Coaches Corner – Your Get Start “Flow”

It is SO important to get someone started well!

In general, we want to meet people “where they are at” – gradually helping them to clarify what is possible for them compared with the expectation they had when they first arrived at the Hub.

In essence, we are helping people to make positive “progressive paradigm” shifts over time.

Some, in fact probably most, new builders will be impressed by just how comprehensive and detailed the system is.

As you move them through the get-start, they will get the feeling that the results for them are highly predictable if they follow the steps.

Time Commitment is required

However, they will also realise that regular time commitment will be required by them.

And they may begin to wonder if they will be able to maintain what they perceive the commitment to be.

This is actually good and it is worthwhile addressing the time commitment required point right up front.

One of the best ways of addressing the time commitment aspect is to plan to have the 2nd last place you land in your get start process to be as shown in the following screenshot:

The above screenshot is taken from the “Start Here” tab of the Activity Sheet.

Our brains tend to adopt the habit of automatically going into excuse mode rather than “Solution Mode”

Which means, at this point, the person you are starting may be thinking:
Ok, I came to the Hub out of curiosity thinking I should do some more networking

Now I’ve been shown a way of learning how to get better results and make Network Building predictable

BUT (the famous YES BUT)

  • Weekly coaching in addition to attending the Hub and the Workshop
  • Together with the time required to put fingers to keyboard and set up one on one meetings with other collaborators

That’s a lot – am I prepared to commit the time?

It is natural for your new network builder to be concerned about their time commitment.
However, it is easy to overcome this concern by asking how much time they are initially prepared to commit.
Then you can help them decide how to spend that time to achieve the best result.

A good thing to say at this point might be:

Let’s ‘park’ what needs to be done for a moment and start by thinking about how much time per week you would think it would be worthwhile investing?

If you were to invest 1 hour per week, what result would you expect from that investment in anything?

How many hours do you currently invest in your job or business?

What result would 1 extra hour per week in your job or business make compared with 1 extra hour per week invested in network building?

Let’s say your new person says: Ok I’d be prepared to start by investing 5 hours per week.

Great, now let’s think how that time would best be spent!

Let’s say you attend a Hub and a Workshop meeting every 2 weeks.
That’s roughly 8 hours per month (assuming each attendance takes roughly 2 hours).
In addition, there is on average half an hour of coaching each week = another 2 hours.

That’s a total of 10 hours per month or 2.5 hours per week.

That is perfect for a 5 hour per week investment as you will need about half an hour per day (2.5 hours per week) to put fingers to keyboard.

With the automation we have, we can show you how 2.5 hours per week should be enough to bring 2 new people to the Hub each week or 4 people every second week.

Obviously greater results will be obtained with attendance every week.
However, fortnightly attendance is a good starting point (expect to progress from there)

It is important to cover off here just how important it is to consistently put fingers to keyboard so that they can bring people to the Hub.
Systematically growing our personal networks is the essence of what we do.
A growing room creates major benefit for us all and we expect everyone to contribute to that goal for the benefit of others.
Most of the people you bring are unlikely to be good contacts for you.
However, in many cases, they will be good contacts for others in the room.

The above discussion helps your new builder gain perspective on their investment of time.

Typically it will take time for them to become more confident about the benefits.
As confidence in the benefits increases, in many cases, new builders figure out how to adjust their schedules to attend more Hub’s and Workshops.

A good Get-Start Flow

  • Register (See Coaches Corner)
  • Briefly go through the menu options – especially the options in the NBS Syllabus
  • Explain how their membership can be cancelled through the menu Option “Your Membership”
  • Point out the Fellow Collaborators Option and explain it’s purpose
  • Download an Activity Sheet (easily accessed from Search)
  • Briefly describe the tabs of the Activity Sheet
  • Go through the Start Here tab of the Activity Sheet – asking them to complete the personal questions by next week
  • Go through the exponential growth part of the Start Here tab
  • Go through “if not this then what?” (More study, your own business, etc) – what’s the investment and what’s the likely return?
  • Then go through the above discussion about time investment and finally
  • Go into the Agenda tab, pull up the first page of the Syllabus and glance at that together (so they see how to click the links and what happens)
    • Specify the Syllabus items which they agree they should be able to complete by next week (start small)
    • You’ll find people are much easier to work with after they have studied the first few pages of the Syllabus and viewed some of the videos
    • Write any other actions required for next week in the Syllabus tab


Bring your own cow (don’t milk the room)

It’s tempting to believe

Your idea/process/product/service/technology is so valuable

That you don’t need to contribute new people (and their extended networks) to our community.

Let’s think this through!

What if everyone took this attitude?

  • Soon they’d been no network to take advantage of all the great offerings!

How do you find the time to put your fingers to keyboard?

Others with perhaps even more difficult time constraints manage to create a “fingers to keyboard” habit

Meeting two new guests at the Hub each week is a lot quicker and more effective than coffee meetings – right?

Isn’t this really a question of perceived value and perspective?

Let’s unpack this a bit!

The value of bringing and progressing your own guests

When you bring guests into the room and transition some of them to network builders a number of really great things happen!

  • When you introduce your guests to relevant collaborators, those collaborators will start to remember you and introduce their relevant guests to you
  • When you are building a network through the guests you bring, you have a potentially huge, growing, extended network
    • You will be amazed at the people that your guests know (6 degrees of separation)!!!!!
  • This makes it so much easier for you to advocate for other collaborators
  • And just imagine many other collaborators doing the same for you!
  • When you start coaching other network builders using the NBS you start to develop fantastic know, like and trust relationships
    • You have probably already experienced this with the person coaching you – and their coach as well?
    • Which means the team you are building will do their best to look for valuable contacts and opportunities within their team before reaching out to the teams of others
    • If there are 10 business coaches in the collaborative and you have a great one in your team – who will those in your immediate team advocate for first?
  • When you start coaching others you start the Duplication process – your team (and therefore opportunities for you) start to grow exponentially

Bringing your own cow boils down to

  • Consistent daily effort
  • Working with your coach to become efficient and effective
  • Working smarter not just harder

Good automation, process and habits

With good automation and process,
It should only require about half an hour a day of fingers on the keyboard
To bring 2 new guests to the Hub each week

  • Given the inevitable results, this brings to you, this is a relatively small investment of your time!
    • Especially when compared with the meet them for a coffee strategy which has little chance to build an on-going relationship
  • Make a consistent effort as easy as possible by booby-trapping yourself into success
  • By far the most effective strategy is to reserve the same time every day for “fingers to keyboard”
    • This will help you start to form a consistent habit
  • If possible, the best time is early in the morning
    • Although “fingers to keyboard” can be done at any time of day
    • If you try to do it later in the day, you will find the day will usually over-run you and you’ll feel anxious that you haven’t done your fingers to keyboard yet
    • Win the morning win the day!
      • Then it’s not such a great task to finish off your remaining “thanks for connecting” messages at the end of the day
  • As with anything you do consistently, you’ll find you get good at this process!
  • Where there’s a will there’s always a way!

Find ways to keep the process fresh and motivating

Don’t we all know how easy it is to quickly get bored with a process?

In many cases, we know what we “should” be doing and know that it will produce the results we are after yet we lose motivation and find plenty of excuses why we “can’t”.

Here are some tips that may help!

  • Have a goal to bring better quality candidates with less effort
  • You’ll find you are highly motivated when you are easily able to bring 1-2 or even 3-4 great people to the Hub every week
    • It’s great when you meet other great people “on the same page” that you want to develop like and trust relationships with
    • This also gives you more options for the people you choose to coach and how you choose to coach them
  • Visualise what it will be like when you have personally introduced 5-10 great network builders who have done the same
  • Imagine the excitement, momentum and motivation then!
  • Work with your coach and STUDY the Syllabus to improve things like
    • Your profile
    • Your boolean searches
    • Your messaging
    • Your Hub conversations
    • Who you can introduce your guests to – send them a profile link!
    • Your personal processes – organising your personal systems and processes, time management etc.

Always keep your eyes on the prize

  • Does the idea of more secure income and more free-time drive you?
  • How will you spend the extra time and money?
  • Building your network is going to be a key part of the strategy that delivers that result
  • Find a collaborator who is really good at creating results by “connecting the dots” and ask them to help you learn how to think differently
  • Hint: They will be far more willing to do this if they think you will be teachable and willing to do the same for others

Watch this 3-min video as a great reminder about the results givers v’s takers get

3 Tips to Make Networking Worthwhile

Learn to make professional connections that matter on this episode of #WorkLife with Adam Grant. Find it now on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen: http://t.ted.com/D6SmUZu

Posted by TED on Tuesday, 14 May 2019