The Non-Needy Networking Process (How To Make High Value Connections)

I'm an introvert at heart and when I went to college I was never the first to engage in any type of social or classroom situation and even my friend group that I still have to this day we kind of just stumbled upon each other in the dorms like they approached me I forget exactly how it was we were all awkward at the beginning uh just getting to school and we're like hey you guys want to go walk to lunch or hang out and then it's slowly built into this don't even get me started about speaking

in front of the class or going to networking meetups to meet new people those just turned me off in every single way I wanted nothing to do with them all I wanted to do was sit in my dorm play video games and work on the side businesses that I was pursuing at the time and this was before I realized that being introverted isn't about being anti-social being social is a skill not a personality trait that can be improved yet people hide behind their introverted identity to avoid the inevitable discom Comfort they are going to have

to face if they want to see success in any domain of life like it doesn't make sense to write off uh business or something else that requires some form of social interaction whether it be in business or just relationships or meeting new people like thinking of yourself as an introvert in that way and thinking that like 50 of the population that is introverted just doesn't do those things that is completely against the point and so that was college but now we're at the center of a new party which is social media and I tried to

build a name for myself many times in the past I started with a fitness YouTube channel went on to create a digital art page on Instagram even did some photography a lot of Photography actually if you go to the bottom like scroll all the way to the bottom of my Instagram page you can see what I'm talking about here and then the next thing was building multiple agencies or just freelancing businesses and testing out different tactics for growing and selling on social media and then that's when I stumbled across Twitter of all places seriously nobody

really uh thought of Twitter back then and I would argue that still most people don't now because I thought it was a place for like politics and half-baked memes and the since the day I downloaded it in like 2011 I just remember vividly scrolling on Twitter not seeing anything that I liked and then I just deleted it deleted the app from my phone for like 10 years but one day when I decided to get back on Twitter a tweet from Jose Rosado great person go follow him on Twitter go follow him everywhere a tweet of

his popped up on my timeline and it was some form of like heavy hitting truth like a harsh truth and I love that stuff that's the kind of content that I really like is like hey stop being a little and go do this I'm pretty sure that's that was Jose's thing at the time is like stop being a little and so that resonated really well with me and so I followed him and I realized that he wasn't just talking about self-improvement he was talking about online business which was what I was interested in too so

I was like oh this is a steal this guy's talking about both self-improvement and online business and then by following him uh more accounts got exposed to my feed either from people that he retweeted or that I just came across in the replies or you know how you find people on social media it's kind of just uh like the network effect and before I knew it I was drowning in high value Money Twitter advice and then on Twitter I lurked without engaging or doing anything that's the type of person I am I just don't like

engaging I don't like commenting I'm an introvert right I didn't want anything to do with it so I just lurked for like six months until I finally realized like it just hit me all at once I'm like all of these people are writing the same exact tweets that I could be writing like I enjoy this content because I could do the same thing they're confirming my beliefs and so why am I just sitting here consuming when I could be doing the same exact thing because they were clearly getting leads followers sales they were growing and

actually making an income doing it and all it took took was a little mindset shift or shift in perception to see from that lens of why am I not doing the same exact thing I can do all of this and so that alone it it sounds cliche but that alone changed the direction of my life so here is a graphic to illustrate that the digital world has no barriers we can see this is the evolution of networking where 20 years ago you need college network location profession status in order to get opportunity today all you

really need is the internet because in the past the only way to the top was your network and your network was limited by your physical location or the college the prestigious college that you went to and climbing your way up the ladder then introverts didn't stand a chance especially me at that time if I would have gone to college in the past I would have been I would have been out of a job I wouldn't have been doing anything because I wouldn't be social enough to actually make that happen so in the past you couldn't

like we take this for granted we don't actually sit and think about it but you can DM a celebrity and if your DM is good like if you're a good persuasive writer which is a skill right it's not like just nobody gets access to these celebrities the the people you want to DM there is a string of words that you can say that will get them to respond and even in a like a freelancer or an agency owner uh their case in the past you wouldn't be able to just DM a client walk them through

some kind of like strategized messaging to open them up to your service and then get them to pay you twenty five hundred five thousand ten thousand I know some people are even charging sixty thousand dollars for services through the DMS do you not see how insane that is like most people would kill for sixty thousand dollars so if you can just up skill yourself a little bit for three to six months in order to be able to create a freelancing Consulting coaching service from the start start reaching out to people because the digital world has

no barriers and then pull in an income for yourself by charging low like 500 to a thousand getting results improving your skill stack charging more learning how how to create a system that solves a specific problem within a specific Niche and then charging even more to get more results and then by that time if you're growing an audience and you productize like it's very clear what people should be doing but this is all modern in the past you had to go to school you had to get good grades you had to apply to a prestigious

College get accepted and then do all of this fancy work to become like rise to the top of the ladder and whatever compartment or Department of that education you wanted to go into and then you had to be extroverted enough to actually form real connections with these people so that they would pass opportunities off to you rather than the next guy and so in the past people had to work their ass off in order to get the limited opportunities that were available but now there's just an overabundance of opportunities and options that make people overwhelmed

uncertain and so they flock to the secure career systems you could call them that have been developed over time that the schools are tightly closed with and so think about it the the person that you read just now in the comments they need a website and you could fulfill that service and the tweet that you just scrolled by that guy needs a video editor and the person on some subreddit they want to learn how to be happy they have a problem in their life they're not sure how to solve it and maybe you can come

in and help them the internet gives you indirect access to the 4.9 billion people that are on it and all it takes is one piece of content right this is all media this is all content where it takes one piece of content for someone to like just it'll just land somewhere right let's say it was a good piece of content someone retweeted it then a big account saw it they retweeted it and then another huge account saw it it got put on a meme page maybe it got mentioned in the news this is like way

overly optimal case but this can happen to anyone right it's just a matter of learning how to write a good piece of media and then having it spread to whatever part of the internet you could get to and then people know your name people start to know what you do and then if you attract them to your audience and you have content going for you then you nurture them they get to know you more and then if you eventually have a product or service that you can offer them in order to pull in an income

so networking even though I don't like that word networking just I like making friends is a better way to put it but networking is the pillar of My Success Jose Rosado was the first person that I reached out to from my memory I ended up signing on to his coaching program which was a great program this was like three years ago and the cool thing is about this is that both Jose and I were in like slightly different niches kind of we talk about some same things we talk about some different things but that just

goes to show that like people can be unique even if we're in very similar domains and so another example is Joey Justice if you're in modern Mastery you know who Joey is if you're on Twitter you probably know who Joey is but we hit it off like way back when when we first both started on Twitter and now I'm flying out to see him in early March I'm I've seen him multiple times he's a very good friend of mine and it's just crazy what happens when you start actually putting yourself out there and we helped

each other with our services at the start I helped him get his I like offered my services to him for free in order for him to get a testimonial from me and to just make his better and he offered coaching to me so it's like vice versa that's kind of how it works in the Creator economy is you just make friends you help each other and then you use those strategies to help others and even last year I moved to Texas with Dakota Robertson and JK Molina that I met on Twitter and I've also met

great people like Justin Welsh sahil Bloom Dickie Bush I had uh dinner with Dickie bush like a few weeks ago I've talked with others it's just genuinely insane what kind of like-minded people that are ambitious in life and achieving good things you can find on the internet if you actually look for them because most people don't approach social media with this mindset they approach social media with the mindset of I want to be educated and entertained it doesn't even cross their mind that they could reach out to this person and become friends with them I'm

talking about like people that are within a similar follower range as them and then grow together and offer their value in front of potentially 4.9 billion people on the internet so if you're in this Creator game or this one person business game if you're not on social media you've already lost this is kind of a given I don't care if it's like paid ads or building a personal brand in general I recommend building a personal brand but if you're not on social media at all I don't know what you're doing and then go and talk

to any Creator or one person business owner that you know and ask them what the most important part of their success is and they're going to tell you it's networking if they don't I don't know what to tell you so when you don't have an audience which everyone does not have an audience at the start DMS are how you get in front of people and you start making connections Freelancers understand this well for landing clients but the average person that is just trying to grow on social media they don't see the importance of it and

so that's what this video is for because I've seen I've seen people land job offers right this isn't only for people that are uh trying to start a business this is for anyone that is looking to advance their career I've seen people with tweets that go viral when they have very low followers simply because they are friends with someone that has a lot of followers and they shared it and so people usually fall into two camps here first is that they don't understand the sheer power and network effect of dming people on a consistent basis

the second is that they don't understand that you can get large accounts to share your post if you are strategic enough so this is clearly about how to send a good DM but most people suck at sending DMS or they don't know how to do it so I want to preface with this like no shade on you if you've done this before but from here on out never ever ever ever ever ever send a DM that starts with starts and ends with hi or hey how are you can you follow me back a straight sales

pitch with no prior connection a long block of text that takes too much time to read especially if the sentences aren't spaced out you have to approach DMS tactically especially if you're reaching out to Big accounts that get 10 plus DMS an hour I would say that I get 10 plus DMS on almost every single platform every single hour and so you have to understand that like I'm not one I just do not have the physical capability of replying to all of those DMS especially because it's not just one dm back it's usually a question

and then I answer and then the DMS compound so if I start answering people the number goes from 10 plus DMS to like 40 plus DMS every single hour so you have to keep in mind that people with a large following that you're trying to get in front of they're just skimming through DMs to see if they're missing anything important to the point where it's like an email subject line or a hook for a piece of content or a headline for an article you have to capture attention with what they can see and you have

to be strategic about what you're going to say so let's dive into the seven steps to non-needy networking this started out as a guide in digital economics and then it got repurposed into two-hour writer to help people get eyes on their writing and then I put in modern Mastery it's just a very important process to understand this is foundational for anyone trying to grow business or just improve their career or just get online and so the main purpose of this really when we peel it all back is to get your name in front of people's

eyes and in their mouths because even Freelancers struggle with thinking that they're just in this constant cycle of I need to reach out to this guy and then the conversation ends if they never respond no if you reach out to 100 people and you were kind and you had value to offer and you walk through the process that we're going to go through then there even if they can't like help you with anything they're gonna have you top of mind for the next person that comes to them and asks if they know anyone that can

help with web design email marketing uh Fitness whatever it may be so the first step is to find somebody that you want to DM you want to DM and this isn't exclusive to just making connections this is crucial for paid work as well so many Freelancers choose niches that they don't give a about and then their entire they're just put themselves in this like terrible place where they hate reaching out to people because they hate the people that they're reaching out to they hate working with the people so they hate the work that they're doing

for the people and then they just build themselves into an another miserable nine to five so this is a crucial step is just to reach out to people that you actually want to connect with so reach out to people that you are inspired by or you would want to work with you would want to strategize with or you see potential for Mutual benefit and when you're just starting out you kind of have to work your way up the ladder right because there's so many different moving pieces with all of this it's impossible to explain in

one video but just one example if if I have zero followers and I'm reaching out to someone with a hundred thousand and by chance they open my DM and then they look at my profile there's like yes this is a bit superficial but there's there's not really anything you can offer me I see Zero followers and I think okay we're in the social media game this guy hasn't put in any time at all how is he gonna help me and of course there's a lot more Nuance to that and so once you have an audience

and leverage you can really reach out to anyone you want if you have a hundred thousand to a million followers you have a lot more social proof because that shows that you've been in the game for a while that you're offering some form of value that it's just like a badge saying that like hey I've stuck this out for a bit and I've actually proven myself and so when I reach out to someone and I have like a million followers I'll get a response from almost anyone and so you're probably asking where do I find

people to DM well I'm assuming that you follow people that you either want to connect with or can help you grow or that you want to work with right you follow at least one of those people so from that one person go and look at their following list right this is probably zero to a thousand people that they follow look through that list spend some time going through the accounts find like-minded accounts or just find people that you'd want to connect with follow them start replying to them engage with them and then eventually walk through

this process of dming them so the first thing that you send is an inspired compliment this is step two so you can find a piece of their content work or just something that they've done that truly inspires you or that you like or it it gave you an Insight that you want to share with them and then you send that to them so let's say it's like a tweet that I resonated with and I'm going to send that person the tweet and be like hey man explain what I liked about it and then go from

there and so people love praise and there's this thing called The Law of reciprocity where if you give value to someone else and praise is a form of value then they feel obligated to give it in return so let's let's pretend that I wrote a tweet on managing emotions this is what I would say what's up Dan this tweet Hit me hard I've been going through it the past couple of days and this instantly gave me some relief thank you and then I add the link to the post they liked simple as that step number

three is to show genuine interest in them so if they don't respond from this you can just reach out again in the same manner send them something that you liked and keep doing that until they respond and so showing interest is communication 101 showing interest makes you interesting so ask them about their goals what they're building what they do for work this gives you the opportunity to give value even if you don't have the value to give right now so let's assume that they just respond with the generic thank you so much and that was

to the last message and now you can go to their profile find what they're working on or just a goal that they have and try to assume it so if you find what they're working on you can say something like what are your next plans for modern math history it's been crazy seeing it grow I'm curious what you've got in store if you can't find what they're working on do you have anything that you're building right now with that kind of content you must have something bigger in the works so step number four is to

lead with value this is the part that trips most people up because most people don't think they have value to give so your first options are to see where you can help send actionable tips if you personally have them or you can send resources videos articles or anything that may help with them building what they're building in accordance with their goal and so if you have to ask more questions in order to get more specific on what they're building so that you can actually help them with that then do so ask more questions in between

these so if you have no value to give you can send a resource that can help them with their goals connect them with someone else in your network just continue having a good conversation and showing interest show that you're interested in helping them so step number five is to get on a call to make a deeper connection so this part is optional but highly recommend did you don't have to get on a call with someone but I would practice it right especially if you're an introvert it helps a lot to be able to get on

a zoom call and just talk with someone because making that face-to-face connection is priceless right especially on the internet where nobody really knows your mannerisms they don't know how you talk outside of like a scripted real or post and it just helps to mesh on that personal level and so when I was starting out I was getting on Zoom calls left and right even if I didn't feel like it I remember being so anxious one time when I was dming someone with like 50 000 followers I was just like oh my God this guy like

it's crazy I can't believe I'm even getting on a call with him and then you realize that every single person behind a high following count is human too they're just like you and so people think that getting on a zoom call is weird because one they haven't done it and it's it's a lot more normal than you think if you just ask someone hey you want to get on call and like I can help out with what you're building or we can just talk shop and have a good time and so it also helps to

just take the conversation to somewhere like telegram or Whatsapp where you can send them like a voice message right you can make it more personal and now I mentioned WhatsApp there's people in the replies of these YouTube videos I'm gonna get you one day but there's like these scammers that have their name as like WhatsApp and then a number and they have my profile picture that's so weird like it I'm sorry I'm sorry if you guys like click on that you're an idiot don't click on those things so step number six is to follow up

with value right you've waited some time you've gotten on a call with them maybe there's some space between the messages the the conversation fizzled out but it helps to strengthen that or just like keep that connection going oh my God my tax guy's calling me hey how are you man yeah sounds good man I really appreciate it so when you're following up with value you want to remember their goals right you want to have their goals top of mind so when you come across something or you find something interesting just as you're consuming content or

you're reading books or you're watching YouTube videos or you're building stuff out then you can think to send it to them in order to just continue providing value to them I've done this before with like content systems that I built out or like notion templates that I've built out and if I feel like it'll benefit one of my friends and my network then I'm gonna send it to them and just be like hey man I built this out maybe it'll help with XYZ and so if you want like a hard script to practice I don't

recommend like copy pasting any of these just use your own voice but if I were to give a script it would just be I remember you telling me about your plans for their project or goal I found this today and thought you'd find it helpful so it could be a YouTube video or it could be really anything that you just feel like they would benefit from so the last step step number seven is to follow up with an Ask notice how we provided value we've followed up with value all of of this is variable right

you don't have to do it exactly in this order these are kind of just the principles and if you study influence or persuasion you'll understand this a lot more so I'd recommend like the book influenced by Robert cialdini but by this point you've built a pretty damn solid connection without asking for anything yet and understand this is a long game as well right if you're here to just like get a quick payment from them or get like a quick retweet from someone or a Quick Share like you may succeed but it's not sustainable you're not

building an actual like good Network that you can rely on and so at this point you can ask them to join a mastermind group send them one of your posts that you've put a lot of time into because they may share or retweet that right you don't even have to ask them to retweet it they could just share it and the third is ask any specific questions you have for them without paying for Consulting right so this is like what a lot of people Miss is they'll just shoot a message immediately to someone and expect

like a thought out answer when there's no relationship there and so if you have a burning question that you want answered then you should practice building a relationship because a lot of the time I mean some people do this I haven't really done it in the past but I know there's some like big big people where someone will send them a question because they don't take into account how much time like they're busy people and so the person will send them like a link and be like hey you can sign up for a Consulting call

here and it's like a thousand bucks right and so no one's going to pay that but if you actually network with this person you show their that you're a cool person and a real person then you can usually ask questions and get answers because they like you and so if your plan is to leverage these people for audience growth then you need to write a tweet that they would think about retweeting right so you could write a tweet that mentions a topic that you learn from them you can write a post on Instagram and tag

them in it because you inspired a part of that post and then when you send that to them you just be like yo just wrote this up and thought you'd enjoy it it was inspired by our previous conversation and if they're tagged in it then there's Mutual benefit because if they share it and that post gets traction it just looks better for them anyways and so for DMS you should be reaching out to people every single day right I'm assuming if you want to become a Creator you're a solopreneur one person business you are in

the space to not only learn and produce and meet people but that's exactly it is you're there to meet people if you like someone's post DM them and tell them you like it if you like someone's reply like it engage with it and just be like hey man I love that reply on the post like it's so easy to just send a DM to thank people for what they're doing online and so there's a bonus tip number eight because you might be thinking Dan won't this take a lot of time it's like yes obviously zoom

out and see the big picture if it's going to take you four years to get a formal education and a degree and then another 10 years to actually work your way up the ladder to a reasonable salary that you can live with then it's going to take a few months years it's going to take some time to build your own thing and all of this is ironic because the uncertain or the uncomfortable path or doing your own thing is the only Quick Fix out there and when I say quick I just mean like an expanded

time Horizon it could take you two years to start making ten twenty fifty thousand dollars a month by building your own thing but then people love the certainty of like oh I go to college for four years I get to take a break I get to go and work for this cool big status based company and then work my way up the ladder from fifty thousand dollars a year to a hundred thousand dollars a year and then get capped there and then eventually start my own thing and maybe spend a few years doing that when

you could have just done it from the start that's why the digital world has no barriers this is such an important thing we do not live in the world that we lived in 10 years ago you live right now and there's ample opportunity to build whatever the you want and so another thing is bringing your ideal future the actions you're going to be taking then anyways Into the Now is something that you should be doing if you want to be a writer and you're not writing for 10 20 minutes even an hour a day and

then just scaling it up as you are able to make that more sustainable in your life that's what you do if you're gonna have to DM people anyways when it comes time to start building your own thing you should be doing it right now so start with dming two people a day you like their content DM them then bump it up to 5 bump it up to 10. I promise that alone will just change everything because the the thing with this is is like oh you like why why would I do these things if I'm

not being paid for it do you do you see the dissonance there there's a huge dissonance where it's like you're not going to be able to get paid for it until you have enough practice from doing it without getting paid in order to get paid and preferably it's something you like doing like if you're going to be writing every day in the future and getting paid for it but you're not writing every day right now and working your way up in terms of income then I I don't know what you're doing like I'm feeling feisty

today so just get your together that's it so if you like the video like the video if you want to comment on the video comment if you want to subscribe subscribe I'd love if you did that uh check out links in the description for two hour writer learn a new skill learn how to leverage it digital economics masterclass on brand content marketing product modern Mastery for a community of like-minded people you can join for five bucks Link in the description free challenge creative Challenge free Power planner other cool stuff just explore down there and with

that I hope you have an incredible rest of your day