Andrew: Hey there freedom fighters. My name is Andrew, and I’ve got something that’s a little bit of a reverse experience for you here today. Usually here I do interviews with entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses. Today Karl, Karl Staib of Domino Connection, interviews me about how I connect with people, how I build relationships with them.
I thought it might actually be useful for anyone out there who’s building a business, and I think it’s one of the best interviews partially because I talk about this, which you’ll see. I talk about this, which you’ll see and other things in there. So a little bit different, but it’s still like the other interviews sponsored by my friend Scott Edward Walker, of Walker Corporate Law.
If you’re looking for a lawyer and you’re running a tech company or a startup, I think you need to go to walkercorporatelaw.com or just, you know what, shoot Scott an email and ask him what kind of deal or how can you help out startups. His email address is scott@walkercorporatelaw.com. Alright, here is Karl. Karl, take it away.
Karl: Hi. I’m Karl Staib of Domino Connection, and I have the amazing Andrew Warner with me of Mixergy. Thank you for being here today.
Andrew: Yep. Thanks for having me on here.
Karl: Oh sure, sure. I brought you on because you’re an amazing connector.
Andrew: Yes.
Karl: I first saw you speak at the World Domination Summit.
Andrew: Yes.
Karl: I’ve watched countless interviews that you’ve done and when you said yes to my interview I got super excited, but the thing that I want you to start with is how did you get started in this, and then next what is your personality type and how that all fits in?
Andrew: Okay. One of the ways that I got started was I started organizing events, and I did it in Las Angeles when I really didn’t know that many people. I thought how do you organize an event when you don’t know that many people and I said I can’t come up with anything, but it’s so useful when you meet someone in person when you’re one of the few people that they actually get to shake hands with, talk with, tell you their issues and so on.
It’s such a better bond than just tweeting at them and Facebooking them and all the things that we’re supposed to do. I said there’s got to be a way and then I said ah ha, co-host. I know maybe five people but what if three of them co-host with me and they know five people, so they could invite those five people and now we have an event.
What we ended up doing was, I think it was an event with five entrepreneurs who were each co-hosts, and each of us was required to at the time we said let’s each invite five good people out. We ended up with a total of 30 people at the event minimum, and actually now that I think of it, it was in an art gallery that got packed because we thought we only knew five people.
We tried to get only five people but we ended up obviously inviting more and more people and the place was just fantastic. That’s how I got started. I got to know people there and when people ask me how do you get your interviewees, I say from my friends. How do I get my friends, from an event like that?
When people ask me how do you get people to teach courses on Mixergy so they can teach your audience, it’s from my friends. Well how do I get my friends, often from events like that and I continue to do it. Offline is still the untapped channel right now. Most people will want to know about the latest Pinterest, the latest Instagram, the latest tweet, the latest email, but they will not care about offline and that is why you and I can use that to our advantage. I’ve got a few props here and I can show people a few of the different ways when you’re ready for me to talk about it.
Karl: Yes. So then your personality type and the fact that a lot of people who are watching are probably introverts and what are you, introvert, extrovert and how do you play that into your connection process?
Andrew: I used to be so shy that it hurt me. For my teenage years I couldn’t talk to girls, but I also couldn’t even talk to guys. I had nothing to say. I couldn’t relate to people unless there was a specific thing that we were talking about. If we were talking about last night’s homework I could talk about it.
If I was trying to tell you about my company I could talk about it because I had a clear path, but most conversations like the stuff we’re talking about at art galleries the stuff that allows you to really get to know someone, it’s not a clearly pathed out process.
You have to just talk and let the conversation go where it will, and there I was completely insecure, completely unsure of what to do and I had to figure it out. The thing is, once I figured it out I loved it. I love doing it so much now that I will talk to strangers in elevators. I love doing it so much now that I will talk to you on Skype. I love doing it so much that that’s where a lot of my friends come from. That’s where a lot of my best relationships come from.
Karl: How did you get there, from that shyness to being able to reach out? You’ve interviewed some of the most famous online people out there, and the founder of Wikipedia. Everybody’s been on a Wikipedia site. I’m just amazed by your ability to connect with them and bring them on your show. How did you get from that to where you are now?
Andrew: Speaking specifically about Jimmy Wales? I met him through a friend who I met at one of my events. So when I say that the friendships ended up leading to interviews, it’s that way. And what I had to do was understand psychology, process, and my own personal confidence. I’ll start with process because that’s what most people care about first. And then once they have the process they go, “Ah, I can’t do it because I’m afraid.”
So for me a process is if I go to a networking event, I don’t often know what to say, but I don’t want to be stuck in the moment trying to come up with something to say. And so what I’ve learned is the first thing that I want to say is something related to the event. How did you find out about the event, is one of my usual go-to’s. If I’m at a party like I was, I think, yeah, it was a party for a friend’s daughter on Sunday. I asked, “How do you know the hosts?”
If it’s around here in the office and I might meet someone for the first time who’s coming in for a meeting with someone else, I immediately, if it’s early in the week, I say, “What’d do you this past weekend?” because I want to get to know what they do socially. If it’s coming up on the weekend, like today’s Thursday, today and tomorrow I might ask someone, “Hey, what do have going on on Saturday? What are you doing this weekend?” That lets me into their world.
So I have this process that I’ve thought about for a long time. I even have a process for if we’re in a conversation, how do I get past what do you do for work, which is really a boring question which never leads to bonding, rarely. And there, what I do is I take people through what I call the reverse biography. I’m hesitating because I’m saying, “Wait, I’m talking about this out loud?” But sure, people will see it and they’ll still love that I do it. Reverse biography starts off with, “Where are you today?”
You know how a biography works, actually? It starts off with the subject of the biography was a baby. And then his parents were afraid of germs, and so he became a little bit of a germaphobe later on. But in high school he was an athlete, and this germaphobia thing was hidden. And then after that he started a small company and he wasn’t sure what to do, and then it goes in chronological order.
A reverse biography goes backwards. It starts with, “How did you find out about the hosts? What were you doing this past weekend? Oh, yeah, where are you from? What’s it like in this city if you’re from New York? Is New York really as aggressive as people say?” And then I go backwards. “Where’d you go to school?” And I work my way back towards getting to know you personally. And I keep looking for you to give me an opening as I go in this reverse biography where you say something that’s personal but not directly related to my question.
So if I say something like, “Well, where’d you go to school?” and you say, “I went to school in Brooklyn but man, that was a really rough city to grow up in,” and then you move on to something else, “Well, now I’m living in San Francisco,” I might pick up on it and say, “What do you mean ‘rough’? What happened to you?” Because that’s not directly related to what I asked. You’re clearly sending me a message. And if you say that, then you’ll tell me about something bad that happened and we can bond on this thing that you want me to talk about.
So that’s a process. I can give this all day long to people, but if they’re shy, they’re going to have a real hard time with it. And so then you have to start working on your inner confidence. How do you get to a place where you feel comfortable talking to strangers? That’s a little bit harder for me to go through here in this conversation, but that’s what I talked about at World Domination Summit. And if anyone wants that video of World Domination Summit we can link them to it, or they can just email me at truemind@mixergy.com, truemind@ M-I-X-E-R-G-Y .com and you’ll see the confidence part.
And the final part is the psychology of the other person. I used to think that people were so irrational that how could I ever interact with them, right? They say they want to lose weight and then they eat unhealthy food. They say that they want to talk about business but then they start talking about personal stuff. Where is the logic of it? I picked up a book called “How to Win Friends and Influence People”.
Karl: Dale Carnegie
Andrew: Dale Carnegie.
Karl: Yeah. Brilliant.
Andrew: It was so powerful. I went to work at Dale Carnegie in Manhattan, the main location. I said I want to work there. And one of the things that it taught me was people are not guided by rational decisions, unlike the way that economists want us to believe we are where we make very rational decisions. We make irrational decisions because we’re guided by our ego, our need and our sense of needing to be great.
And that’s why you can do so much for someone and really care about them, but if you screw up their name and if I accidentally call you Todd here a couple of times, you’ll be hurt. Even if I did all this work to prep, even if I took time out, I just call you Steve, I call you Bob, you feel a little bit hurt. Why? Because you have this sense of greatness and importance, and I’ve just shot it down by saying, even your name, which is so closely identified to you, it’s unimportant to me. So you then must be less important to me than you might want to be.
And so the combination of those three, boom! Allowed me to just get out there and talk to as many people as possible. And right now, many of my conversations are documented. You can see them on mixergy.com. Interviews with people who I’d be intimidated to talk to years ago but I’m talking to now and often as a result of personal connections.
Karl: I love that. And what really pinged me was that person that said it’s rough growing up in Brooklyn. And you’re right, they’re trying to tell you something. A lot of times we just gloss over that because we’re so caught up worrying about ourselves looking okay. We don’t really listen to those little hidden details that could open up really strong.
Andrew: I’m also afraid. A guy comes over to my house for dinner. He comes in, people say it’s good to have you hear, you seem a little frazzled or something. He says, divorce is just a really tough thing to do and I was stuck in traffic and I’m glad that I’m here. People know what he wants to talk about is the divorce because the divorce is an issue for him, he needs to release it. Otherwise he could have said traffic was a problem but he clearly brought up divorce for a reason.
Most people would know he wants to do it but they get uncomfortable because it’s too personal. They talk about traffic or they say we’re glad you’re here, you can sit down we’ll have some dinner we’ll get your mind off of it. He’s asking for it, begging to talk about that divorce. The easy thing to do is to walk away, the meaningful thing to do is say really wants going on with you and your ex-wife.
And then you give him an opportunity to talk. And then you really get yourself the opportunity to be there for someone that needs the release. And so we hear sometimes but we often don’t hear it like you said. But even when we hear it we tend to punk out. And I don’t want him to just punk out of any part of life. Any part that’s significant anyway.
Karl: Yeah. You brought up Dale Carnegie which led me to the Power of Now, which is basically being in the moment with that person and really listening to them and not punking out because you afraid to go there.
Andrew: Yes.
Karl: Yeah. I love it. Okay. We can interview here because I think we’ve filled up our cup.
Andrew: I think I’ve given you a lot of good stuff here and I’ve even got to call you five different names even though I’ve got your name up on the screen, Karl.
Karl: And now everyone’s got mad.
We clearly see how you’ve been able to build up that confidence. So what is it that you now able to rely on those people and how do you say hey do you know so and so or do you know somebody. How do start building up? I like to call the domino effect, tip, tip, tip. How do you do that? How do you get started?
Andrew: One thing that I do is to not look directly for a result. It’s so tough not to. Sometimes I think I should only get together with people who will somehow benefit me because otherwise what am I doing just playing around, I don’t have time to play around. If I’m just looking to hang out I can do it with two or three friends but I don’t need to keep going out to meet people just to hang out I’m an adult.
What do I do? I realized there was this time when I was living in Washington DC and I came home from an event and Olivia said how was it? I said it was great. And she goes you bought people drinks again, you always do that, right. And I said I did, I did, here’s the bill. And the bill was pretty expensive. It was like for a small group of people, a few drinks and food, I love to have snacks out there. It was like 120 bucks maybe 140 dollars after tip, somewhere around there.
I thought maybe I’m making a mistake here because I’m in business what am I doing. But then later on I looked at my email and saw that one of the people that was there bought a membership to Mixergy Premium, paid 200 bucks. Really dwarfed the size of the tab that I paid.
What I realized is if I would have said come to dinner and if you buy my membership then I’ll take you out to dinner, it wouldn’t have worked, it would have been a little bit to sleazy or a little bit to direct. If I would have said, now that I bought your drinks will you go back and by premium. Or if I would have emailed them and said buy premium you get that now that you know how good I am you should know I have 1,000 interviews with entrepreneurs and all these courses with people, just go to Mixergy Premium and buy it. You would have said that’s a little bit too much, I don’t want to have drinks with him again because he’s always going to have an ulterior motive.
But because I was really there with him and got together with him, something good came out of it. And sometimes its measurable like that where I can put dollars and cents comparison, my tab that night versus his membership. But often it takes a lot longer and it’s not nearly as direct but it’s there, it’s there.
Karl: Yeah. And it’s interesting because it goes back to measurement. We always talk about the ROI of things, right? You can’t always measure everything and I think what it came back to, you just enjoy being around this guy and that paid off and I think that initial gut thing is like am I having fun, should I stay and if it’s a simple yes or not then that’s fine too.
Andrew: So I’ll show you a few things that I do. I always say to people they need to have an event. You could go to events and that’s great but I think you need to have an event where you could meet people, invite them to this event and I will show you one of mine.
I have someone go out every week, I have my lunch delivered from the grocery store from Trader Joe’s and one of the things I ask for is I say make sure that you buy me a bottle of Glenn Levitt and some crackers and some cheese and carrots and a couple of other things and I have it here and on Thursdays I do scotch night here. Scotch night is an event that I like to have because it works well with one person or it works well with five. I try never to have more than five people and I don’t know that I ever have had more than six. So I don’t have to worry about do I have enough people coming over.
I don’t have to worry about well, can I do it this day, that day, schedule here, schedule there. No. I do scotch night here at the office. If you’re in town and you want to get together and you invite me to coffee or you ask about whether we can get together I don’t have to search my calendar, have scotch night. If another person comes over, I invite them to scotch night too and we talk over a small glass of scotch, we have a little bit of food and it works.
That’s one of the events that I do. There’s a guy who I work with, [??] Gupta, he goes out to all these start up events here. He goes to, what’s the one that [??] does, startup school and then he goes out to networking events and he’s a good guy so people reach out to him and they get together, they get to know him. I said [??] what are you doing with all these people? And I don’t remember what his answer was but what it wasn’t was I have an event and I said [??] you need to have an event.
And so I suggested that he used my house to have a pool game. Once a month he decided he was going to do it where all these people who he’s meeting he’s now inviting over to poker and I think poker’s another one that’s a great one to have.
And the reason I like poker, we do low stakes $5 buy-in poker games so it’s not about the money, poker gives you some game that you can play and if you ask adults to play a game they’re going to think well maybe I should, maybe I shouldn’t. Some have judgments associated with it, think of it as a child’s game but poker doesn’t have that. So you do poker and they feel like it’s an adult thing but they also get the game and the game gives them something to do, some way to interact with each other, something to talk about and it plants them there.
You can’t just play three hands and then pick up and go, right? You’re there for a few hands, especially if we hand you a stack of chips for your $5 bucks. Now you’re mister money bags and you can’t leave until you either earned everyone else’s money or you’ve lost yours, either way we’ve kept you at the table for conversation for about 2 hours. It costs less than $50 bucks to do something like that. You don’t need to have a beautiful place to do it. I’ve done them in small places.
Let me give you one last one. This one right here. This is Yerba Mate. When I was living in Argentina this was the drink that we had in the morning and I got hooked on it, I love it and it comes with a special glass that I actually just took home, and a special straw. You pour it in, you drink it, it gives you something to do with people and if you invite someone over for this Yerba Mate you can have them there for a little while. It’s not just another coffee, it’s an experience that they can take away from it and remember you by and it’s a bonding experience for you to talk.
So have some kind of event.
Karl: I like that, I like that.
Now do you, and we’ve talked about offline versus online, you say okay, let’s do it offline because it’s in person. How about online? Let’s say you’re a little remote. Do you ever do stuff like that where it’s like an online event?
Andrew: You know what? To be honest I haven’t done many of them. If you’re online, I think it’s more efficient but I think it’s still worthwhile to either find a way to have people come to you or to go out to conferences and have your event at a conference too.
But I do see that if I’m online and there’s people who form a lot of Facebook groups. And if you’re in some of these Facebook groups where it’s a small group of people, consistent and there’s someone that’s a moderator to encourage you to keep on talking, to keep on asking questions, keep on answering, keep on posting, then it creates a community and I’ve seen that work well.
I think frankly just the fact that I’m doing interviews is tremendously helpful. If you’re remote and I was in Argentina where there weren’t that many people that were in the tech space at the time, I mean, there were more than people expect. There were hundreds but not what feels like hundreds of thousands here in San Francisco where I’m living today. I would do interviews from there and people didn’t even know where I was and
I would just send out an email to someone saying can I interview you about this issue and they would come on, we would talk for an hour and they get to see me in the face for an hour, I’d get to look at them for an hour, I’d get to ask them some questions, we’d get to find out about each other, I’d publish it so they’d feel proud of it and I’ve bonded with them but now the audience also gets to see me and get to know me a little bit and that’s a very helpful thing to do. Big on that.
Karl: Yes. And I guess it’s something about eye to eye. I mean, we’re not physically in the same room together, but I feel like I know you so much better in the past half hour than I would have if we just talked on the phone or we emailed back and forth.
Andrew: Yes. I agree. And if we tweeted at each other, you’d just be another avatar on my Twitter list. If we emailed each other, you’d be another obligation in my inbox, but because we’re here talking, even if no one saw it, it would be helpful.
Let me just say this. Every time I say to my audience and to other people, “You should do interviews,” there is someone out there who says, “Don’t we have enough interview sites? Does the world need another interview site?” And I think, well, first of all, I think yes, the world needs another interview site. They keep coming out and they keep doing well and I keep seeing them do well.
But second, who cares if no one sees it? If you get one on one time with someone you admire, a past boss, someone who works at a company that you like, if you get one on one time with someone who you’re hoping to get to know better, that’s a win in itself. Forget the fact that no one’s looking. Get rid of that counter. The counter is not the only reason, it is not your boss. And so if all you do is get a connection with that person, that alone is valuable.
And that’s another reason I say do it the way that you and I are doing it, which is via video. As long as you’re talking to someone, have the courage to get on camera with them, and when they see you and don’t just have that disembodied voice as the connection to you, they’re really going to get to know you, and I think that that’s too powerful to pass up.
Karl: That’s a great point. I was a little nervous before we started this. That shows me that I think I’m going in the right path by interviewing you because if I was bored by it I’d be like, eh. I wouldn’t put the energy behind really making this a really good interview.
Andrew: Yeah. And you should be nervous. I mean, I’ve interviewed so many people, you must be thinking, is Andrew weighing my interview style against his, and all that. Do you feel any of that?
Karl: I did have that thought, actually.
Andrew: I get it. I’m glad that you admit it publicly. By the way, here’s another thing that works. One of the cool things about San Francisco is that there are a lot of people in the tech base. We’re all working on interesting things. That’s what everyone says when they explain why they’re in San Francisco. What people don’t talk enough about is there’s a lot of bragging; subtle, but it’s there. It’s like, “Hey, dude. How are you doing?” “Well, we’re crushing it. We’re killing it.” Right?
When you say only boastful things, no one has any way to connect to you. No one really buys it. When you share a little bit of your vulnerability, people relate and they connect with you. And when I asked you that question, you could have said, “No, this was easy for me. It’s just another interview,” eh, no one would have cared. But if instead you said what you did say which is, “Yeah, I felt a little intimidated. I felt a little bit nervous about doing this interview,” just that little bit of vulnerability makes people feel like that they can connect with you.
Even if they’re judging you a little bit at first, they’re going to see themselves in it later on when they feel vulnerable talking to someone else and they say, “All right. That is what’s going on with Karl.”
And so that is very powerful. That is so powerful that manipulators will even use it against you. It’s so powerful that even the great Steve Jobs, “Where’s my iPhone?” “There is nothing wrong with this iPhone!” He looked at every bit of it. Or his people did. And he looked at every little bit of the computer, and his people did, that I’m using to talk to you. Everything was supposed to be as close to flawless as possible. But when he picked a biographer, did he pick a biographer who was going to write a hagiography about him? No.
He picked a biographer that he intentionally knew was going to include his flaws: the way that he parks in handicap spots, the way that he orders multiple glasses of juice even though he only needs one because he’s so judgmental of the juice.
That is the person he picked. Why? Because he must have known that when it comes to products, perfection is what makes us attach to it. I’m attached to this because it doesn’t give me a headache every time I turn it on. It just works perfectly, or turns on perfectly, as close to it as possible. But when it comes to people, it’s those flaws that gives us almost like little hooks to grab into them, to identify with them, to care about them.
Karl: Before we got on, you asked me what I was trying to accomplish with this interview. And you’ve been weaving it throughout this whole interview, which has been amazing, about the idea of connection. And it came back to being vulnerable or coming back to that connection thing. So I’m just impressed and I just wanted to point that out for the audience of how you’re weaving everything back into that process. It’s pretty neat.
Andrew: Thank you. And I do ask a lot of interviewers, “What is this going to be about?” and they often don’t know. Or “What’s your goal?” I ask guests and I ask people who interview me, “How do I make this a win for you?” And it’s helpful when you say, “I’ve got an audience of people who I want to help connect. I want them to be better at connecting with people and see how you do it.” Then immediately I was able to think how can I help out here? What can I do?
And then I went out and I got this, and I thought of a story we can tell, and then I told it pretty badly to you the first time. And that’s, by the way, why I do pre-interviews with people because often when I ask them to tell me a story or give me an example, the first time they tell it it’s just a little mish-moshed. The second time, they remember that they understand the key points and it’s a much more sharpened experience. And so, yes, I’m glad that you were able to ask that and I’m glad that I was able to help.
Karl: Okay. So as we’re kind of cruising in here, it is a tough question, everybody that’s been to my podcast always gets it and what is the secret to happiness?
Andrew: Remember how I told you that there was all these girls that I wanted to talk to and friends that I want to talk to? That was a secret to misery, not being able to talk to them. And then when I did to not know what to even say, again, misery, to try to be like my friends so that I could talk to them sucks.
For me the secret to happiness is being clear about what I want and having the confidence to ask for it and to go after it and sometimes the acceptance when I don’t get it. And that’s been the secret to happiness.
Karl: That’s great . That’s definitely going to be tweetable after this is over.
Andrew: Thank you.
Karl: Okay. So you’ve interviewed over 1,000 people on business related topics.
What is the one key piece of advice that you would give somebody as they’re trying to build connections and improve their conversion?
Andrew: You know, one of the things that Dale Carnegie opened up for me was the other person’s operating system, they are all based on ego. When I was walking into a conversation saying how do I make this into a useful conversation, I was a tool, it wasn’t marketing. When I understood he has an ego, he has this sense of greatness, he has something he’s looking for and if I can give him that in the conversation by remembering his name, by taking an interest in his past and going through the reverse biography with him, if I can do that then he starts to care about me and I get what I want.
I think it’s the same thing for business and that’s one of the big lessons that I heard in interviews. I used to think great business ideas only came from a genius who sat in his room aware of what was going on around him online and evaluating other products and then saying I found a new way to do it or I found a new thing to do.
What I’m discovering is that more often business comes from people, the great ones come from people saying what are problems that people have that they’re so frustrated that if I can just solve a little bit of it then they’ll want to pay me for it or they’ll want to be a part of my world. What’s that one little problem, you know?
And if you can do that, then you get the business that you want and I’ve interviewed entrepreneurs who instead of starting their business with even a landing page, they’ll start their business with phone calls to potential customers, instead of everybody will tell you create a landing page first and get people in. Great advice. But I’ve interviewed people who say go to message boards before you create anything of your own, go to message boards and see what people are complaining about. What’s frustrating them?
If you’re going to create a site for a convert that’s going to increase people’s conversions, maybe go to message boards and see what people say about the existing sites and what they complain about. Are they too bulky? Then you might want to call them and say can we make it if I made it smaller, would you want to buy it?
Are they saying that there’s another issue? What’s that problem? And frankly, remember the guy who I told you earlier on, he comes over for dinner and the first thing he says is divorce is hard. If you just listen to him he gets a relief and he feels happier and then he associates that happiness with you, if you can just have the confidence to draw him out.
It turns out the same thing happens with people who you meet online. If they have this problem that they are talking about publicly, if you just listen to them and hear them out, they feel like someone at least cares. They might not be able to solve the problem but they at least care.
I’ll give you a great example of someone who did it. Wade Foster, I think, Wade I’m sorry if I got your last name wrong. Wade sees that I’m complaining or asking for a solution to a problem that I have. I went to Stock Exchange and asked that question and then I asked the same question somewhere else.
My question was how do I get data out of PayPal into software like High Rise that’s a CRM? And so he calls me up and he says I see your problem. What if I can build this for you, a tool that will take your data out of PayPal and automatically take all the contact information and put it into CRM so you know everyone’s contact information?
By the time he called I said you know? Thank you but I solved it. But can I tell you why I had this problem and how I’m having a similar problem? He said yes. And I started talking to him. He said, you know, I can’t solve that for you but let me think about it. And I felt all right. I post stuff online, someone actually cares.
Sometimes you don’t even get a response. He calls me up I think about a week later or at some point in the future, I think he called me back up and said I think we have a solution. And he showed me the buggiest solution out there. But it worked. It did what I needed. I was willing to deal with bugs. I was, actually I think even before he did that.
I said if you build this for me, this thing that it connects two pieces of software together maybe not PayPal as a CRN I don’t need that anymore but two pieces of software together I’ll pay you. He said how much would you pay. I said well I was thinking of going online and paying someone who I find on oDesk a $1000 bucks for it. What if I give you $100? He goes yeah. So I PayPaled [SP] him a $100 bucks. He built that solution for me . I was his first customer. The company is called Zapier. They connect software together.
All because he saw that I had this pain and I talked about it online and he followed up with me and he heard me out. Even when he couldn’t it solve it I felt heard and I still liked him and I was still willing to try to take his calls and answer his emails. And I was willing to pay for a potential solution. And even though the solution was buggy I paid for it.
Karl: Yeah.
Andrew: That’s the answer.
Karl: [??] Zapier.
Andrew: Zapier.
Karl: Wow, that’s cool.
Andrew: One the first things ever done on Zapier was I needed to create using Wufoo, I need to create a survey and one of the things I wanted to survey was to say as long as you giving me your email address if you check this box, I will add you to my mailing list. And they can do that. They did that for me for 100 bucks.
Karl: Nice. That’s great. Well this was…This was amazing.
Andrew: Today anyone can use Zapier do to that. I don’t want to make it a commercial for Zapper. but what I am saying that is the model that I love. See someone’s problems. Talk to them about it. Give them that relief and then if you can solve it even a little bit, they will be willing to put up with the flaws because they have this big pain point.
Karl: Yeah. That’s how I build up a lot of my clients is reaching out like that. And that’s the key. I mean you don’t know and the part of it is at least you’re trying. At least you’re putting yourself out there. And then if you notice you keep getting rejections, rejections it’s time to tweak a little bit, but then have something to measure and then you can possibly shift in a different direction that’s more helpful.
Andrew: Um-hmm.
Karl: Yeah.
Andrew: That’s what we’ve been seeing. Alright.
Karl: Okay, so this has been fantastic. I think the notes that people will be taking on this will be numerous. So if they’re going to find you, mixergy.com.
Andrew: Yep.
Karl: Anything else that you want to …
Andrew: Let me share with people how I feel at the end of this interview so they understand the person who they are listening to. It’s not just me it’s everyone else. At the end of the interview I either feel I didn’t do so well. I can’t believe I jumble it up. At the end of this interview I feel great. Like I feel I did well here. I got you stories, I got you tactics, I got you ideas and so on. Either way you should contact me.
And I don’t want necessarily more emails but I think I will take this emails and I think anyone in my position would. Because if I’m feeling a little insecure about it and you send me an email saying Andrew I like this one part of it. You pick me up and you make me feel less bad about it. If I’m feeling great about it and you send me an email and you saying Andrew I really like this piece in your interview. I’ll go yes, someone saw this interview and I rocked it.
And so I say to my audience all the all the time if you watch an interview, send an email to the person saying something, saying thank you. Saying something. And in this, since I’ve said it here, I’ll give you an email address and it’s the one I give earlier. Just truemind@ mixergy.com. If you send anything, I will reply and I’ll give you… if you send anything about this and you ask for it I’ll send you a video from World Domination Summit. The one that allowed us to connect me and Karl.
Karl: Perfect. And that’s the start of the connect which then could lead knows what.
Andrew: Yes the one thing that it won’t lead to is spam. I have no mechanism for taking those email addresses and spamming them.
Karl: [laugh] I like that one on that.
Andrew: It’s going right to Gmail.
Karl: Thank you so much.
Andrew: Thank you. Thank you.
