Hello fellow traveler! This week I took about 15 phone calls from people that I didn’t know. What were the topics?
- Coaching
- SaaS solutions
- Leadership
- Innovation
- Technology
- Picking the brain
- Networking
- Connections
- Looking for work
- Looking to understand what COO’s do
I took all the calls and had some good conversations. What I find interesting is that many people will still use e-mail campaigns to reach out to people or cold calls on LinkedIn. Most people have a specific interest wrapped up through a dialogue of some form of admiration or respect.
I am not “knocking” anyone here, people are looking to make a living, and they see me from a far and have a perspective. As I have written in my profile, we are 1000 people to 1000 people.
The closer people get while developing the story, or the narrative they had in their minds eye, the more they move from being interested to either having an interest or looking for a way out of the conversation.
People will reach out to you and seek to size you up within 10-15 minutes to identify if you are going to help them or not. It is pretty interesting if you think about it. They want something from you. They don’t know much about you or who you are. They will do a cursory glance or maybe use AI to figure it out.
They reach out to you, and they look to schedule a meeting. Often times, they’ll want you to work from their calendar. You know, it is convenient for them. From there, if you are willing to meet with them, they will seek to create some form of dialogue which expresses their admiration for you.
Once they establish this, they seek to explore what you can do for them. If they can’t see it, they’ll look to get away. I’ve learned that it takes less than 5 minutes for them to figure it out but about 15 minutes for them to escape.
I take the calls because I know how it feels to be a founder looking for opportunities.
What I don’t like is the patterns I see in SOME people which equate to being disingenuous. It is nice for people to review my history and my career and ask me questions. The problem is that when they come to believe I am of no use to them, the feel of the conversation turns quickly towards, the question of how quickly they can escape and move on.
The nature of our world is now so very transactional. Building relationships over time doesn’t seem to be of interest. It boils down to the idea of a person being “interesting” or of “interest.”
Now, being interesting is cool but short lived.
Being of interest means others may want to invest.
I’ll continue to take calls and help people but I am aware of what folks are doing and I think it will catch up with them. For me, you never know what a new friend can bring! Maybe we can help each other. Maybe we can change the world.
I wonder if they can change their behaviors and choose who they want to speak with more carefully.
We shall see!
Happy Sunday
I rarely take calls from American business people (that I don’t already know) anymore because of this “transactional” nature… I find people in Europe want to maintain the connection even if the first call did not lead to business…
LinkedIn turned relationships into a searchable database. Once you could filter people by title, company, and keywords, the impulse shifted from “who do I know” to “who do I need.”