In this episode of Sequence Over Strategy, Michelle Warner discusses how to create and nurture strong networks and how specificity, involvement, and consistent communication will build deeper connections with the right people.
They say you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. What happens when you apply that line of thought to your business? It’s your network that determines your business’s worth. In this episode of Sequence Over Strategy, Michelle Warner discusses how to create and nurture strong networks and how specificity, involvement, and consistent communication will build deeper connections with the right people.
Check out the full episode at TheMichelleWarner.com
Hi, I'm Michelle Warner and I'm a business designer and strategist. In the 15 years I've done this work, I have noticed the same trend everywhere.
Business owners are falling into a trap of centering strategies first, when what they actually need to be centering is sequence. Because the reality in building your business is that the steps you take and the order in which you take them is more important than how well you implement any single strategy. And that's why this show exists. On Sequence Over Strategy, my goal is to fix that by helping you find and trust your own sequence of actions rather than blindly follow someone else's strategy.
Question from the Community
Today's question is from Emily Crookston, who runs PocketPhD, a company that helps craft thought leadership for rebels, renegades, and mavericks. I love that, Emily, and I really love your business. She helps extract your best ideas and craft the strategies to share them. Here's Emily's question. And full disclosure, Emily is a Networking That Pays student, which is one of my courses that teaches you how to build authentic relationships to move your business forward.
Emily asks:
“After making a pivot in my business, working on new positioning and messaging and talking with you about my ideal connection avatars, which is a concept we teach in Networking That Pays, I feel like I have a good handle on who I want to connect with and what I want to say to them. But I think I'm sort of awkward when it comes to nurturing relationships, and I worry that this is getting in my way. I love the networking that pays prompts for keeping a relationship warm. I just haven't really seen these relationships evolve to the next level. I want to be borrowing audiences. I want people to be talking about me and my business when I'm not around. So can you offer any more guidance for deepening relationships? Or can you share an example of how a business relationship might evolve if there's not an immediate and obvious way to partner? Or maybe I should be looking more for those immediate and obvious partners with whom I click right away.
Yeah. All of the above, Emily, this is such a great question. And so I thank you for asking. And we're going to get into all this because every single option that you give here has some relevance and fits into the picture of how you manage these relationships to get them where you want them to be. And you know that I'm a big advocate of having the right relationships in your business. Whether you're focusing on a relationship or traffic marketing approach, the right relationships will make all the difference in your ability to reach your intended audiences.
And let's be real, they're also crucial for your mindset and your mental health. So Emily, I know you're not the only one who wants to prioritize this and is also getting stuck once you've made that initial contact. to actually build the relationships to a deeper place. So let's start with talking about why this is important. I just mentioned it a little bit, but let's really talk about why relationships are important in your business. And I often quote the famous saying that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
The Quality of Your Business
But I change that to say your business is the average of the quality of your network. And I say that because in the 15 years that I've been helping people build businesses, I see that over and over and over again. And I want to be clear that I also don't say this lightly because as a hardcore introvert who has struggled in the past to build my own relationships, they're not the easiest thing for me to build. So I don't say this flippantly thinking it's easy for everyone or from an extrovert's point of view where I just think, oh, just go build relationships and it'll be fine. This is something that I personally have had to really work on. and yet I understand the importance of it and so I don't want to discard this because I never want to lie to you guys and I never want to make you think that something is easy or unimportant. Like I'm going to be honest with you, this is really important and that's why I've spent time figuring out ways to make it doable for you. Because I know that it's a giant cheat code.
So I've made this a point again to carve out a section of my business that helps make relationship building for your business a doable thing for anyone. No matter introvert, extrovert, how you like to spend your time, if you live in a tiny town like I do, if you live in a city, we want to make this doable because it's such a key ingredient of your business success. And so if you are struggling to get past an initial introduction and build a deeper relationship, this episode is for you.
You know, in Networking That Pays, we spend a lot of time talking about how to get that initial connection going. But there is more to the story. We need to keep it going over time. And that's why I'm so glad Emily asked this question, because it allows me to get into some of the more intricacies and the nuances that maybe we don't have time to get into elsewhere. So let's start by getting to the heart of Emily's question to see what frameworks we can find to make this easier.
It's always easier if we can find a framework, some sort of system to help us understand what we're actually trying to do. That's always the first step of sequence, right? Let's understand what we're trying to do because when we understand that then the steps to take, the strategies, become a lot easier because they become a lot more apparent. So first place we head is straight for our old friend, again, sequence over strategy, the order in which we're going to do this.
As that plays a critically important role here, especially if you are someone who has a tendency to be maybe a little socially awkward, and again, I'm raising my hand with you, or you just aren't the most extroverted person in the world. So what's the first system we want to put into place to help you? Number one, meeting the right people.
As I told you, Emily is a Networking That Pays student. And hint, you know, if you're interested in building a supportive network and you don't know how to do it, Networking That Pays is a course I offer that will help you to do just that. I've also talked about this extensively in a previous episode of the podcast, in episode number three, called Network Rework. So if you want to learn a little bit more of this, go check out that episode as well. And so Emily has done a great job of identifying her ideal connection avatars, which is something that we talk about in the course. And in that episode three, your ideal connection avatars are those people you identify who you should be connecting with in order to further your business. And that's the important first step in the sequence, right? You will not build strong relationships if there's no reason for them to exist, especially if you are not a big relationship person to begin with. So you have to get that ideal connection avatar right.
But here's the catch that some people miss. And Emily, I'm not directly calling you out for this because I'm not sure if you're missing it or not. But overall, something I see people missing when they're meeting their quote unquote right people, their ideal connection avatars, but not keeping up with the relationship or not being successful in getting it deepened, is that they're only focusing on the business part of the ideal connection avatar, not the personal part. And when you're creating your ideal connection avatar, again, which is that person that you identify as being the person who you would want to connect with to further your business.
Both pieces are equally important. Both the business reason why it makes sense to connect with them, how do they make sense as a referral or collaboration partner, but also the personal side. You want to create an avatar of a person who's going to help you meet your business goals, but they also have to be someone you want to be friendly with. And I cannot overstate the importance of this. When we're talking about your business ICAs, I know personally I cannot talk about business all day long. Bless you if you can, but I think you're in the minority if that's you. For most of us, we just can't talk business all day long. And if I'm collaborating closely with someone over a long period of time, there has to be more for the relationship to go deeper. And that means we need to have more things in common than just finding a business win-win.
So speaking for myself, to use myself as the example, I have about 10 people who are close business ties. So in Networking That Pays terms, I would break that down to tell you I have two strong ties who are business associates. I have four to five who are my innermost weak ties, right? They're almost strong ties. And then probably two or three who are just beyond that innermost weak ties. So if we think about our Russian nesting dolls or we think about our rings around a planet, I have those strong ties who are right next to me, about two of those.
Then I have four to five who are right beyond that, and two to three who are right beyond that. So of those people, those 10-ish people, about nine share at least some of my non-business passions. And that's what we spend a majority of our time talking about. So first step first, it is easy to skip the suggestion that your ideal connection avatar includes some personal characteristics that are going to make it easier for you to deepen the relationship.
The Win-Win Myth
It is a lot easier to go out there and just find people who on paper look like a great business win-win. but avoid that temptation. Because if you're finding folks who are just the business win-wins, we'll talk about them in a minute, they can still be your weak ties, they can still factor into your network and should, but they're not gonna be those people who you deepen the relationship with the most. And so you really want to, again, avoid the temptation. You're going to have so many options for people who fit your ideal connection avatar that it is okay to include this personal. There is room for finding that fit.
So many people push back on me and they say, Michelle, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to find anyone, so I better focus on the business side of things. And I'm not going to worry about the personal. And so they just skip that whole half of the ideal connection avatar. And you can't do that for the people who you want to have closest to you. Also, though, I'm going to throw a wrench in things because I keep saying the people you want closest to you. And I just told you about 10 of those. You want to keep in mind that you are unlikely to successfully deepen a relationship into a strong tie or close to strong weak tie without those personal connections.
But as you heard me say, that's only maybe 10 connections for me out of the probably 50 that I keep in touch with. So the rest of the 40, the rest of my business connections, the rest of my weak ties, they're further from what I call the surface of the sun, right? They're further away than those strongest ties. And I get a little more transactional with them. If they're not within my first three layers, they get increasingly more transactional. And that's okay. They don't get transactional like bro marketing transactional, but more transactional than the people I have the closest relationships with.
And that's an important distinction here. Not everybody who is in your network needs to be your best friend, but you do want to have some who are very close to you. And then you also want to recognize others who you still build a networking that pays like good relationship with, but it's a little bit more on the transactional side. And that's okay. So what I'm saying here is that I make the business case for why we were connected and I get on with asking them for things before we're best friends.
For those people who are going to be a little bit more transactional, Emily, like you said, when it's kind of obvious that there's a partnership opportunity, let's go straight to it. Let's not waste time. trying to become really close friends first. When there's an obvious win-win for both of you, bring it up. Get into the business side of the relationship, and as you're creating wins for each other, then the personal side can develop as much as it might. But you also want to leave room for those folks you want to be closest to you, and those are the ones that you want to build a deep relationship with.
So when you're looking at your network setup, we want to have those two groups, right? We want to have the group that says, yes, I want a deep, ongoing relationship with these folks because maybe they're going to be the people I go to when times get a little tough, when I need to talk about things like they're going to be really the business support system.
And then the other folks in my business network, I'm going to build a real relationship with, right? It's not just going to be completely transactional, but I'm going to recognize that some transactional is okay, we're here to create win-wins, and therefore I can ask them for things faster. Because if they're just going to be in that transactional place, trying to stop and make a really close friendship before you ask for anything is going to take a lot of time, especially if you don't have something in common with them.
So to recap where we're at here, two things make this easier to build these deeper business relationships that you have. Number one, if you really do want them to be that deeper business relationship, make sure part of the personal is included from that ideal connection avatar. Make sure you are looking for that. But also at the same time, let yourself off the hook for having everything need to be deep. Some relationships can be appropriately transactional and that is great too.
It takes all types to keep a network going around and the second group who are appropriately transactional. You want a relationship there. You want to be friendly. It doesn't have to go super deep if early on you can be finding win-wins for each other, because in that case you can use those wins to build on each other and it's okay, you know. You don't have to wait until you feel like you have this really really rock-solid Connection before you propose something if there's something staring you right in the face in terms of how to make it happen. So think about your groups in those two ways.
And that is something that I see in my networking that pays students and just anyone who's building relationships struggle with is not asking fast enough. If you see a win on the table, propose it and get it going and you will build your relationship from there. So now that we have that framework in mind, where we're thinking about the ideal connection avatar and making sure that we are prioritizing the personal side of that, especially for the deepest relationships we're looking for. But we're also recognizing that not every single business relationship needs to be deep. You know, maybe there's 10 out of your 50 that are really deep and the other ones are just as appropriately transactional. Then let's figure out some strategies for how to actually make that happen.
Answer for Emily
So let's go back to Emily's question and a real specific part of her question. She says, “I want to be borrowing audiences. I want people to be talking about me and my business when I'm not around.” Emily, again, I'm not going to call you out on this because I know it's not what you're saying, but I do want to point something out. We cannot count on the other person to do things for us. So when you say, “I want people to be talking about me and my business when I'm not around,” that means it's first your responsibility to bring them in in such a way that this is a natural step for what they do. And what do I mean by that? I mean that you don't want to do it by asking people to refer you. That is never effective.
And all of you, we can all have a joint calling of ourselves out, because I know I've done this too, especially earlier in my career, where you're having a get to know you call, things are kicking off pretty well, you feel like you have some common customers, and so at the end you both say, oh yeah, I would be happy to refer you. That's not going to happen because you're putting the impetus on the person to remember who you are and to refer you when they don't really have a real connection with you. So you have to recognize that if you want to be in this place, that people talking about you and your business when you are not around, that is all built on you having a relationship up and running so that they are thinking about you, their friend, you, their close business associate, and not you, that person they once had a phone call with.
Again, what in the sequencing makes that happen is recognizing that you want to build a deeper relationship. And that's where Emily's question comes from, because she knows that if she wants people talking about her and her business when she's not around, she needs to build these deeper relationships with those key folks. So how do you do that? What deepens relationships? Let's talk about a few things that we can always keep in mind that are going to deepen these relationships.
Number one is inserting specificity into them. Let's talk about specificity. This is one of my favorite words when it comes to relationship building and so I am going to start with the actual dictionary definition of this. The definition of specificity is the quality of belonging or relating uniquely to a particular subject. I'm going to give you another definition. It's the biology definition of specificity. The narrowness of the range of substances with which an antibody or other agent acts or is effective. I find these definitions fascinating.
The narrowness of the range that is effective is part of the biological definition of specificity or the general definition. The quality of belonging or relating uniquely to a particular subject. What does that mean? That means that when you're building a relationship with someone, you can build it on specificity by zeroing in on very narrow things that you have in common, right? We want to be ungeneric.
I use this example often, but it drives me bonkers when I go on social media and I see some sort of comment or somebody tells me that they have tried to build a relationship with someone by commenting on their social media, and I go and look at what was said, and what was said is something like, thanks, I needed to hear this today. There's no specificity in that. There is no reason you have given the person that you have commented on any reason to believe that you absorbed anything that they said. you can just run and throw that comment under any social media post that there is. Instead, you want to be specific.
Specificity, narrowness, is what builds a relationship really, really quickly. So how can you be specific and what does that actually look like? Well, when we narrow down the number of people that you're trying to connect with, and we figure out things that you have in common with them, right, this is the personal side, you can start paying attention. You can be more curious. You can pay attention to things they say, their preferences, their interests. You can figure out how to interact on their preferred terms, right, that hopefully work for you too.
If you notice that somebody doesn't like receiving emails, but they want to text you, text them. You can incorporate them into your life in ways that work for them. And this is honestly a little bit like dating. The same rules apply. I always think of that New York Times article that came out a few years ago about the 36 questions to ask somebody to fall in love, where they say if you sit at a table with someone and look them in the eye and ask them these 36 questions, I can't remember the stats, but like odds are you will fall in love with that person.
Well, all those questions get to specific preferences if you go look at them. And that's what we're talking about here is actually being curious about these people and understanding things and then calling back, meeting them where they're at, right? How do you incorporate yourself into someone's life? so that you're at the tip of their tongue when they run into someone who might want your services. You do that by being proactive and, again, interacting with them in their preferred terms.
I will tell you that the quickest way to not build a relationship with me is to constantly show up and expect me to communicate with you on mediums that I'm not involved with, right? And so if you're always asking me to jump on a Zoom call and you're not picking up on the fact that I would much prefer to text or email you, we're not gonna have a good relationship because there's always gonna be a level of me thinking this person doesn't really get me or this person is not listening to me. They're just staying in their world.
And if you are never remembering anything about my life beyond my business, again, there's just a level of knowing that you're not paying attention. And so I want you to prioritize being specific with these people. And when you are specific, both in the ways you interact with them and in the things that you say when you do interact with them, that's going to deepen a relationship really quickly.
Now, of course, there are lines here. We don't want you to be creepy when you do this, right? You want to be noticing things that are common and easy to notice. You don't want them to feel like you have spent hours upon hours on their social media. And that's why it's nice to have the avatar pay attention to their interests, pay attention to their hobbies, know what is going on so that you know you have something in common. And then also, when you're being specific and you know that you share things in common, It's really easy to communicate because, and this is one of the tricks I use all the time, you don't actually have to know what is going on in their life.
You can share things about your life that you know they will find humorous or get a kick out of or relate to, rather than always having to be up to date on them. So one thing that I share a lot of common interest with my closest business ties, well, two things, gardening and the love of the outdoors. And so I know I don't need to be updated on one of my business ties status of their garden. Instead, I just know that I can update them with a very quick 30 second anecdote about something that's going on in my garden. And we'll connect on that, that specific. and that will deepen a relationship because then they will follow up and tell me what's going on with theirs and we can have a quick back and forth about a gardening situation or about a hike we just took or, you know, about our dogs.
Whatever we're connected on, I can start with what's new with me and I know that that will be specific and relevant to them because they share the interest. So that's another little cheat code about the specificity tying to the personal is when you can build a relationship where you know you can start with what's going on with you, but you can do that in a way that's not selfish, aka you're not immediately asking for a favor or you're not immediately in some sort of crisis mode, but instead you're kind of laughing about something that has happened to you or giving them an interesting update on something that has happened to you that they know is also relevant to their life or that they could relate to. That's a great place to be.
So when we're thinking about deepening relationships, you want to look for moments of specificity that you can bring to the relationship, both in terms of your shared interests and in terms of making sure you are interacting with them on their terms. That should also work for you, right? That's where this is a win-win. But you want to be doing those two things, and that's just going to immediately deepen the relationship because it's going to make it easy for the person to show up for you. And when you're making it easy for the person to show up for you, then they will reciprocate and they will make things easy for you to show up for them. And that's when we start building a really productive back and forth.
That leads us into the second thing you can do to deepen a relationship. Involve them, right? This can be tricky because you can do the wrong thing quickly. But another thing that really deepens relationships is involving people. Asking people for help, asking for help in the correct and appropriate ways actually builds a relationship.
Now, asking for help in ways that are too taking can devolve a relationship really quickly. So that's why you have to be careful with this. But you can find ways to involve people. And when you do that, again, it deepens a relationship. The story I always tell here is to think about toddlers and think about a toddler who is maybe in the kitchen with you and wants to help cook. And maybe you hand that toddler a little sippy cup full of something and ask them to deliver it to someone across the room. That toddler is going to be over the moon and feel closer to you because you have asked for their help. And so finding these appropriate ways to bring somebody in, how can you incorporate them into a training that you're doing and ask them to stop by?
I have one business partner who always asks me to stop by her live events for a few minutes to help answer a question that she's maybe stuck on but wants to get a great answer to her audience. I'm always happy to do that. And it makes me feel so special, right? Because I'm like, oh, I can help her. And she's not asking for a ton. And she's asking me to come in front of her audience for five minutes and help add some perspective here. How fun is that? She's incorporating me, involving me in her business. And I do the same.
I'm looking for ways to involve people in the business or I'm looking for ways to say, hey, I have this idea and I give them a specific idea. What do you think about that? I don't ask to pick somebody's brain for a half hour about a bunch of unrelated things, but I'll come with maybe one very specific idea and one specific ask for feedback on that idea that somebody can give me in 30 seconds and that involves them.
And that deepens the relationship because you're bringing them into the circle and they're seeing a little bit of the behind the scenes of how you think and how you talk. And so again, that just deepens the relationship because you're showing them your brain, you're showing them what you're doing, and that can be really interesting and exciting when you're finding these ways to involve folks. And then the third way.
Stop, Drop, Communicate
Okay, so the ways that we have to deepen relationships, get specific, both in what you're saying to them and how you're interacting with them. and then involve them, right? Find ways to involve them. Third way, stop, drop, and communicate. And this is a little bit of a combination of the two above, but this is a really good habit you can build for those people who are most important that you want to stay connected with. And I always laugh when I say stop, drop, and communicate. It's like stop, drop, and roll. Stop, drop, and communicate is really something that you can incorporate into your habits.
And again, it shows people that you are invested in them and you are thinking of them. What does this mean? Well, when you have a manageable number of people that you're trying to stay in touch with, you can easily keep them at the front of your mind and incorporate them into your day. Here's what I mean, and I'm not always perfect at this, but I try really hard.
When I think of someone, If I am walking the dog and an experience I had with someone comes to mind, or if I figure out a problem to something that includes perspective that was brought to me by someone, or if I just see something that reminds me of someone, I stop, drop, and communicate that. If I'm in a position to immediately text or email that person, I do that. I don't wait. These take 30 seconds. I just stop. I email the person and I say, oh my gosh, you'll never believe what just happened. I'm thinking of you. Hope you're well. Or I write myself or I record myself a quick little voice note. And I say, remember to go tell so-and-so what I just did or what just happened. And then when I get back and I'm in a place where I can email or text them or communicate in whatever way I communicate with them, I can share that with them. And this goes so far in building depth into a relationship.
And when you have a manageable number of people that you're trying to keep in touch with, again, it's not that hard. It's not that difficult to have moments where you notice them, you think of them, and then you make it a priority to tell them that. Right? And this will take a little bit of time. This is some muscle memory. You need to build up this habit. But I can tell you now that my brain is tuned to this. It can take a minute, 30 seconds to communicate with folks. And that just deepens the relationship. Because again, that kicks off a conversation. It just kicks off a funny back and forth. They know that they have had an impact on you. And so they're going to continue to communicate with you.
I also have been known to send silly things via Amazon or via any kind of gift giving service, if you will. I'm absolutely terrible at sending gifts on appropriate occasions. So please don't wait to get your birthday gift from me, a thank you gift, a holiday gift. It's probably not going to happen. I'm terrible at it. But when I think of you, if I see something at a store and it has your name written all over it, or if I think of a funny thing I could send you and I can log on to Amazon real fast and find it, people are getting those all year long. And that's such a fun way to, again, kind of communicate, stop, drop and communicate, stop, drop, and tell people that you're involving them and that you're specific with them, right?
I'm not going to send you a generic holiday gift, but I can send you something that is really cool and random. that reminds you of something that we did together, I'm going to do that. And that is going to solidify and deepen the relationship. Because when you receive that, you're probably going to laugh. You're probably going to get in touch with me. And you know what else you're going to do? You're going to think of me the next time you have an idea that could help both of our businesses or the next time you run into a referral.
So those are the three things that I really, really focus on when I'm talking about deepening your relationship. Those are the three tactical, strategic level things. I think about specificity, I think about involving them, and I think about stop dropping and communicating whenever something happens that makes me think of a person.
Review
So let's review. There are a lot of ideas I just threw at you. but I wanna make sure we're thinking about them in the right order, because my friends, this is sequence over strategy, right? So if you are struggling to build business relationships at the depth that you would like to, let's start with thinking about it in the right order. And in this case, that means starting with confirming that number one, you're being picky and building with the right people, and you're not trying to force deep connections with people that you don't have a personal connection with. That's probably never going to happen. Or if it does, it's going to be a flash in a pan. So you want to focus on making sure that the deep connections you want, the people you're going to siphon off, if you will, from the rest of your network to be deeper, really are people that have both a business and a personal connection.
And then going hand in hand with that, you become OK when some people are more transactional, if that is the vibe. And in those cases, we're not talking again, we're not talking bro marketing transactional, but we're just talking about some transactional is OK. You're going to ask a little faster because you see win wins and you're going to build a relationship off of mutual wins that you can create for each other. And that's great too. So once you are clear on those two groups of folks, then you're looking at the group that you really do want to build these deeper relationships with, and you're making a commitment to be specific with them, to involve them, and to stop, drop, and communicate with them.
And listen, I'm not going to complain if you take those three things and apply it to everyone in your network, but if you are struggling to build deeper relationships with a sliver of them, that's your best bet. is to, again, grab the people who you think really are great fits for a deeper relationship and start practicing being specific, involving them and stop dropping in communicating. Start there, you know, with two or three people and see the progress that you can make. And then you can expand it and then you can start incorporating, you know, five to ten people in that core group. And then you can start finding fun ways to incorporate these three things to your larger, more transactional network. to make it more personal. But that's how I would do it, is I'm thinking about, number one, who are my real priority people? And then I'm applying those three principles to them. And then I'm going from there, because we don't want to bite off more than we can chew.
So that's how you build the deepest relationships in your business. First, you prioritize who they should be. And then you use some of these tricks that just make it more fun to interact with people and get the business so it's not the only thing. Incorporate some of that personal. So listen, this was some kind of advanced relationship building topics. But like I said at the beginning, if you are just getting started with relationship building, check out the free training that you can see on my homepage at themichellewarner.com or check out Networking That Pays, which is a course I have that teaches you all about ideal connection avatars and how to think about these relationships that you should be building in your business.
That's the first step, the first sequence in getting this piece of the business right is first identifying who should be in your network and then having some of this more advanced fun in terms of how to really deepen those relationships that you do start building. And again, you can find all that at themichellewarner.com. If you go there, you will see in the middle of the homepage, there'll be a free training about networking that pays. You can check that out and it will go over some of these basics with you.
And in the meantime, thank you, as always, for being here. If you haven't yet done so, please subscribe or even rate the show on whatever podcast platform that you're listening to. It makes a huge difference in others being able to find it, and I just appreciate your support so much. I will see you right back here in two weeks. And in the meantime, remember, Sequence Over Strategy.