NYC Elevate is a networking community organized to help our members make more money through structured collaboration and referrals.
Recently, we learned that we are sitting on a gold mine here at Elevate, and if you know anything about most modern gold mining, it’s that it often happens near a stream.
So the important question for today is … are you upstream or downstream from the gold?
And that’s determined by who knows first about an upcoming transaction?
Who is upstream of you in the deal flow?
If you take me and e9digital for example, I’m usually the farthest upstream of any member of the Marketing Power Team. That means clients often think about updating their website as one of the first steps in a new marketing initiative.
And that helps me give a lot of referrals to people in this chapter who are downstream of me in the marketing deal flow & that results in referrals to
- Eric Lituchy for adwords marketing
- Anatoliy Chistov for SEO marketing
- Briana Elledge and Peter Dressel for project photography
- Sharon Becker for the make up on that photography
- Dan Weber for printing all of the stuff we design
- Ben Grody for web videos
- Ben Prusky for credit card processing on my ecommerce sites
- Brett Semetz for the promotional products & swag
- Cliff Schneider for writing the Terms and Conditions
- And finally, Tony Margiotta for lots of wine to help me relax after giving out all these referrals.
Another example is Nora, our commercial office broker. She knows a business is moving before most people, and that results in referrals to:
- Jeff Simon to architect the new space
- Jordan Metzger to do the commercial office lease
- Brittany Greer for new office furniture
- Eric Toth for the commercial move
- Joe Mossomillo to construct the new space
- Steve Conyers to help set up the new IT
- Max Simenchik to set up the new security system
- And Tony Margiotta for lots of wine to help Nora relax after giving out all those referrals.
So here’s your big takeaway action item for today.
Think about all the deals you get.
Then think about who, or what profession knows that a client is in the market before you do. And then start asking for those introductions here and on your 121s each and every week.
Why is that critical?
These people are upstream of you in the deal flow and you need to partner with many of them as possible if you want to have great success.
Wrapping it up, imagine if each of the people I named earlier only asked to meet web firms like e9digital, month after month, and then actually got one partner per quarter, after two and a half years, they would have 10 e9digitals referring them consistently and I guarantee that they would definitely be making more money.
