Super Connector Networking Secrets You Need To Succeed With Joyce Layman

A super connector always seems to know all the right people. What’s their secret sauce? Join host Hanna Hasl-Kelchner as she welcomes networking expert, Joyce Layman, author of Your Connecting Advantage to Business Confidential Now.

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WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER ABOUT A NETWORKING SECRETS:

• How a super connector leverages the art of business connecting.
• How connecting differs from networking.
• The biggest obstacle business professionals face when trying to connect.
• 2 keys to developing a super connector strategy.
• How self-talk can shift the outcome of what’s possible when connecting.
• How introverts can take the pressure off themselves when networking.
• And much MORE.

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GUEST

Joyce Layman is a national speaker, author, presenter at TEDxUMKC, and connector.

As a former wallflower in the world of business networking, she feels your pain and knows firsthand the biggest obstacle you have going into a networking opportunity is the self-talk going on in your head.

After attending training at The Pacific Institute Joyce learned how cognitive processes influence mindset and success. It transformed her life.

 

She discovered it all starts with how you think and builds on how you connect with people.

As a result Joyce loves to help people step out of their current habits and push comfort zones so they can recognize and leverage the opportunities around them.

 

She uses her extensive training and experience in the science of mindset and the art of business connections to provide the one-two punch that gives you an advantage over the other guy.

Joyce has worked with various industries and sizes of organizations, including household names like Hallmark.

 

Her practical wisdom has also been captured in book form, the most recent being Your Connecting Advantage: Success tactics to turn life into one big connecting opportunity. Your Connecting Advantage: Success Tactics to Turn Life into One Big Networking Connecting Opportunity.

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RELATED RESOURCES:

Contact Joyce and connect with her on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and her own podcast show: In Layman’s Terms.

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Super Connector Networking Secrets You Need To Succeed With Joyce Layman

You already know that networking in the right circles will help grow your business and those warm introductions are better than cold calling. What you don’t know is the secret sauce of super connectors. Those people who always seem to know the right folks, what is it that they do to help develop a highly responsive network? My next guest, Joyce Layman, has the answer.

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Joyce Layman is a national speaker, author, presenter at TEDx and connector. It’s ironic because she says she’s a former wallflower in the world of business networking, but she knows firsthand that it’s not easy. One of the biggest obstacles you have to face when going into a networking opportunity is the self-talk going on in your head. It was through some training at the Pacific Institute that Joyce learned how cognitive processes influence mindset and success and it transformed her life.

She discovered it all starts with how you think and it builds on how you connect with people. As a result, Joyce loves to connect. She loves to help people step out of their current habits and push their comfort zones so that they can recognize and leverage new opportunities that are right under their noses in front of them. She uses her extensive training and experience in the science of mindset and the art of business connections to provide the one-two punch that gives you an advantage over the other guy.

She has worked with various industries and sizes of organizations, including household names like Hallmark. Her practical wisdom has also been captured in book form. The most recent is Your Connecting Advantage: Success Tactics to Turn Life into One Big Connecting Opportunity. That’s what I’m talking about here. It’s why it’s such a pleasure to have her on the show. Welcome, Joyce.

Thank you, Hanna. I’m excited to be on the show.

I’m thrilled to have you because when it comes to business networking, the word networking alone can trigger some strong feelings and emotions in people. It’s everything from having that pit in your stomach to, “Party time. Let’s go. Have we met? Here’s my card. Where’s your card? Who’s next,” that kind of thing. It’s disconcerting sometimes to figure out how somebody is supposed to fit into that because there can be all these extremes. I’m fascinated by the work you do in blending the science of mindset and the art of business connections. How is what you do and advocate different from the traditional networking that we hear so much about?

When people talk about networking, what they tend to focus on is networking as an event. You go to an event and that’s where you’re making these connections. The reason I crossed it out on the front of my book and inserted the word connecting is that every single day, you have connecting opportunities and they don’t always happen at an event. I have made some of my best connections getting my oil changed and sitting in the waiting room. I’ve made a stellar business connection in that regard. I’ve made other great connections online just for the fact that the individual I wanted to meet was not here. It’s a shift of what you think networking is. That’s the start.

Let’s talk about those first impressions. You’re sitting there getting your oil changed. How did you connect with that person? How did the conversation start? Most people stare at a TV or pick up an old magazine, leaf through it, and pretend to be interested.

Part of that goes back to mindset. When I first started, the reason I was a wallflower is if you put me in an event, I wouldn’t talk to anybody. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. When I made the shift, I realized that making a great connection is simply about having a conversation without an agenda.

Because too often, when we walk into a networking event, your agenda is you want to sell something. You want to meet somebody and you want to see it as a business opportunity. When you’re getting your oil-change, you’re just sitting there. It was a group called KC Autosport. It wasn’t a dealership but a mechanic shop. A gentleman that was with me was on his computer. I’m on my computer and we were working. They had about an hour and we just put it into a simple conversation. What was funny is we realized we’re both cyclists. It wasn’t even a business thing. It was simply a conversation and out of that, we started discussing business and it’s been two years. In fact, he just made an introduction for me.

Somehow though, your conversation had to extend beyond that one hour waiting for your oil-change. How did you maintain contact?

The beautiful thing about social media is following up and connecting on LinkedIn. I’m a huge advocate of social media, but I want to answer that piece as far as you have to have a strategy because not everybody is going to be on every social media platform. If you’re in business, then LinkedIn is your place to start.

It comes down to clarity. Who are you and what are you looking to accomplish? Share on X

Alex and I connected on LinkedIn. We are now Facebook friends as well but I use Facebook a little bit differently than a lot of people do. That’s where the conversation was and then just continuing touchpoints. That goes to the relationship that you’re trying to establish. That is a whole other conversation that we could get into. Truly when you make a connection, figure out if it’s a business connection or a friend connection. If it’s a potential client, how are you going to touch base and follow up, but that’s where it is.

I think we may have to have a follow-up conversation about the strategy because I think that could be a whole another segment or another episode which I love to explore. Let’s talk about the strategy a little bit. How can somebody develop a more successful connecting strategy?

I do keynotes and breakouts. I do training as you mentioned with Hallmark, and then I have my private clients. The first thing that I do when we’re sitting down in a coaching session is I want to understand their business. Who is their market? What do their clients look like? What do their potential referral relationships and strategic partnerships look like? Who are they already doing business with? Who do they want to do business with? Where are those people hanging out?

You mentioned social media. If your client base of spending a ton of time on Twitter and you don’t feel that there’s any value for Twitter, then you may be missing opportunities. If you take it to an actual networking event, if you’re going to one type of networking event but your client type tends to spend a lot of time somewhere else, then you’re not always being strategic about the time that you’re spending in that business development role or even in a relationship development role.

It comes down to clarity is the first thing. Who are you and what are you looking to accomplish? A great question to ask is, “I always thought I was B2C and then I realized I’m actually B2B when I look at who hires me.” It goes to, “Where are the people you want to talk to and connect with spending time?” Sidetrack it for a minute and it’s going to be a little different with referral partners and strategic partners.

That gets into the whole business development role and how you build your business off of that. Simply networking. If we go back to, “Where do I spend my time networking? Who do you want to meet? Where are they most likely going to be?” It’s not always a sure thing, but it pays to take the time to think about that.

You said it’s not always a sure thing. How much do you think luck plays in the role of networking? That’s the whole serendipity idea.

I love serendipity. Tony Hsieh coined the term collision rate. To me, luck favors the prepared. That’s why in the very first chapter of my book, it’s interesting when you ask what makes things a little different. Too often, people walk into an event or they’re going somewhere, and they don’t think about when that connecting opportunity happens. It’s like when getting my oil-change. What happened when Alex googled me? What showed up? What was on my LinkedIn profile? What’s my online presence? What does my brand look like? Those perceptions can go a long way.

 

You also have to keep in mind that sometimes you’re at an event and somebody may have already been out searching for you, and you haven’t even met them yet. When it comes to those serendipitous moments, I like to be prepared. I like to have my brain intact in what I’m going to say based on who I’m going to meet, but I also know how the mind works. That’s the training from the Pacific Institute.

Too often people say, “It just happened that I met them.” I have a specific mindset when I go into an event. In fact, when I start the day, I want to make great connections. The connections aren’t always for me. They could be for somebody else but it’s understanding the mental filter in your brain. It’s called your reticular activating system, and how that can tune in to the information that you’re looking for. To give you an example, the last time you bought a car and you drove it off the lot, did you start to notice that car everywhere in that color?

That’s right.

That’s your RAS, Reticular Activating System. That’s that mental filter. When you talk about serendipity and “I got lucky and I just happened to meet this person,” I realized that when I get specific about a company, an individual or maybe it’s keywords that somebody might use as far as a customer having a pain point or maybe something that’s going on within the city that you want to get connected into, you’ll start to tune into that information. We’ve got six billion bits of information flying through our brains every second.

The more clarity you get and you get that strategy around it, your brain starts to pick up on the information. It’s not magic. We get clear and we hear it through all the rest of the stuff that’s going on. I know that’s a little interesting to take in but that’s that cognitive psychology piece. It’s so much fun when you can apply it to connecting opportunities.

It’s interesting the way you break it down, as opposed to when it gets all lumped together and it’s like, “That’s just luck. That’s serendipity. We just happened to connect.” This way, it helps people identify where they could be a little bit stronger, as opposed to this big amorphous thing that you can’t get your arms around. I think that’s helpful. Thank you.

We mentioned before the internet and connecting. LinkedIn is a very powerful tool. It seems like we get another social media platform every other day. There’s one thing about reaching out too much. I think some people have a fear of stalking on Facebook, which is why some people totally lock down their profiles. Do you have any suggestions about the best way to reach out to somebody versus overdoing it? How many touches? What kind of frequency? Nobody wants to be viewed as a stalker.

The first thing I’m going to go back to is if let’s say you’re on LinkedIn and you’re going to go look at somebody’s profile, then your profile better is intact. What I mean by that is a great photo. It takes 1/10 of a second to make an impression based on a photograph. If your LinkedIn profile looks like a resume and not a story of how you can benefit somebody who wants to work with you or have a referral relationship with you, you’ve got to make sure that your online presence is intact before you go looking at other people especially when they come back to look at you. That’s the very first thing that I would do.

You've got to make sure that your online presence is intact before you go looking at other people. Share on X

LinkedIn is the 12th most searched website on the internet. It is a powerhouse when used correctly. I use LinkedIn for multiple reasons. I use it for thought leadership. I use it to find potential clients and cultivate business connections. In fact, I’m putting out a LinkedIn Publisher post of my interview with Sandra Yancey, the founder of eWomenNetwork. You can use LinkedIn for a variety of reasons.

When you reach out to somebody, do a little bit of research first. We’ll start it with that profile but you can apply it to all social media. It’s not stalking, it’s research. You’ve got to know why you’re reaching out. If somebody sends me a generic LinkedIn request, then I’m going to wonder who this person is. I’m going to put it back on them to tell me why they feel that we should connect.

The second thing is when you send somebody a connection request on LinkedIn, you want to customize it. If you click on friends, you don’t have to have their email, and then put a little snippet. What did you notice in their profile? What do you think is the value of starting that relationship? Is it that, “I don’t know but I like what you say about culture? I see that we have a lot of mutual connections in common. I’m all about creating great relationships.” Be clear as to why you’re wanting to make the connection and then make it easy for somebody to follow up with you.

If you’re connecting with somebody on Facebook, that’s a whole different thing because you don’t have the opportunity to send a friend request with an introduction paragraph. You just have to send it and hope that they respond. With Twitter, you can follow somebody and you can immediately add value by retweeting something that they say or mentioning them in a comment.

That’s another way to use that platform as far as raising awareness. One of the stories in my book is called It’s Not Stalking, Its Research. There was a CEO in Kansas City and I read an article in a magazine and I simply wanted to connect with him. It was not to sell him. I went to the website and this took me five minutes to do because I’ve gotten very fast in my process. I skimmed the website. I found out he had his own blog at the time.

I skimmed a couple of blogs. I went through his LinkedIn profile but I did not send a connection request. I went to Twitter because he was the CEO of a technology company. He’s all over Twitter. I followed him and retweeted. That afternoon, he reached out on LinkedIn and asked me to coffee. I look at it as being clear about who you want to connect with, what’s the value, why you want to make the connection requests, and how you can immediately add value back to them. Those are three things to think about.

Those are three great tips. I think Zig Ziglar had a quote one time, “You can get anything you want by helping other people get what they want.” I’m paraphrasing. That’s not the exact quote. That seems to be along the lines of this strategy that you just outlined.

It also gets into the mindset of adding value first. That comes from Bob Burg, who I love and adore. He’s my mentor and my networking guru. When you think about adding value to the introverts and the people that feel uncomfortable going into an event, it takes the pressure off of you. It’s because you’re not trying to sell somebody something. You’re looking at, “What can I do to help you? How can I add value to your life first? How can we make a connection and see where it goes from there?”

 

It’s like being the host at the party. You’re helping to make other people feel comfortable. You talked about research. Are there any tools out there that you could recommend that could help us in this regard besides knowing about Twitter or LinkedIn or whatnot or ways to research people?

I love technology hacks. I’ve got a whole chapter on them in my book. My favorite hack is Crystal Knows. This is a great research tool. What happens is let’s say you called me and wanted to set up a meeting. I only had a few minutes on the phone. I could go out and look at your social media platforms and see what you posted. With Crystal, there’s a plugin that you can use via email and then it also goes into Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and attaches directly to those profiles. It’s going to gather the data and what it’s going to do is tell me how to empathetically communicate in your voice.

It will coach you through an email and tell you, “Great job, one change, two changes,” based on the language that you use. It’ll give you keywords and phrases. If you’re looking at creating meaningful connections, then you need to understand the other person’s style. The other cool thing about Crystal is they’ve now woven the DISC personality profile into it so it gives you a great snapshot. Whether you’re researching somebody or you want to develop a more meaningful relationship, there are lots of things you can do with that. Crystal Knows is the first place I would start and it is my favorite hack.

You’ve mentioned your book a couple of times. Let’s talk about that. It’s called Your Connecting Advantage. What inspired you to write that?

I have been living it since 2005 when I was working for another company and then I started building my own company and didn’t have a clue what to do. Part of the book is my process. How I went from wallflower to connector and the mistakes that I made. I talk about my $23,000 mistake. There were a lot of mistakes lumped in there when I was first starting to build my business and had no strategy.

We’re spending money with a lot of great people that knew what they were doing, but it wasn’t the right fit for my business. It’s all the stories that I get from working with clients and my experiences. Ultimately, the book came as a result of people saying, “How do I take you home with me?” They would hear me do a keynote or I would come in and do a training. They’re like, “I need more of this. I took notes but I need more.” That was a result of taking what had been in my head for many years and putting it in the book.

What would be the one thing you would want a reader to take away from your book?

The first thing I will tell them is to buckle up. If they follow every tactic that I give them and there is a tactic on every page, it will take somebody an average of two months to get through the book. There’s a mindset. We have a focus there. There are brand and thought leadership. There’s building strategic relationships. There is a chapter on what to do to go to the networking events, choosing the events and how to stay away from card counters, if you need a wingman, and all of that good stuff.

Find people that will push you out of your comfort zone and help you develop that performance mindset. They can truly open up a world of possibilities for you. Share on X

There’s something for everybody. Whether they’re a newbie or a seasoned connector, they’re going to get nuggets of value out of the book, but it’s going to take time. It’s not like you read it and you’re done. It is going to take some time and that’s what people love about it. It’s like a mini-training session in 212 pages.

I’m going to have to check that out for sure. It sounds interesting because I know I’ve sometimes been at what I would consider the wrong networking event in retrospect. Because many of these groups have fascinating-sounding names. You go there and you realize that the people that are attending probably are not the right audience for what you have to offer. It does sometimes feel like you’re spinning your wheels. I’m definitely going to check out your book. I would imagine some people want to take you home with them as well. I mean that in a good way.

Thank you for saying that. It was interesting. I facilitated a workshop and I always get more time and, “Can I take you home?” I had a woman at the event. She goes, “Can I put you in my pocket and just carry you around at an event with me?” I’m like, “I do provide wingwoman services. We can do that.”

That would be like Cyrano de Bergerac. You’re whispering in people’s ears what to say at the right time. Your career has gone through some interesting transformations and I’d love to hear about what’s influenced your choices. Could you share one of your influencers with us?

One of my biggest influencers is Denise Mills. I met her in 2005. I was at a networking event trying to learn how to network. Denise was speaking and she literally had the kind of energy that lit up the room. I thought, “I don’t know what that is but I want that.” Two conversations later, I found out that Denise was a project director for the Pacific Institute, which is based in Seattle. When she said, “There’s this program you need to go through,” I went through it. It gave me the foundations for cognitive psychology and mindset.

Some people call it a performance mindset. It was understanding how my mind worked, conscious and subconscious. They’ve been around for many years and worked with six million people globally, including a lot of Fortune 500 companies. Denise lay the foundation that everything I do now is built upon whether it be when I started my speaking business and being able to push comfort zones because public speaking used to be my second biggest fear, to getting out to an event and being able to look at it in a different mindset. I truly credit Denise for that. I adore her. To me, you find people like that in your life and they can truly open up a world of possibilities for you.

They are a treasure so it’s wonderful that you had that experience. As you were going through that training at the Pacific Institute, what was one of your biggest a-ha moments as you were doing that?

People probably heard the term self-talk. It’s the 50,000-plus thoughts we have a day and how our thoughts can drive us into negativity bias, which is a hardwired response from our hunter-gatherer days or it can actually drive us towards a positive result. As an example, you’re walking into an event. You’re stressed and the thought goes through your head of, “I’m wasting my time and I’m not going to meet anybody,” which in turn will trigger your subconscious because it does what it’s told.

 

Somebody could be standing next to you who are in need of your specific services and you don’t hear it. Versus you walk into an event, you’re stressed, you’re tired and you have an intention, “I’m here to make three good connections.” It completely shifts the outcome of what’s possible and it goes to mindset. That’s a huge piece and it starts with what you say to yourself all day long.

Is this akin to the Law of Attraction that people talk about?

No. It’s cognitive psychology and social learning theory. The program that I went through at the Pacific Institute is founded on that and some of the top cognitive psychology researchers in the world have developed that curriculum. It does sound similar to the Law of Attraction, but when you understand physically how the mind works, what it’s doing, and also building neural pathways, filters and all of that, it’s a different approach. I do know it sounds similar but that’s not what we’re talking about.

I’m glad to hear that there’s science behind it and not just wishful thinking.

It’s fun stuff.

Joyce, this has been a pleasure. I have enjoyed this conversation and learning about how to become more of a super-connector, and learning about your journey. This time has been terrific. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me. It has been great.

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Important Links

• Pacific Institute
• Your Connecting Advantage: Success Tactics to Turn Life into One Big Connecting Opportunity
• eWomenNetwork
• Crystal Knows
• Joyce Layman
• LinkedIn – Joyce Layman
• Facebook – Joyce Layman
• Twitter – Joyce Layman
• In Layman’s Terms
• How To Honestly And Naturally Connect With Buyers With Deb Calvert – previous episode
• If you liked this interview you might also like these Business Development episodes

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