Our Vision – to help you Achieve your End Goals

Our ultimate goal is to help others achieve their truly desired Personal End Goals

We believe Personal End Goals

Are best achieved with the aid of:
** Increasing amounts of secure stable income
** Decreasing amount of time required to produce that income

More free time and increasing amounts of secure income allow us to:
** Create more memories relationships and experiences
** Make a greater difference in the lives of others

Most people allow their means goals to distract them from their truly desired end goals.

This following must watch video brilliantly explains the difference between End goals and Means goals

We also believe

Building a team of team-building advocates (a 2-dimensional network)

is the fastest, safest, most predictable and most effective way for most people to achieve their truly desired End Goals

How to insert a photo in Google Sheets

You can add a photo in Google sheets using a formula (=image())

However, Google recently introduced the following (easier) method

This will result in the following

How to copy a photo link from LinkedIn

When you paste this as shown in the screenshot above, the following will be displayed

After Clicking INSERT IMAGE, the photo will be inserted into the cell

How to send connection requests

First create a list of Linkedin profiles to send connection requests

Summary: Use PhantomBuster to paste the LinkedIn profiles from a LinkedIn Boolean search into a ‘csv’ results file into your “PB csv” sheet.

These profiles will be nicely displayed in your “To Connect” sheet.

After you have sent a connection request to all those you want to send a connection request, do another Boolean search and repeat the process.

The additional names will be added to the bottom of the results csv file by Phantombuster so that when you paste this file into “PB csv” the new results will be displayed at the bottom of your “To Connect ” sheet.

How do I paste the profiles into “PB csv”?

Click here for the full explanation

Your Daily Process

It is very simple!

Following is a screenshot of your PBO sheet

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The URL Column

Rather than opening one link at a time, it is far faster to open a group of links.
To do this, highlight a group of profile links and right-click, the following will be displayed:

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When you click “Open Links” all the links SHOULD open in your Chrome browser.

Hint

If only 1 link opens, you will probably need to change one of the settings in your Chrome browser – see the Troubleshooting section below

The Exclude Column

This column contains a formula which checks to see if the profile in Column C is also in the Fellow Collaborators sheet.

If so, the word EXCLUDE will appear in the “Exclude?” column and you should not send them a connection request.

Important

In order to make the above work, the first thing to do is to grant access to the Fellow Collaborators as described below

Column AA of your PBO contains a list of profiles that you should not send a connection request. These are imported by the formula in Column AA3.

You need to grant one-time access so that EXCLUDE comes up in the EXCLUDE column if the profile is in the Fellow Collaborators and should, therefore, be excluded.

Here’s what you need to do

Go into your PBO and scroll across to Column AA Row 3
When you hover over this cell, there’s a good chance you’ll see something like the following:


Simply click “Allow Access” and that’s all you need to do!

Important

Do not try to enter any data in the “Exclude?” column or you will overwrite the formula – you should get a warning if you do accidentally try to enter data here!

Important

There is a sheet in the Fellow Collaborators workbook called “Exclude”

Please copy and paste into that Exclude sheet, the profile of anyone you are conversing with on Linkedin who you believe is not a suitable candidate for the Hub (“this is the 19th time I have been contacted”, etc)

This will save other collaborators from wasting their time and also allow us to stop annoying people who do not want to build a network in person (for whatever reason)

As you open and examine each LinkedIn profile

You will determine whether or not you want to send this person a request to connect on LinkedIn

If so you’ll press the “Connect” button as shown in the following screenshot

Hint

Before pressing the Connect button, highlight and copy their first name

We use a Chrome Extension called TextBlaze to store commonly used “snippets” of text which can be quickly and easily pasted into the Connection request shown on the following screenshot

One of the features of TextBlaze is {clipboard}. This takes the last thing you copied to the Clipboard and automatically puts it in the text (in this case, there first name)

After pressing the “Connect” button, the following screen will be displayed in LinkedIn

After pressing “Add a note” the following screen will be displayed

Date Connected Column

As from Version 8 of the Activity Workbook, “Connection Requests” are automatically calculated in the “Daily Activity” sheet as the number of rows with that date in the Date Connect Column in PBO.

So, either enter a date indicating that you sent a connection request or some other value such as ‘x’ or ‘n’ indicating that you chose not to send out a connection request.

Hint

When you double-click in column A, a calendar defaulting to today’s date will appear (see screenshot below)

This makes it very easy to click to enter a date

Reducing your number of “clicks” & making your daily process faster and easier

If you have a large monitor (not a laptop), rather than continuously clicking between 2 screens, the following Chrome extension makes it easy for you to move between screens and enter your data

Tab resize

Find the above Chrome extension by googling and then install it, follow the directions and it will save you a lot of time.

Hint: Once installed and you have opened tabs for a large number of LinkedIn profiles to the RIGHT of your PBO sheet, click on your PBO sheet Chrome tab and then enter Ctrl-Shift-2 (it all in the documentation of the extension and easy to follow)

Managing all those browser Tabs easily and efficiently

​Go to the Next Tab

Mac+Windows: Ctrl+Tab

Use this to cycle through to the next tab right of the one you currently have open in Chrome

Close Current Tab

Mac: Command+W

Windows: Ctrl+W

Use this to close the current tab and open the tab immediately to the left of the current tab.
If no tab is available on the left, this will open the tab immediately to the right

Reopen Last Tab ( If you accidentally close a tab, you can re-open it with the following key combination)

Mac: Command+Shift+T

Windows: Ctrl+Shift+T

Close all tabs to the right

Half the battle in stopping overwhelm is closing unused tabs!

A great tip here is to use the following Chrome browser feature:

Just click on any tab and then close tabs to the right (see above screenshot)

Duplicate Tab

This is another handy Chrome feature which literally duplicates the current tab.

This is handy where for example, you may be in the middle of messaging someone and you want to get another look at their profile without losing your place in the current tab.

To duplicate the current tab, right-click on it and select as shown in the following screenshot


Dealing with a large number of rows in your PBO sheet

During the set-up process (described below) 50 new rows will typically be automatically added to the bottom of your PBO every second day.

You will be working from the top of the sheet processing these names.

After a while, scrolling through large numbers of rows to get to the last row you processed can be a bit tedious.

You can overcome this by hiding the rows you have already processed or by choosing a different results file (see the set-up process below)

Hiding rows which you have already process is easy – just select the rows you want to hide then right-click and select “Hide rows” as shown in the following screenshot

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Troubleshooting your PBO Sheet

Your results are missing

First, check to see if your PBO is showing an #REF! error in Cell C2 like the following

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If you HOVER (mover the mouse pointer) over the red triangle that comes up in the top right-hand corner, you will often get a helpful message letting you know that there is something in the sheet blocking the expansion of the data – go to the suggested cell and delete the data there and it should fix it.

You select a group of profiles to be opened (see above) but only one link opens

This usually means you have to change a setting in your Chrome web browser.
How to do this is described in the following screenshots

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Click the 3-dots shown in the top right of your Chrome browser and then click “Settings” as shown in the screenshot above

Then type “pop-up” into the search bar and click “Site settings” as shown in the following screenshot

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Slide the “Allowed” switch to the right and that’s it – you should now be able to open multiple profile links in your PBO!

Add the Gyazo Chrome Extension

The Gyazo Chrome extension allows you to obtain a link to a photo which can be displayed as a thumbnail in various parts of the system.

Why Gyazo?

Links to images are provided as a standard part of the Chrome web browser.
However, many of these links are only temporary.
They look like they work but after several months, they stop working – very frustrating!

Gyazo links, on the other hand, are permanent.
Also Gyazo is exceptionally easy to install and use and it’s free!

How do I install and use the Gyazo Chrome Extension?

Search for Gyazo in Google and from this list choose the extension as shown in the following screenshot

Add it to Chrome as shown in the following screenshot

After installing Gyazo it is most important that you allow the extension to automatically copy to the Clipboard (see following screenshots to see how to do this)

As shown in the following screenshot, when Installed, Gyazo will appear when you right-click on an image.

How do I obtain a Gyazo image from LinkedIn?

Right-click on the profile photo, click “Capture” then click “This image” as shown in the above screenshot.

This will (1) Upload the image to Gyazo (2) Automatically create a copy of the link on the clipboard which can now be pasted where you need it (for example in your profile)

Activity Workbook Walk Through

The Activity Workbook is the central place Builders will go to learn about and drive their team building activity and obtain information about fellow collaborators

There is a lot to learn and in the brief amount of time you have available during this get-start, are to guide your new person through the first few steps of the Agenda Sheet as shown in the following screenshots

The following screenshot shows some of the main sheets (or tabs) that can be accessed either from the bottom of the spreadsheet or from the Menu sheet. The best place to start is with the Agenda sheet.

Tip

It’s actually a great idea to click the link and read the Instructions!

Explain that all the sheets in the Activity sheet have a link in cell A1 to provide great help / instructions as to how to use them

They also have a link in cell B1 which brings the user back to the Menu sheet

Menu Sheet

Ask your new builder to click the menu link to take them to the Menu page

Explain Quick Access to the Tabs

Explain that we have quick access to the most frequently used tabs.

This saves having to scroll through the tabs at the bottom to find the tab you are looking for.

Links to other frequently used resources

Explain how convenient it is to be able to quickly find the links you are after!

As an example, explain how using the link to the “Virtual Introduction to the CC” allows them to quickly book guests in using Calendly.

It’s great to also be able to include your own personal links so that you can access all the links you want in the same place!

Now draw your new Builders attention to the following section of the Agenda

Tip – we all love to tick things off as done on a list – Right?

Start by asking your user to write “Done” beside the items they have done

In the ‘Date to Complete’ column write “Done” beside the following items

  • Create NBS Log-in
  • Set a regular coaching time
    • It is important to set a regular coaching time when you can both get on the Zoom for half an hour or so
    • Explain that in the first 6 weeks or so you will be explaining the how-to’s of the process.
    • After that, your coaching session will be mainly focused on the people they have introduced and helping them get better tangible results
  • Download an Activity Sheet – Done!

Fill out the Start Here Sheet

Ask your new builder to click on the Start Here tab

Briefly explain the first part of this tab

As part of their ‘homework’ you are going to ask them to answer the questions with a rating 1-10 so you can review it during next week’s session

Explain that we are most interesting in helping people think about what they would ideally like to achieve.

We are more interested in helping them achieve as individuals rather than helping their business or careers. That may be part of the current plan but once we get to Know Like and Trust them we will be advocating for them regardless of what they are doing.

And we have found that in most cases, 4 years from now most people would like to have more secure income and working less hours to achieve it. More time and money to do the things they’d really like to be doing.

Is this really possible?

When you have enough people advocating for you and you have easily understood highly leveraged opportunities it sure is.

Who really wants to be still chasing their next gig or transaction 4 years now?

Better to have many others promoting you so that gigs and opportunities are continually being presented to you – right?

Yes, we all have to “put bread on the table” but begin with the end in mind – work towards achieving the lifestyle you’d really like.

Next ask them to compare

“Building a team of team-building advocates”

With other things they may invest time and money in to get ahead

One option would be to spend say 3 years and $30,000 investing in obtaining a piece of paper (MBA or whatever).

What are the likely financial results of that compared with having 100+ credible people advocating for you?

So what is the time investment?

Well the important thing to understand is that you putting time in to get a result. For example, may be a good question to ask is: Should building my network be the cornerstone of building my business or career?

If so it would not make sense to say: I’m too busy building my business to spend time building my network would it?

The most important question in the Start Here sheet

With 5-10 hours per week it should be very easy to find 5-10 people in the first year who will come on board and duplicate your activity. And when they do the same, it’s easy to see the exponential growth over the next 3-4 years and the opportunities that will bring – right?

Take them through the final part of the perspective

Fill in their Profile Details

Ask them to go back to the agenda sheet and click on the link which takes them to the page where they can complete details on their profiles such as Photo, Link to LinkedIn profile, Industry, Positions held, About, etc

It is important that they do fill in this information as it is what will appear on the Fellow Collaborators sheet

Briefly visit the Fellow Collaborators Sheet

Demonstrate:

  • How entering a search term brings up a list of rows
  • How clicking on a profile displays that collaborators profile

Press the “Activate” Button in your Daily activity Sheet

Ask your new builder to go into their activity Sheet

Briefly explain that the Activity Sheet is where they record their Activity so that we can measure their Activity and compare it against the results we expect. That way we can pinpoint where we may be able to help them get better results.

Show your new builder the following

Now we need to ‘Activate’ your sheet.

The formula in cell A3 is =today() as shown in the following screenshot

This formula will keep rolling the date forward to whatever the current date is.
We need to set this to today’s date so that the dates in Column A will run forward from a fixed date (today).

To do this simply press the ‘Activate’ button

Your new builder will be asked to confirm some steps and the script should run.

To confirm that the script has worked, check cell A3. It should now contain today’s date in dd/mm/yy format rather than the formula =today()

If not, re-run the script or in worst case just type in the date in dd/mm/yy format.

Don’t forget to Activate!

Otherwise, it will lead to frustration later on!

Now ask your new builder to go back to the Agenda sheet and mark this step as Done!

Click Here to remove LinkedIn Pending invites

Explain that this is a step for later but it’s near the top of the list because it is important for us to keep reminding ourselves about it

Make a calendar entry for our Weekly Workshop

As we know, the Workshop is where your new builder will see results, meet other collaborators and build relationships. It is also where they will learn so many valuable things and discover great opportunities.

It’s important for you to promote the Workshop as well as you can.

After attending their first workshop (in person or on Zoom), your new builder will definitely be sold on the value of the workshops!

The Soundcloud Playlist

Ask your new builder to click:

This will immediately take them into the all important NBS soundcloud playlist:

It is Super Important

To encourage (with all your might) people to get Soundcloud on their Smart phone and

Establish a daily listening habit – on the way to work, while walking, whenever

This will save you so much time as a coach!

The NBS playlist consists of recordings ‘from the desk’, external TED talks and selected Connect Collaborative talks which will help your new builder understand the value of what we are doing, why it works so well and how to make it work for them!

Why don’t we just use Youtube?

Because unless you have the premium version of Youtube, it stops when your mobile phone times out.

Daily Listening

In addition to the carefully selected and sequenced talks of the NBS playlist we have hundreds of other great talks which can be accessed as videos from the Builders menu or as sound only from Soundcloud lists

Aligning Your (LinkedIn) Profile

The first real action step you will be helping your new builder take is to review their LinkedIn profile and possibly help them make some “tweaks” that will make it more attractive to others on LinkedIn to want to connect with them.

It’s a good idea for them to gain a glimpse of this by clicking the link shown in the above screenshot. This will take them to a page which is quite impressive and enlightening.

Then ask them to scroll down and click on the following image

This will take them to another page containing some sample LinkedIn profiles of fellow collaborators

However before moving forward with this, it is important for your new builder to take their time absorbing the following so that they fully understand what we are doing why and the perspective we are coming from

Let your new Builder know that the objective will be for them to view as many of the above as they feel they can by next weeks session. If they can get them all done, you can move on with “aligning their profile”

Let them know that most of the pages attached to these links are much smaller than the “aligning your profile” page and they’ll find them interesting.

Demonstrate this by clicking the following

This will display the following “light viewing’ short page

Scroll through this page to give them an example.

OK – it’s time to wrap-up this session and set up for the next

The above seems like a lot to get through. However, you can easily do it in 45 minutes if you don’t get too side-tracked.

By now your new builder is realising that we have a predictable, organised and systematic way of:

“Building teams of team-building advocates”

They are going to need to put in some consistent effort.

However, the results will be more than worth it and

In today’s economy, deliberate network building has become essential.

Ask them “how many of these agenda items do you think you could tick off by our session next week?”

In fact it’s great for them to write something like “Do by” in column B

Go at your own pace – get as much done as you can.
Our first steps will be to review and align your LinkedIn profile but it’s important to get the prior steps done first.

It is important for them to realise that when they are starting people, they will want the system to do as much work as possible for them. This will lighten their coaching load.

Remember: you only need few good people who will follow the process and you will end up with a very large team of team building advocates

Your Google Email

In many cases, you will have an email address that is different from the one you use to login into your Chrome web browser.

For example, you may have a contact email which is something like: Me@mycompany.com

Whereas, you log into Google (i.e. your Chrome web browser) with an email address which could be different – perhaps something like:
Me@gmail.com

Accessing the Fellow Collaborators Sheet

When you attempt to access the Fellow Collaborators Google spreadsheet, Google will check whether the email address with which you are currently signed in to Google has access to the Fellow Collaborators sheet. If not, you will be denied access.

How to ensure you have access to the Fellow Collaborators sheet

Firstly determine the Google account you are logged in with as shown in the following screenshot

Click on the icon shown at the top right of your Chrome browser as shown in the above screenshot

Now, take note of the email address which is displayed or better yet highlight and copy it.

This is the email address you want to let the system know should be able to access the Fellow Collaborators sheet.

Tip

If you have several Google accounts, choose the one you are most likely to use to access the Connect Collaborative

Update your profile’s Google Account

The system will now grant access to this email. In other words, if you are logged into Chrome with this email address, you will be able to access Fellow Collaborators

Fingers to Keyboard – Overview

Network Building vs Networking

Networkers attend events hoping to meet people that may be relevant contacts or obtain “leads” from others that attend such networking events.

On the other hand, our goal is to proactively build a self-expanding group of know, like and trust relationships rather than just network. In other words, your job is to consistently put “fingers to keyboard” to search for relevant others who also see value in consistently building their networks.

If you found 5 such people in a 3 month period who did the same, after 6 months this would result in 36 network builders including you.

We all have limited time. In order to make network building feasible, we follow a systematic approach and also commit to duplicate “mini-habits” (see the great video below).

As you help others that you have introduced build their networks, you build strong, invaluable relationships with them and the people that they introduce.

Add to this the people that you meet that have been introduced by others and you have the ability to achieve far more than you may have imagined possible through your rapidly growing extended network.

The process of building a network requires you to consistently invite people to meet with you on Zoom (or a phone) call so you can see if they are open to building their networks using our culture and processes.

From the outset, it is important to understand that, as valuable as building a network is, many of the people you invite will not be ready YET to make the commitment.

It is a numbers game

Focus on finding the right people –

Rather than trying to “make” the not-yet-ready successful.

If you have one new guest attend a CC Introductory Zoom meeting each week you would have brought roughly 50 people per year.

If 50% of those decide to consistently engage in building their networks, you would have 25 people per year following your network building example.

How do you find the people to invite to an Introductory Zoom session?

Obviously, you can invite people you that you already know.

However, typically your existing personal contacts are quite limited and the real gold is in the people you haven’t yet met, rather than those you already know.

Our primary way of consistently finding enough relevant others is to search for good candidates on LinkedIn and invite them to connect with us.

Roughly here’s how the process goes:

  • Search on LinkedIn using the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT to create a list of the most relevant contacts.
  • Capture up to 1,000 of the people from the list of candidates generated through LinkedIn into a list you can process over time.
    • Note that LinkedIn will only display a maximum of 1000 of the results from any search.
  • Progressively examine each profile on this list to determine if you want to send them an invitation to connect with you on LinkedIn.
  • Send those you select an invitation request with a note via the LinkedIn connection request process.
    • Make sure your connection request message includes a version of (use your own words please)
      • If (like me) you are also keen to proactively build your virtual network making our LinkedIn connection more “real” & authentic, let’s connect with a view to meeting on Zoom or by phone.
  • Send a thanks for connecting message which includes words to the effect (use your own words please)
    • Hopefully (like me) you are also interested in pro-actively building your personal business network with like-minded others and making our LinkedIn connections more “real” & authentic?
    • If so, let’s connect via Zoom or by phone?
  • If they agree decide on a time when you can have a 15-minute Zoom call (consider obtaining a free Calendly account to make it easy for them to book at time which suits them)
  • If during this first Zoom meeting with your candidate, it’s clear that they are interested in building their network of Know Like & Trust relationships rather than just networking with the intent of gaining immediate transactions, invite them to attend a CC Introductory Zoom
  • Check the CC calendar for available intro session slots using this link
  • Book you and your guest(s) into a CC Intro session using this link
  • Book a time to follow-up before or during the Intro session
  • During the follow-up , ask the 5 Golden questions to ensure you have a serious network building partner (no point in investing your time with those who are unwilling to put aside a small amount of time each day to follow a simple and effective process to proactively build their network – easier to find someone else who is)
  • Register them on CC.net & set up a time for regular coaching.
  • Help them download an Activity sheet.
  • Host them at their first and subsequent workshops.

Details of the process

Set-Up

  • Adjust your LinkedIn profile to make your process as effective as possible.
  • Set up standard messages and store them in TextBlaze to make it easy to send common personalised messages.

Searching for candidates on LinkedIn

  • Experiment with some searches on LinkedIn to obtain a list of candidates.
    • Scan this list to see if the people on it appear good enough candidates – in other words, the sort of people you’d like to connect with.
    • If not, tweak your search some more to see if you can get a better list.
  • Ideally, you need to have about 1,000-2,000 “results” in the list generated from your LinkedIn search.
    • Remember that LinkedIn only allows you to access the first 100 “pages” of results.
      • Which means you can only access the first 1,000 profiles (there are 10 profiles per page).
    • Also, remember that LinkedIn has “Commercial Limits” on the free version.
      • Among other things, this means LinkedIn limits the number of searches you can do per month (if you reach your limit, it will be reset at the end of the month). LinkedIn doesn’t tell us what this limit is, but we believe it is around 15 Searches per month.
  • When you are happy with the results of your search, copy the URL of the search (from the address bar of Chrome) directly into the “Search Input” field of your “LinkedIn Search Export” Phantom.
    • Exactly how to do this is explained in the instructions contained in your “To Connect” sheet (see Cell A1)

Process the Profiles obtained from your LinkedIn Search URL

  • This is done through Phantom Buster.
  • Phantom Buster processes the LinkedIn URL you give it and places the results in a CSV file which you can then copy and paste into your Activity Sheet (PB csv) sheet.
  • You can then process this file through your “To Connect” sheet
  • The details of how all this is done is contained in the instructions which can be found by hovering over cell A1 of you “To Connect” Sheet.

Becoming Effective and Efficient

After you have set up and become familiar with your basic processes, it’s time to start working on improving your results as follows:

  • Check your statistics to see how you are going against the expected averages.
  • Your current results compared with the expected averages can be seen at the top right side of the Daily Activity tab as shown in the following screenshot:

Tips

Think about who you want to connect with and why they would want to connect with you.

For example, people are likely to want to connect with you if it is obvious that you believe in making your connection more real and authentic by meeting (consider including this in your connection request and thanks for connecting messages)

They are also more likely to want to connect with you if they believe you are able to introduce and advocate for them to relevant connections given the industries you are both involved with (note however, that you are primarily looking for people who are keen to put in a small amount of effort to build their own networks!)

Continually “tweak” your profile with assistance from your coach. When you send a “Thanks for connecting, would you like to meet in person” type message, they will usually look at your profile to evaluate whether they want to meet you in person.

In addition to a standard generic connection request, consider developing an “in-common” connection request message that could start with “Looks like we are both engaged in …”

Continually tweak your Text Blaze standard messages to get more effective results.

In your LinkedIn conversations, talk about people you would like to introduce them to.

Become good at finding the right people and coaching them to become effective

Tips

Decide to get good at the process rather than just “rote” following a procedure – always be results-oriented.

Continually ask your coach how you can do better.

Follow the Syllabus (accessible through the Agenda tab of your Activity Workbook or the Builders menu of cc.net) to coach others.

This is especially important because you want those you are coaching to duplicate following the Syllabus.

Listen to the Soundcloud playlists, attend the Workshops and do your best to make them effective for the people you are coaching.

In particular, participate in the “Good News” stories at the Workshop.

Be the example that others can follow – especially by forming mini-habits – watch the following 2 very worthwhile short videos:

Linked Helper – Exclude List

Overview

There are some people that you should not send an invitation to connect to on LinkedIn. While we are a community that is inclusive, some people wish to exclude themselves or they are not aligned with the principles and values of the Connect Collaborative. Remember you are are inviting people to meet with you, not attend an event but the reputation of the events you use and the people who attend those events create a real perception of your network.

As the MC repeats every event, the Connect Collaborative is fiercely independent so that you can build your network.

Help your Fellow Collaborators

The following procedure is quite easy so please make the effort to regularly upload the exclude list as this will help us all!

Who should I add to the ‘Exclude’ list?

You are creating your own, personal Hub around you so obviously don’t invite people who you don’t want to meet, but the Exclude list should include:

  1. People who you have communicated with who express a strong aversion to being invited to the Hub (sometimes again) i.e. “can you guys please leave me alone”. Often, this will be people who have a complete misconception of what the Hub is about and, or have never attended. While it is worthwhile clearing up any misconceptions about the platform and your intentions, your job is not to convince them of anything and it is important to respect their wishes.
  2. People that you believe it would be unwise for others to invite to the Hub (don’t be overcautious – check with your coach). Recognise that people who have rejected your invitation to meet you doesn’t mean that their timing won’t change in the future and they will be grateful that someone contacted them again.
  3. However, it is OK to exclude someone who is extremely rude or negative in their conversation – fortunately, they are only a tiny minority – let’s all do our bit to keep our culture as positive and uplifting as it can be!
  4. People who are already attending the Hub and are Active Network Builders i.e. on the NBS and attending the workshops, and they don’t want to get snowed under answering invitations to connect.
    Note: If this is you, please feel free to put yourself on the Excluded list by following the simple instructions below

Also, before connecting with people attending the Hub or other collaborators on LinkedIn, consider these important points:

  • First, speak with the person they are connected to i.e. their primary relationship. They can facilitate an introduction and you will demonstrate to them and others that you are respectful of all the relationships in the room.
  • If they are actively building their network, you can find their details on the Fellow Collaborators Sheet (along with the name of their coach) and then you can reach out with an email or give them a call.

How to add yourself and others to the Exclude list

To add people is relatively easy and can be done through the Fellow Collaborators sheet. After opening the FC list, go to the Exclude tab

Then just enter the details in the appropriate cells and columns as follows:

Hints

There are 2 Filter views that have been set up for the Exclude tab – one that lists alphabetically by First Name, the other by last name. This may help you quickly find someone you are looking for.

How to upload a list of Excluded profiles to Linked Helper

When you open the Exclude tab of the Fellow Collaborators sheet, highlight / select the cells of the “Profiles” column (only) you wish to add and copy (ctrl+C). Open your Chrome browser and LinkedIn with LinkedHelper and select “Collect, Select & Invite 2nd & 3rd contacts” from the options menu as shown in the screenshot below:

In most cases, you will be collecting profiles from your Boolean Search and storing them in your LinkedHelper “Default_List”, however, if you are using another list (that you have created using CREATE NEW then choose that list. Select whichever list is appropriate to exclude the profiles from (you can add to multiple).

When you have selected the list, left-click the “View Collected” option as shown in the following screenshot; even if you haven’t collected anything into this list yet.

Now select the “Excluded” tab at the top of the new screen, as shown in the following screenshot:

and left-click the “Upload Profile URLs” option as shown in the following screenshot:

When you have done that simply paste (ctrl+P) the profiles you copied from the Fellow Collaborators, Exclude list into the text box as shown below.

Finally, click “Close” as shown in the following screenshot, and you will return to your Linkedin Page.

Important Notes

  • When you paste, it will include the column heading “Profiles” but Linked Helper will automatically ignore this. It will also ignore all the blank rows pasted that you copied, so all you have to do is literally copy and paste!
  • In some cases, you will already have a list of profiles that you have already added to the Linked Helper excluded list. No problem – Linked Helper will nicely combine the new list you have just pasted with existing exclusions
  • When you run a new collection process from your Boolean search, those that you have already added to your excluded list will not be collected from LinkedIn; they will simply be ignored.
  • If you have already collected a profile and then add this to the excluded list (by way of this CSV upload), Linked Helper will not send an invitation to connect to this person, even though their profile is in the “Inviting Queue”. It will simply skip it and move onto the next.
    Note: Manually excluding profiles that you have already collected is very good practice as it helps to improve the quality of your connections. For example, if you have collected many students, the connections of those students tend to include other students and you may not want that! Manually scanning your collected list also gives you ideas about how you can automatically exclude people with a better boolean search

Please – Regularly upload the Excluded List

Other Collaborators will be continually adding names to the “Exclude” list in Fellow Collaborators. So it would be great if you could regularly update the Excluded list:

Consider setting a calendar invite to remind yourself to upload the Excluded list and also remove LinkedIn pending invites every 2 weeks.

Note that you can also set an email notification with calendar invites so that you will get an email to remind you to complete these tasks. They won’t take long – it’s really fast once you get the hang of it.

Coaches

When starting someone new on the NBS, make a point of helping them add the current excluded list to their Linkedin Helper to immediately minimise the chance of bombarding anyone who is on the excluded list. Make sure you and the builders you are coaching follow this process of adding and updating their and your exclude list regularly.

That it!

NBS – Text Blaze

Why would I want to use Text Blaze?

Text Blaze is a ‘text expander’ which is much more efficient than ‘copy and paste’.

Instead of using Text Blaze, you could do the same thing by copying and pasting from a document where you have this message stored, e.g. Google Documents. This is a great starting place and useful when you are working with your coach to edit. It is also useful when you are using your mobile, however, you (and most importantly those who are duplicating what you do) will find using Text Blaze snippets faster and easier in your workflow when you are sending a lot of messages – you will find it is more than worth the small amount of time taken to set up Text Blaze Snippets.

Hint

You could also use another extension, but remember duplication is the key and documentation like this will enable you to be effective when you are enabling others.


Even when you use Text Blaze, you can still over-type any part of the message to personalise it for the person you are sending it to. Remember you have to be authentic and communicate like a real person and not a robot. If you are responding to a person’s message to you, then consider what they are saying and actually respond accordingly. The whole objective of connecting to someone is to have a brief conversation, not whip them through an automated sales process.

Your messages should reflect who you are and your intention to meet and build a genuine relationship, so come up with your own authentic snippets (especially for the Connection request message) so that we are not all sending out the same message. Make sure you are running each message past your Coach to get it right from the start, rather than after you’ve sent out a multitude of messages that make you sound like a creepy salesperson. Better to ask first and confirm you are on track, then ask afterwards and be wrong.

Following is how to upload the Chrome extension to your computer:

Step 1 – Install the Text Blaze extension for your Chrome browser

When you type “Text Blaze” into your Google search bar the following will be displayed:

When you click on either of these, a screen similar to the following will be displayed:


Click ‘’Go to Dashboard’ and sign up (if your chrome browser is open using your Gmail / Google account, then you can ‘Sign-up with Google’. The following Text Blaze icon will then be displayed to the right of the address browser:

Hint

When you create an account, you can use it across any number of Chrome profiles, and laptops/ PCs and all your messaging will be the same – so you only have to do it once!

Step 2 – Set up

When you click the icon, a screen similar to the following will be displayed:

Click ‘Go to Dashboard’ and it will open a new tab in your current Chrome browser and a screen similar to the following will be displayed:

At the top left, click the text ‘Text Blaze‘ and it will take you to the ‘Welcome to Text Blaze’ starting page where you can follow the instructions and add text to see Text Blaze in action. If you left-click on the ‘My Sample Snippets’ you will find a series of sample snippets that you go through and examine for your own snippets:

Step 2 – Create Snippet Group

You can edit the ‘My Sample Snippets’ group name by left-clicking the folder name or create a new ‘LinkedIn’ snippet group by clicking the ‘Create a new snippet group’ icon to the top left of the screen:

Note: If you wish to delete all of the demo folder snippets in one go, simply click on the ‘My Sample Snippets’ folder and click the ‘bin’ symbol at the bottom right of the screen.

Step 3 – Create Snippets

You can either edit the existing demo snippets or create an entirely new snippet by clicking the ‘plus’ sign at the top left of the screen and a ‘New Snippet’ will appear:

Some important things you will need to be aware of when creating your new snippet are:

  1. Using the forward-slash ( / ) will differentiate the shortcut you assign to each snippet from any text you may be typing and avoid the snippet being inserted when you don’t want it to be. There is no keyboard combination (e.g. shift+N) required, simply type the snippet shortcut, and the text will be inserted.
  2. The snippet shortcut must be unique and must not conflict with other snippet shortcuts. The way this works is a bit quirky, so we suggest using /01, /02, …./10, etc. for commonly used snippets.
  3. In order for the message to be formatted correctly when you use a snippet in LinkedIn, you must remove the rich formatting. This is the final thing you do when you set up your message body in Textblaze. When you have completed each message, select all text (ctrl+a) and highlight the entire message and then press Tx as shown in the following screenshot.

Hint

The standard version only allows 10 snippet messages

Step 4 – Command References

In the body of the snippet, you can add ‘Command References’ which will do a number of different things. We suggest you look through these and find ones that work for you. You can find them under the ‘Docs’ tab at the top and it will take you to this page:

For a quick guide to each command, click the links on the left. One we recommend is the {cursor} command (available in the free version of TextBlaze. When your snippet is inserted, the cursor then automatically moves to the location in the body of the text where you can immediately start typing text.

For example, the following allows your cursor to automatically jump back to the top and enter the person’s name:

Note: Some of the other commands are only able to be used as part of the ‘Pro’ version (approximately $30 per year subscription). While it is definitely not required, it may be worthwhile using for things such as {formtext} which allows you to enter variables like two potential dates to meet:

Hint

When using the command references, you will notice when they are highlighted in blue/green they have been entered correctly, while the ones in red are incorrect.

Step 5 – Questions

If in doubt, and rather than immediately calling your coach (or worse putting it in the ‘too hard’ basket’), our suggestion is to go to the Docs tab and look up ‘Common questions’ or click on the ‘Community’ tab as you will find many posts and questions that may easily answer yours: