Neil Dudley: Welcome to Straight From the Horse’s Mouth. I’m going to get right to it because that’s what this is all about. It’s not going to be a long conversation. It’s going to be a conversation meant to give you insight, give you something that can make your business, your life, your family, your faith better. A recurring theme that has been happening with podcasts that I consume, my own podcast has been network is key. We have to think about our network. We have to engage our network. We have to value our network. We need to be someone our network values. Those things have just been ringing loud and clear to me, and I wanted to share it with you. I think it’s important for you to think about that. No matter where you are in life, if you’re an employee of a company, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re a leader of a company, if you are a leader of a family, at the end of the day, we’re all leaders of something, someone, some group of people. So, the network you build will be so valuable to you. I’m going to get Johnny to put in a couple of snippets from conversations I’ve had on the Cowboy Perspective. One of them was with Jason Beyer, and we just talk about how his network is what has made his business success happen. We’ll also put in a piece from Randy Bernard and how he’s built his network to something over 23,000 contacts in his phone. I’m going to get Johnny to put in a snippet for the Kasey Mock episode I did recently. I want you to listen to the timestamp 8:36 through 10:28, where Casey’s talking about meeting Gary Keller, and that ties into network. It’s the same thing that kind of even draws a parallel with what Randy’s story was. If you listen to that whole episode, Randy started meeting people through hunting, you guys were coming to do hunts with him. And so, Kasey was doing the same thing. He got to meet Gary. Next thing you know, those guys are building a big business together. It just illustrates how network is key. I want to feed you some other information from podcasts that I consume and listen to a lot. And I’m very excited to maybe turn you onto a podcast you haven’t listened to before. One of them is called Let’s Buy a Business, a guy named Ryan Condie hosts it and he just does a lot of great interviews. One that I’ve listened to recently was with a guy named Shaylan Hurley, and I might be mispronouncing his name, so forgive me if that’s true. But what they talk about is so important. And I want you to go find that episode. Again, it’s Let’s Buy a Business with Ryan Condie and find the Shaylan Hurley episode. Go to time mark 11:27 and listen to it through about 12:08. They talk about build your network today and how important it is to start that today, because you will need it two years from now and you can’t have it today. Building a network takes time. You must be working on it. It doesn’t happen overnight. So go listen to that piece of that podcast. I guarantee there’s a lot more stuff in that podcast for you to consume and think about, but that little piece really ties to this particular Straight From the Horse’s Mouth episode that that says network is key. Everybody listening to the podcast knows I talk about Dropping Bombs with Brad Lea a lot. That’s one of the podcasts I listen to a lot. I fashioned my podcast after him in a lot of ways, just, I think his content is really awesome. Go to his Jesse Itzler episode. About timestamp 55:50 through 58:05, he and Jesse talk about the three Cs and how to be a member of your network, how to compliment, congratulate, and console people in your network so you have a personal relationship. It’s not always give, give, give, give me. It is we are friends, we have a relationship, it’s personal, it’s something I care about enough to compliment you. Go listen to that piece of that episode and the rest of it. That whole Jesse Itzler episode was really fun for me to listen to. Okay, I think we’ve successfully illustrated that network is key. So, the question is how do you build your network? I don’t know how you build your network. I can tell you how I built my network, and I hope that you find some tools or things that I do valuable. So, you might find that as a way for you to build your network. What I do is ask my friends to introduce me to people. I listen to podcasts – everybody they interview that I find interesting in the least, I go follow them on LinkedIn and not follow them, but I connect with them on LinkedIn. Now, not all of them connect with me back, but a high percentage of them do. Therefore, I’ve got a network in LinkedIn that is really highly influential and awesome. I have to build it better. I need to spend time, I do spend time in those LinkedIn connections trying to build that relationships. And LinkedIn connections, it’s not really like, oh, yay, now we’re friends. It’s just now I’m connected to them. I have- people that see my LinkedIn page can see I’m connected to these other people. That’s a network. I go to relevant, well before COVID, we would go to relevant shows and events. And like Jesse Itzler said in that podcast I referenced in this episode – I just would go to every mixer, go to every session, meet people, just say hi, smile, those simple things. Hi, smile, I’m Neil, I work at Peterson’s. Create conversations. You just never know who you’re going to meet. Go hang out at the receptions. I just can’t stress that enough. Just go be there. Yeah, it’s a little bit awkward, especially if you don’t know anybody, so you have to build yourself up and just say I’m going to smile, say hi to people, introduce yourself, hand out a business card. I would say, get on Clubhouse. I carry a Samsung Android based phone, so I can’t get on Clubhouse, and I almost want to be on Clubhouse so bad that I’m willing to switch to an iPhone. I keep thinking they’re going to make an Android compatible app. But anyways, go to Clubhouse. Get in those conversations. Get on social media and get involved in conversations. That’s how you build your network. You can’t build your network just sitting around hoping that oh, I’ll build my network. It takes action. Be nice to people. Congratulate, console – what’s the other C, I can’t remember the other C – compliment. That’s right, compliment. My mom taught me that as a youngster, like hey, find something about people and just say, wow, your hair looks nice; oh, what a cool, those boots are awesome. Compliment people. I promise you those things will play well for you if you’re wanting to build a network, or if you’re just wanting to be a nice person. So, there’s a few tools you can use to build your network. I hope you found them valuable. And now here are those clips that I mentioned earlier. Yee-haw!
The other thing you touched on that is just a common theme in every podcast I ever do is network – the people you know, how do you grow your network? How do you make your network valuable? Let’s explore that a little bit. Maybe it’s a good time to even talk about the SMA because that’s a great way to build a network for anybody that’s in the meat business or wants to sell to the meat business.
Jason Beyer: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean network, that’s what’s made me. It’s not what I know, it’s who I know and how I’ve done it. But you got to challenge your network and ask them for help and ask them for their advice and listen to them because they’re not worth anything if you don’t use them.
Neil Dudley: Right, don’t be scared to ask. I mean, I’ve asked you for things and you’ve gave me things. And sometimes you don’t and that doesn’t mean we’re sideways. It just means, hey, you’ve tapped that little faucet enough for a little while or whatever it was. Maybe that didn’t work. It’s happened to me a lot. Like I think you have to get used to being, don’t be afraid to ask for help. That takes a little bit of what I always say, you got to be humble, hungry, and smart, and you got to have that humility to say, hey, will you help me? And a lot of times, people in your network will gladly help you. I help anybody I can because people have helped me. And I know Jason, you’re the same way.
How do you meet these people? Like that’s why I think your skill set is so awesome is your network. It’s like, I kind of want the listeners to think about that. I couldn’t be talking to Randy Bernard if it weren’t for my friend Ty, and the network that ends up playing out.
Randy Bernard: If there’s one thing God blessed me with, it’s an amazing network. Garth kids me about it all the time. He likes to take my phone and just scroll it and stop and say, who is this? Because I think I have 23,000 contacts in my phone. But yeah, I’ve been blessed with that. Ever since I was a kid, I was 12 years old and getting names.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, I wrote down competitive here. Well, where do you think your competitive nature-? Is that from being a twin? What built into you this competitive nature?
Kasey Mock: Your last guest, I think it was your last guest, you’ll talked about behavioral profiles and Kolbe. So, I’m a part of Keller Williams Realty now, since 2014. You talk about being introduced to key people at key points in your life. In 2011 I think, I met Gary Keller. Gary’s the founder, chairman of the board of Keller Williams Realty International; it’s the largest real estate company in the world. When I met Gary, I was consulting for ranch owners. I was selling for the state’s largest private land and wildlife management company. So, we just sold management services, tax plans. And I had a hunting company. We booked hunts, guided hunts, outfitted hunts, set up ranches. And started that in 2008, I believe, out of necessity, because my wife and I were married in college. I was a county extension agent, made like $28,000 a year. We had no extra money, and I was guiding hunts on the weekend. And I thought, man, I can turn this hunting guiding into a business because I can only be sitting in one deer stand at a time to guide hunts. So how can I leverage the platform that we’ve got and the people we’re meeting to have 10 or 20 hunters in camp at a time? And then I can be home a little more. So, we started that. And that was my introduction to Mr. Keller. I didn’t know who he was when I met him. And fast forward to 2014, we started the land division, farm, ranch, and land division of Keller Williams Realty International. And this past year, I think that company, we closed $4.2 billion worth of real estate, we’ve got 380 agents and brokers around the county.
Neil Dudley: I hope you guys found some value in this quick conversation. I’m going to be doing these Straight From the Horse’s Mouth, trying to nail down some specific things on topics for everyone so you get a little quicker listen. And if you want to get deeper, you can listen to these full episodes. Thanks everybody for listening. Go get them. Don’t forget, network is key.
Hey, if you like what we’re doing here, go to the website thecowboyperspective.com and check out all the people that sponsor the podcast. They helped me make this thing happen. If you have some need that they might be able to fulfill, I’d appreciate you doing some business with them. Thank you. Now for your listening pleasure, a little traversing trail from Mr. Byron Hill.