Week 35 - Treat every human you meet like a rockstar 🤩

The week started with a coffee chat with a potential partner for freelancermap around the topic of growing the freelance market in Poland, and I was so excited about the potential collaboration and wanted to talk about this specific topic, that I forgot to introduce myself and tell what I do 😲😅 Luckily, the person asked me to tell a little bit about my background before we continue the conversation, so kinda turned me back to Earth, and helped me to remember that in official setting I always have to start with telling some backgroung about myself so person can make a picture in their mind and see where the conversation is going.

On the other hand, if you have a casual coffee chat, you can ask what a person does, ask follow-up questions, and add tips about yourself here and there so it doesn’t feel like an intro, and still, a person knows what you do.

For example, here is how this dialogue might look:

- “I’ve been recently on a podcast, and I talked about this topic… etc.”

- “Oh, great! Did they send you questions upfront? I’m asking because I host 3 podcasts myself - The Independent Workforce, Community ROI, and Humans of Business - and I’m always curious what the best way is to send or not to send questions upfront?”

This way, I kinda tell a person that I’m a podcast host, rather experienced since I run 3 of them, and also curious and want to grow, since I ask them about their experience that might help me to improve.

Also, on Tuesday, I attended the networking event around a book about networking written by its authors, and I met a coach there, who said that even though he’s 66 years old, his life is just starting. He compared meeting another person with uncovering something new in yourself, something you didn’t know about before. And he reminded me that it’s better to have 1-2 meaningful conversations than just say hello to 50 people.

So, I decided to attend more in-person networking events, focusing on quality over quantity. And every time I go, I’ll intentionally choose 2-3 people I want to meet, agree with them upfront, and also still make some space for accidental meetings.

On another note, a warm intro (or even just calling someone’s name) is so much better than reaching out cold, so every time someone tells me I need to meet someone else, I always ask whether I can mention them (as the first step) and for an intro, as a second step if a person doesn’t answer me (sometimes it even a first step) - this idea was inspired by the recent TIW podcast episode with Mina Bastawros, who referred 3 people, and I’ve already reached out to them, and every single person answered super fast and agreed to be my next guest! 🤩

Finally, I noticed how easy it is for me to find guests for Community ROI and TIW podcasts, and how I personally struggle with the HOB podcast. Also, there is a podcast I’m listening to called “Personal IPO”, and a new episode goes out once in 2 weeks.

That’s why I decided to do the same with HOB - do it once in 2 weeks since I still love those human conversations with business owners, and double down on CROI since there are so many people I want to talk to, and the sky is the limit to uncovering all those things about community and business.

Especially, I decided to do this since I’ve noticed a growing interest in community by listening to the guests of the Creator Spotlight, Personal IPO, and even DOAC podcasts, so I feel like the time has finally come, and community becomes not just a “nice-to-have”, but more of a “must-have” 😎

In addition to it, I was playing in my mind with a question, “Why do I still not have a rather good listening audience even though people tell me they adore those podcasts?”, and I understood that I need to create a better marketing strategy.

But since I don’t have a budget to buy ads, I decided to approach it in a human way, which means I’ll do my best to highlight each guest as much as possible and make every guest feel like the rockstar they really are, even if they might not think so.

Each episode is a treasure trove of content - conversation itself, blog post, clips, quotes, summaries, etc. - so I’ll build a podcast content-sharing machine to ensure that 2-3 months after the episode, I’ll keep mentioning and tagging a guest so that more people find them, and also that they know I care a lot about the wisdom they shared with me!

So yes, it’ll be an exciting journey, and I’ll share the results later on 😉

And here is a small motivational video for this week 😉👇

Thoughts of the week:

• “Preaching and not doing is worth than not doing and preaching about it afterwards.” - Nudge podcast

• “Hire independent talents to try things and for projects you’re not sure will be out there before traditional hiring.” - Sandra Pinnavaia at the Human Cloud podcast

• “If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.” - Joseph Campbell on Sahil Bloom’s newsletter

Song of the week:

Book and quotes of the week:

Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda

• “Look for ways to make quick progress. Watch for project stalls that might indicate a lack of potential. Cut corners to skip unnecessary effort. Remove distractions to focus attention where it needs to be. Start approximating your end goal as soon as possible. Maximize the impact of your most difficult effort. Combine inspiration, decisiveness, and craft to make demos.”

• “We’re going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because perfection is not attainable. But we are going to relentlessly chase it because, in the process, we will catch excellence.”

• “In the introduction to this book, I described empathy as trying to see the world from other people’s perspectives and creating work that fits into their lives and adapts to their needs.”

Tools that I use with referrals:

• Descript - for anything around podcasting and video editing

• Manus - for building complex systems and projects

• Beehiiv - for a newsletter (that’s what you receive 😅)

• Text Blaze - to access message templates with shortcuts (like “/ty”)

• Exali - promo “FROMYURII” - indemnity insurance for independent experts in Europe

Daily actions:

• invite 1 person to give feedback about how I helped them

• participate in a secret LI support group

• read a self-development book/listen to a professional podcast for 15 minutes

• make a valuable post/comment on LinkedIn

• tag 30 people in my database

• work 30 minutes solely on my business 😎

• invite 5 people to check my website and ask them for advice (postponed)

Weekly actions:

• transcribe one new episode of the Creator Spotlight podcast, learn something from it, and connect with a guest

• transcribe two new DOAC videos, learn one thing from them, and make 1% posts in the DOAC community.

If you have any thoughts, ideas, or questions, please 👇

And if you’d like to walk The Road To $1M+ Freelance Business with me 👇

See you next week! 👋