember the song a little bit because now they've they've spent some time to get to know you enough to put together the song and then you're going to remember it because like how often does somebody write a song about you and it it's about you. So, it also gives you that connection. So, things like that that you can do are just are are great. So, we could go really deep in that. Like I said, we have in the past and we probably will at some point in the future, but for now, we're going to let you guys get back to it cuz we got to get back to it. So, go out there, have yourself a great one. We will talk to you next time around because we are not even close to done with this season. So, we're coming back. Uh, we're going to do some more. Going to get We got real this time. We're going to get digital and virtual next time. Talk to you then. [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
there. That should work a little bit
better. Say hi. Hi. There we go. Okay,
cool.
techn mic is a little too much in my
face or on my head or something like
that. Wondered why you weren't
responding to me.
Yeah, I had like I had gone to
headphones so it wouldn't get I wouldn't
get echo in our prior meeting because I
could hear her like two rooms away and
vice versa. So, I was just like screw
it. I'm going to put headphones on so we
can have two people on a Zoom call in
the same you know same house
essentially. So, hello everybody. um
joining us right after it has been a day
day of calls right now. So this is not
one of those early morning ones. This is
one of those where it's not about having
too much caffeine. It's about possibly
not having enough caffeine.
So let's see. Did we have
a topic? I didn't see any topics out
there.
Um, so I was thinking one, we haven't
talked about doing like a podcast or
anything in a while. I was thinking
maybe like how to promote your business.
Uh, kind of other ways outside of
marketing. That was one. Uh, another
could be marketing. I could get into
like some heavier stuff like SEO,
websites, uh, you know.
Um, I wasn't sure if we wanted to delve
into that yet
or exactly how uh together. I think fun
ways to promote your business, some of
the thoughts on that would
be good. Um,
because you've got some good stuff, too.
I think promoting your business,
networking. So, I'm thinking one would
be this maybe a good little twofer is do
it from a networking point of view and a
like real world and stuff like that and
then separately maybe more of a like
um yeah web
SEO type stuff uh content.
All right, now that I found my notepad,
what was that first one again?
Maybe one's like promote promoting your
business um networking things like that.
So more like I guess real world things
you can do versus uh then we'll do a
second one will be more like web SEO
content production stuff like that would
be more um digital way to do it. Oh,
okay. That might be a good little combo
of
stuff I think.
All right, it is time to take a deep
breath, everybody. Deep cleansing breath
and breathe
out. Okay, there we go. You know, that's
the cool thing. Side note, this little
bonus stuff. If you have not on a
regular basis, like probably each day
taken a deep breath big enough to like
fill your lungs, do like two or three of
those. Um, it's just actually a really
good thing. It's a really good exercise
because you don't realize how little you
actually use your lungs and how much
your lungs probably they think there's
probably parts of your lungs haven't
touched oxygen in a couple of days if
you don't do like a really
like it like suck all of it then go and
then suck even a little more in and then
you blow it all. So now like you've
really exploded the expanded the
balloon. I did that in a one of these
like you know healthy uh this is one of
those uh uh cold water plunge type
classes. They were talking about
breathing techniques and all this stuff
and that's one of the things I was like,
"Wow, I guess I don't very do that very
often." But it is actually very uh
refreshing to do. So, so there you go.
Healthy
bonus knowing is half the battle and
we'll do our countdown to a three two.
Well, hello and welcome back. We are
continuing our season of building better
businesses. We're building better
developers. We are
developer, but building better
developers is easier to say. So, we're
going to go with that. My name, not that
hard to say. I'm Rob. Robadhead. I'm one
of the founders of developer, also a
founder of RB Consulting, where we we
help you solve problems basically is is
the nub of what we do is we work with
you to understand your business. We talk
through how you do it. It's basically
educational you as well because you're
going to explain to us what is, you
know, what are the ins and outs of your
businesses. What is it that makes it
valuable? Where do you add value? Where
are you separating yourself from the
competition? And then we take our
knowledge
of technology and all the tools that are
out there and how to deal build
technology teams. Look at what you have
and then find a way to craft a specific
recipe for you to move forward in a
better way with technology leveraging
that so that you can be more productive
and make better use of that huge
investment that we call
it. Now, good things and bad things. Um,
so still in the midst of it. I think I
mentioned this one before was that we
got a we got a cash offer on our house,
but we had to be out in 2 weeks. It is
almost that time. Another like good
thing, bad thing that's a part of that
is we're going on a cruise in like hours
from now and we'll be out, we've had it
planned for a while. We're going to
cruise for a couple of days. We're going
to be mostly out of touch. So, lots of
work stuff that silly I'm not going to
be able to get to for a few days.
There's a lot of like other stuff that
I'm sure is going to be going on. We've
had inspectors at our house. We had all
kinds of crap going on trying to move,
trying to get everything out of the way.
So, it's very good because we're going
to be able to like get all this stuff
done quickly and we're going to have a
little vacation here and all that kind
of stuff. But, it's also bad because
stress. The other thing that makes it
bad is Michael. He's over here. He's
stressed me out because he hasn't
introduced himself yet. So, I'm going to
let him do that and take a little bit
off my plate. Introduce yourself, Mr.
Michael. Hey, everyone. My name is
Michael Malash. I'm one of the
co-founders of developer building better
developers. I'm also the founder of a
company called Envision QA where we take
test-driven development approaches to
building software. We work with small to
mid-size businesses, clinicians,
essentially anyone who has software
that's not really working for them, for
their business, for their product. We
come in, we help you uh assess your
current situation, figure out the ins
and outs of your uh processes, and we
help you work through a plan to
basically make the software work for
you, not you work for your software. So,
if you find yourself where you're
working, writing notes on papers or
putting post-it notes all over the place
because your computer doesn't do it or
it makes it easier, you have a failed
process. We will help you fix that.
Today I want to focus on this episode. I
want to focus on promoting your business
and and really it's just a little bit
about it's a little bit about
networking, but I want to talk a little
bit about maybe thinking outside of the
box because this is one of the things
that I think we get we miss way too
often. We think about networking is like
we've got to get a bunch of business
cards and we've got to go to some, you
know, some lunch. We eat some rubber
chicken. We have like the same crap that
everybody else has. We shake some hands,
everybody swaps business cards, and
hopefully magically everything happens.
And as you may have learned because we
have talked about uh we've introduc uh
interviewed some really good networking
people in the past. Uh there's several
sites we've talked through. So you can
go back through the interview season,
the epics that it was or like 80 some
odd episodes or whatever it was that we
did that were all interviews and there
were a lot in there that were really
good about taking different approaches
to networking.
Now, some of them were digitally based.
So, we talked about like podcasting and
writing books and all these other little
things that were out there, but this one
I want to talk a little bit more about
the in-person kinds of things. Now, one
of the things that I think we we don't
consider often enough is just getting
out there and doing
something that, you know, you're wearing
your business shirt or you've got you
may have a business card or somebody
may, you know, may talk about your
business, but you're not really there
directly to network. So, one of the
things that happens on a regular basis
that everywhere, no matter where you're
at, they're going to be things they're
going to be some sort of uh usually
they're charity events of some sort. So
maybe a work day or something like that.
So it could be uh and it could be
something like very hands-on. You could
be working at a soup kitchen and maybe
they want to get, you know, the local
community in there or uh around
Christmas time a lot of times you'll get
people will go together and they'll
they'll purchase gifts and then take
them to certain places. Or maybe during
the summer when kids are out of school,
they'll go deliver, you know, lunches
and stuff to, you know, low to the
neighborhoods that are, you know, the
poverty neighborhoods and stuff like
that. or you it goes on and on and on.
There's a lot of stuff out there and a
lot of it
is it's it's related to some, you know,
community building event of some sort.
So, it's really what interests you. So,
if you're interested in, I don't know,
helping cancer patients or if you're
interested in teaching more people about
baseball or whatever it is, there's a
wide range of stuff you can do that all
of these are they're really they're
giving back. It is, you know, an idea of
some sort of community service in some
way, form or fashion. The bonus is that
if you're one, I mean, you're going to
get you're going to feel good doing this
and it's something that you can you can
do, you can give back, like I said. But
the other thing is this gives you really
an opportunity if you're thinking about
it to talk about your business, to get
to learn what other people are doing,
and to see where you may fit in and to
get to know your community. Particularly
if you're some sort of a, you know, more
of a traditional bricks and mortar kind
of a a company. If you're somebody like
me and you're completely virtual, then
you know it may be a little different.
But in those cases, we'll talk about
that a little different more in the next
episode, but there it may be something
where you want to do more um you know
online gatherings or or virtual meetups
and things like that. But in person
there are obviously there's the meetups.
You can go to meetup.com even though
they are you know they're charging now.
There's a lot of stuff they've they've
switched around in that. Uh but you can
also find stuff through Facebook groups.
You can find uh there's going to be some
LinkedIn things and stuff like that.
Some companies you'll find that they
will do uh happy hours or some will do
virtual happy hours, things like that
where you can uh you can sort of hang
out and and get to know some people. And
those are the things I think that you
really want to look for. It's the one
that it is um not repetitive sounds, you
know, bad like redundant or something,
but it's no, it's more like it is a
repeating event of some sort. So yes,
you will see the same faces over time
will start to recirculate. But the nice
thing is then you get to actually have
time to know these people and it's not
like the the speed dating things that
are out there in a normal one where
you're like you got 30 seconds, bam, go.
All right, we do everything in the
world. Pay us a lot of money. Awesome.
And everybody else is like, hey, we do
the same thing. Great. Okay, swap a
business card and you're done. No, this
is something where you actually get to,
you know, spend some time, get to learn
what they do and whether they are even a
customer because some won't be. There'll
be a lot of people out there that have
nothing to do with you as a customer,
but maybe there's somebody that you can
refer somebody else to and that
eventually does get you to a customer.
And we've talked about that before in
some of our interviews where we talk
about having sort of these expanding
rings of where you there's some people
that are like ideal and you really need
those, but then as you get further out,
those people you really your business
doesn't need them, but that doesn't mean
you don't want to talk to them because
they may connect you to somebody that's
in that that inner circle, that inner
ring. So, whatever you do on a regular
basis that is social and hopefully
there's at least something you do. It
could be as easy as simple as like you
know or as antisocial I guess is like
going to a library. Maybe you go to a
library on a regular basis and you go to
like a book club um or a crocheting club
or something like that. I mean you can
do something that's very milktoast not
usually connected to networking or
anything like that. But those are
actually sometimes some of the best
things to go to if you're going to any
kind of a a hobbyist thing. Um, if
you're into like cars, you go to a car
show. Or if you're, you know, if you're
um, if you go to like, you name it. If
you like to go to circuses, if you see
like to go to, uh, movies, or if you
like to go to, you know, shows like
concerts and stuff like that, there's
groups that will do this, and you will
find groups that are within the genres
of whatever it is you're doing. You
know, I don't know that there's like
heavy metal crochet groups, but you
never know. There's probably like, you
know, the hardcore grandma crocheters
and then there's like the young kids
that are just like, "Hey, I want to try
it." Those are the kinds
of threads, for lack of a better term.
Those are sort of like the themes that
you want to look for in your groups
because you want to find something you
connect to. And this is just what we
talked about when we talked about like
writing a book or doing a podcast or
anything. Find something that interests
you enough that it's like, "Okay, this
is something I I enjoy doing anyways."
And then while you're
there, think about how you can introduce
your company into it. Now, you can be,
you know, obvious and you can have like
a hat and a coat and a shirt and shoes
and sho strings and, you know, have a
little laser that points in people's
eyes and it burns the image of their,
you know, logo or something like that.
Okay, don't do that. But there's a lot
of ways that you can get people's
attention and some of it can be very
subtle and some of it can be not so
subtle. The subtle approach I personally
prefer is like if you have just like you
know you happen to have wear your
company shirt from time to time or just
occasionally drop that well you know the
company I work at which sometimes will
you know often enough will lead to well
what is the company you work at what do
you guys do thinking about those things
one is going to be a way to get genuine
kinds of networking going is to really
get to know people and get that going
but the other thing is just thinking
about how you will approach that. How
will you talk about your company when
it's with, you know, your drinking
buddies or somebody like that? It's
like, how do you do it when you're not
selling? You're not really like you're
not really selling your services
directly to this person. You're really
telling them about your company. And
guess what? A lot of times that that
approach is going to be one of the best
ways that you can turn, you know, create
that into a an elevator pitch of some
sort. So, there's a couple things I want
to throw out there and let's see where
Michael's mind is wandering. Thanks,
Rob.
So, right off the bat, you know, you
talked about, you know, promote your
business, going to community events, um,
you know, maybe volunteer, do things
like that.
Um the and you talked about meetups
which is very important as well but if
you are in an area that where meetups
might not work for you or Facebook
groups and that aren't really like if
you're in a small town or you're not
like Nashville but maybe like Jackson,
Tennessee which is a little bit smaller
but growing massively. There are other
outlets to look at and if you have no
idea where to go, go out and just walk
the town. So, one of the first things I
did, cuz me and my wife moved to Jackson
in the middle of COVID, everything's
closed. You know, no one's around,
nothing's open, you don't know anything.
Well, as the world
reopens, first thing we did was we went
to town outlets and just started walking
around seeing what's there, what
businesses are there, who's open, you
know, what is there to do. And then we
found local magazines. So, don't always
go digital. You can also find like a lot
of towns or uh businesses have local
flyers. You know, you have the penny
saver, you have the the Nashville uh
scene or the Rage, if it's even still
around. Uh Jackson has a couple of
different magazines. They've got like
the um the Jackson uh magazine. There's
another one uh for Pwick and a couple
others. But what's interesting about
these is it highlights those social
events that Rob was talking about.
There's like these uh gallas that go on
all the time for charity benefits, sound
options, golf tournaments. These are
great little things. If you find
something that you're into, go to these.
Just go check them out. If you like
them, just start talking to people. And
then one, you might find a social scene
that you might you didn't know that was
there that you find is uh fulfilling.
Two, you may make some new friends. But
three, the best part
is as you're at these events, talk to
people, listen to them, ask them, "Hey,
what it is that what do you do?" "Oh,
you have a company. What is it that they
do?" Um, going this route, it actually
reconnected me with the Chamber of
Commerce again. Uh, I used to be a
member out in uh, Williamson County, and
that chamber wasn't really great at
networking, but the one here in Jackson
is fabulous. They host once a month uh
free happy hour meetings where everyone
goes to a different business once a
month and you spend two hours
networking, free food, drinks, and all
that. Look for things like that. It
doesn't always have to cost you money to
go out and network. And if you go to
something like that, you also get to
meet other like-minded business members
in your community.
Plus, that also introduces you to those
other events like Rob was talking about
because it's like, oh, through the
chamber, hey, we're offering this or
we're doing this uh benefits drive or
hey, we're doing this volunteer drive.
Things like that. It it can grow from
there. Uh other things to kind of think
about that I kind of stepped into is
look at your local community or uh I
guess we work type offices. Some of
those offer networking hours or free
hours where you can just go in, hang
out, check out the area. Those are
interesting places to network because if
you go through that period, uh, when
it's like the open hours, it's more
open. People are more talkative. It's
not always as, you know, everyone's
heads down working. So, that's another
place to kind of check out because you
might run into someone that is
like-minded like you that, hey, they
could use my services or, hey, I could
use theirs. Uh some other things to
think about too,
uh like restaurants, you know, you
mentioned happy hour. Uh if you do want
to go out and network and find areas
around businesses, uh one of the areas
uh in Jackson anyway, that's interesting
is this new little
um restaurant pub that opened right
across from the courthouse.
And interestingly enough, all the
lawyers tend to go over there right
after uh court gets out of session or uh
they go to another local restaurant
right around the corner. If you want to
kind of engage with other businesses or
lawyers or depending upon who your
target market is, go to those areas
where they frequently hang
out. If you're looking for, you know, to
help lawyers, go to places where lawyers
hang out after work. If you're looking
for baseball fin, go to like your local
town's baseball games, go to a high
school game, go to a college game, or go
to like aa or uh you know, smaller
venues are usually better. Um, I
actually find like the
um what what's the sound that's like
what uh AAA or some of the
um they're more open. They're more
family friendly. People are more engaged
in talking and enjoying the game. But
it's more of a social time than just
watch the game and you know drink some
beer or eat some hot dogs. So there's a
lot of
areas and ways that you can network
yourself in your business. And there's
also other ways where you can just go
out and kind of immerse yourself in your
community in these
groups to listen to what it is that
they're talking about. What are their
problems? Are these your customers? Are
these your target customers? If they
are, great. You're in the right area. If
they aren't, could they potentially be
or should you shift and go to a
different type of meeting or a different
type of networking or social event to
get yourself in a little more situation
where you're talking to the right
people?
I think this, you know, that brings in
up to mind the the classic uh I guess it
were if you go back, you know, now a
couple of decades where everybody would
go play golf and get a lot of business
deals done out while golfing, which is
honestly when you think about it, it's
it's like the perfect way to do those
kinds of things because you're with a
small group for hours, you're walking
around, you're just, you know, you're
chitchatting about whatever. So it's a
it's a captive audience to some extent
and actually very valuable to very good
way to do that. And so anything you can
think of that is in that vein which
includes you know if certain people or
you know hanging out at the close local
places for happy hour or you if
everybody goes to Friday night they go
hang out at a certain restaurant or
Saturday night they go and you know go
to dance at the local dance hall or
whatever it happens to be is you're
going to be able to find people that
will probably do this on a regular
enough basis. You get to know some
people you'll see the same kind of
faces. Um an example that we I'll use
out of my own experience which is a
little different is that we actually
have a whole uh you know a little group
of friends that the only reason we know
each other is because we went to
concerts that we went to local that's
local bands and you go to enough shows
and you get to see the same faces and
sooner or later you start talking to
people and there's all these people we
know that we would never know except
we've gone to a bunch of different
shows. they've gone to a bunch of shows
and now we've actually expanded and it's
amazing how many people have expanded
the the relationship outside of that. So
you'll meet, you know, maybe meet people
for dinner before a show or you'll go
somewhere after a show or you'll talk
about another group that you found and
then everybody will go to another show
together. There's things like that that
you you find that
commonality, you get to know some people
and then you can sort of work in some of
your networking. It is a slow burn. This
is not something where you're going to
like just go out there and say like this
week I'm gonna get 500 contacts doing
this. This is a little different
approach, but I think it's a very
valuable one because what you're doing
is you're building true relationships
and not just swapping business cards and
shaking hands. You're actually going to
have people that you you get to know and
they're going to feel, you know, people
buy from those that they know, like, and
trust. And so that's where you're going
to get, you know, definitely the no, but
you're going to give the investment. so
that they like and trust you. And that's
where you're going to start getting some
really good customers somewhere along
the way. Now, not everybody's going to
be, but you don't need that many for
this to be a worthwhile
investment. Challenge for the
week. What is your favorite thing to do
outside of work? Because we love our
work. What's your favorite thing to do?
And then if you do it
weekly, find one way, just one time,
strike up a conversation about your work
with somebody, some way, form or
fashion. Even if all you're doing is you
just like, you know, s in a silly way
almost or like, hey, guess what happened
at my work the other day or where I work
this happened or yesterday at work where
you're just like beating that drum so
that eventually somebody's like, fine,
I'll bite. where do you work or
something like that. Um, you know, test
some test the waters to see and and be
sensitive to how conversations go where
they may actually be an opportunity for
you to sort of like stick your foot in
the door and say, "Oh, by the way, you
know, that's something that I do or that
my company does or that we are building
or something along those lines." I think
it'll be a very uh it's one of those
things it'll be a very insightful uh
good learning experience as a challenge
if you don't do this already and if you
do do it twice as much I don't know pick
a number do a multiplier um but I think
it is something it's like see if there's
maybe a different way if you do this on
a regular basis let's say you you play
golf and you do networking while you
golf pick something else see if there's
something else that you do that you can
now expand that into a different uh
venue or line of work whatever it
happens to
That being said, first shoot us an email
because that is always the best way to
just like make this better each time.
Give us an email at
[email protected]. You can leave us
contact form, any kind of contact
information you want on our contact form
out on
developer.com. You can hit us up, follow
us, respond to us, send us all kinds of
suggestions of that on X. We are
developer uh Facebook, we have a
developer page. You can go out to
developing our channel out on YouTube
and you can see this and hundreds
literally hundreds of other content and
pieces of work that we've done over the
last I think it's like seven or eight
years that we've been on YouTube that's
now becoming something that we like have
been there. We are established. We've
been there a while. Um and of course our
website tons and tons of content there.
Always looking for feedback. Let us
know. But for now, go out there and have
yourself a great day, a great week, and
we will talk to you next time. Bonus
material. So, one of the things neither
of us really touched on was also uh like
conferences, trade shows, uh local uh
like community events. Uh those are
great places to go interact with the
community, interact with different
businesses and even possibly people
within your sector of business. if you
go to like a trade show or a conference.
Uh other things I found even going to
like the local craft fair um or little
special events out in parks and that
there's hundreds of vendors out there.
You never know who you talk to that
might end up needing your product or
your services. So really the sky's is
the limit and it doesn't really always
have to cost you know you to go out and
eat. It's just a matter of driving
somewhere and interacting with people.
And I think that's the key is is the
interacting with people because I I
cannot even begin to count how many of
my customers over the
years. Their primary the work that we
did for them was not their primary job.
It was not what they identified as. You
know, they would be like I I spent a
year working for a guy that basically
was a lawyer. He he did contract law,
but we were building a social web a
social networking site for him. And this
is way back in the day, but still it's
like it's a guy that you wouldn't expect
would be in that line of business and
yet he is. And that was I think if you
want good examples of that is go back
and again this seems self- serving but
it's really not. Go back and listen to
the interviews that we did um a couple
seasons back because I was and this one
of the things always amazed me is that I
would start into the conversation most
time did not know the person we were
talking to. Like sometimes it was like
the 5 minutes before I hit record was
the first time I'd ever spoken to them.
I I did a little bit of research to get
some background and then like off and
running and had some incredible
conversations because we would just let
the conversation flow. And like I said,
there were I've said there were a couple
of times that we I stopped recording and
talked to those people for an hour
afterwards. It took a long time for us
to actually wrap up our conversation
because we had all of these
commonalities and all these things that
we wanted to talk about and all of these
different ways that, you know, we could
explore a a relationship of sorts. Um,
you know, and it even goes back to, you
know, even the most simple stuff. Like
my my favorite of the, you know, way
back, one of my favorite things that
you've now heard several times. went
through those was when uh we had the
interview and he wrote a song at the
end, spent two minutes and he's, you
know, he talked about how this was a
great little brand and marketing thing
that they do is they go out there, they
create a song based on somebody and the
nice thing is it's like they're going to
remember the song a little bit because
now they've they've spent some time to
get to know you enough to put together
the song and then you're going to
remember it because like how often does
somebody write a song about you and it
it's about you. So, it also gives you
that connection. So, things like that
that you can do are just are are great.
So, we could go really deep in that.
Like I said, we have in the past and we
probably will at some point in the
future, but for now, we're going to let
you guys get back to it cuz we got to
get back to it. So, go out there, have
yourself a great one. We will talk to
you next time around because we are not
even close to done with this season. So,
we're coming back. Uh, we're going to do
some more. Going to get We got real this
time. We're going to get digital and
virtual next time. Talk to you then.
[Music]