Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Bigger Stage w/ Matt Stone is a conversation series about leadership, relationships, and the stories that expand influence.
Matt Stone sits down with CEOs, founders, leaders, and creatives to explore the human moments behind growth—how trust is built, how visibility changes responsibility, and how storytelling becomes a leadership skill as stakes rise.
This show is for entrepreneurs and leaders stepping into bigger roles, bigger audiences, and bigger impact—who want to lead with clarity, credibility, and connection, not performance.
BBR Pre-Launch Convo - Heidi Medina
===
[00:00:00]
Matt Stone: Welcome to the Building Business Relationships Show. I'm Matt Stone, and before we officially launch, we're exploring what matters most when it comes to relationships in business. These early episodes are about testing ideas, learning from guests, and hearing what you think in the conversation.
Matt Stone: So listen in, share your thoughts and help shape what this show becomes, and helping us to shape what the show becomes today is. Drum roll. The amazing Heidi Medina, she's a five time entrepreneur and business relationship strategist. Do you see the connection? Who believes people don't refer followers, refer relationships?
Matt Stone: Hmm. Let's see what she thinks about that. Heidi's helped over 350 established entrepreneurs use intentional conversations to turn their existing connections into paying clients and collaborators without grinding content or feeling overly salesy, which is really great. [00:01:00] Um, Heidi's originally from the US now based in Portugal.
Matt Stone: She teaches conversation first marketing to help entrepreneurs get more out of less social media while dumping those algorithms. So I couldn't resist. I had to get Heidi on the show. Heidi.
Heidi Medina: Hi. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited.
Matt Stone: Thanks for taking the time. Yeah, and you know how these flow, I've given you the outline, so this is a fast conversation, but what we're excited about in the future is more longer ones with panels and exciting things.
Matt Stone: But let's just dive right into the first question that I ask everybody. As you look back on your life and your career and all those companies you've started and managed and helped, what's a business relationship that's had a major impact on your life and business?
Heidi Medina: Honestly, one of the biggest ones was for business number two. My first one I started at 13, but number two was I had been working with a landscape company for almost three years in some [00:02:00] very elite companies in Wilmington, North Carolina. And, we were working in communities like, uh, Landfall, Figure Eight Island, Wrightsville Beach.
Heidi Medina: I mean, these are creme de la creme neighborhoods. And Henry and Heather Berger, they were, they were the owner of the company. They were the bosses, and they decided to let go of one whole side of their company, the maintenance side, and they offered it to me to take it over. And so I got that business turned out to be award-winning on the East Coast, and I literally was working with people like you have Matt, you know, top CEOs, movie stars, all this kind of stuff. And
Heidi Medina: I don't know if I would've had that start or those connections without them having that faith in me for being able to take over that, that side of things and build my own business out of it. I mean, they literally gave me that start. I was very [00:03:00] lucky.
Matt Stone: Mm.
Heidi Medina: So yeah.
Matt Stone: How do you
Heidi Medina: I.
Matt Stone: that? How, when, when does that experience kind of come into your consciousness now? I mean, all these, you know, these years later, when does it come up in your mind when you're helping clients or, you know, how does it kind of revisit your mind?
Heidi Medina: It does, it is part of the basis because it made me realize how important relationships are and how much they can change your life. I mean, did I work my ass off for three years? Yes, I did, but at the same time, they didn't have to hand me. They literally like. Here are the clients.
Heidi Medina: We're gonna let them go. You get to pitch them. I mean, they didn't do the work for me. I had to pitch the clients. I had to do that to get them on board with me. But of course, they already knew me for three years. So, yeah, of course they all said yes. But without them having even given me that opportunity.
Heidi Medina: And it's because I had built the relationship I did with them, and it taught me going forward because the relationship I had with them, the relationship I had with the clients, even though it wasn't my company at that time, I [00:04:00] mean, really that's what it took so much from that.
Matt Stone: I can tell. I can tell. So help us land the plane and this is gonna be something I'm gonna wanna talk to you about in, in much more depth. So, there was a big obsession for a long time. Maybe there still is with some people of like how many followers I have, you know, on LinkedIn and every platform.
Heidi Medina: Yeah.
Matt Stone: And that doesn't necessarily mean that those followers are activating business for you. In fact, I met someone a while ago who had over 20,000 followers and zero business from their LinkedIn pretty much.
Heidi Medina: Yeah.
Matt Stone: So it can happen. And that's not a criticism of them,
Matt Stone: it's just followers and relationships are two different things. And I'd love for you to expound on what do you think are some common mistakes and or misconceptions about social media and relationships and business?
Heidi Medina: I mean, we've been trained by the social media platforms for almost two decades, and we've given up some agency on, because [00:05:00] they have been like, Ooh, create content for us. We'll give you reach and visibility with the right people. And they've taught us to pay attention to numbers, not people so much.
Heidi Medina: So think about it, how dehumanizing things is. It's content, it's comments, it's impressions, it's followers. And so when you start thinking about this, this takes away that it's a actually a conversation with a human being on the other side of the screen and they're connecting you. Supposedly social media platforms were built to connect you to build relationships, right?
Heidi Medina: But we forget it's actually someone else's business. And so they just want us there to make money, and we have been trained to become their product and create free content and grind that out and focus on impressions and building follower numbers like that's going to actually build our business, and it doesn't.
Heidi Medina: We've forgotten to build the relationships.
Matt Stone: Yeah, I often think, am I working for Meta or am I working for myself, you [00:06:00] know? Um,
Heidi Medina: yeah.
Matt Stone: There was at some point, I, I don't remember when it was, but I was like, oh my goodness. So much of what we've been told is really geared towards servicing for free, giving them free labor, basically.
Heidi Medina: Yeah. You took on an unpaid job
Matt Stone: yeah,
Heidi Medina: to be somebody else's content writer.
Matt Stone: yeah. In exchange for mild dopamine hits every once in a while from, Ooh, someone liked it.
Heidi Medina: Well, and for a while though, it worked, and that's why we're so believing that this works and it still does work, Matt. I don't want anybody out there thinking you cannot get business from social media. You can. It's just about shifting your intentions, your strategies, back to the actual relationship building, back to your playbook instead of playing their rules.
Heidi Medina: So we can satisfy both. We can still put content on their platform, which satisfies them in getting that, but we can play it our way by actually building the connections we want to, instead of waiting for them to hand deliver us [00:07:00] maybe the right people, which right now they're not doing that. They're not giving us the right people.
Matt Stone: I don't mean to put you on the spot 'cause I didn't ask you this beforehand, but is there a specific example from a client that you've worked with where you helped them make a, what seemed like a minor shift in that intention that had a big impact on the other side? Is there a concrete example that you can share?
Heidi Medina: There is, and I could tell you this is 'cause this will give hope to people even starting from fresh. I had a client that actually hated social media, I mean physically hated it because she didn't like playing the game by the rules. She felt like she had to follow all these rules. 'cause all these rules have been programmed into us slowly that this is how you do social media.
Heidi Medina: You post so much content, you go engage so much, you do X, Y, Z to get more reach and visibility. She hated it because it didn't feel human. It didn't feel like she was building relationships. So she came on with me and I was like, [00:08:00] throw it all out the door. She's like, none of it feels good. I want you to help.
Heidi Medina: She's like, I need to be on social media. 'cause this is during the pandemic. So she had no choice. And she's like, so I need to be on the social media. I need to bring my, my business here. And she's like, I'm absolutely hating it. And I'm like, throw all the rules out the door. Everything you think you should do, stop doing it.
Heidi Medina: And I said, for the next two weeks, do nothing except what feels good. So she spent two weeks literally only posting what felt good, no rules. She only reached out and talked to people. That felt good. And from starting with me, six weeks later, she signed her first claim. We just threw out their rule book.
Heidi Medina: That's all we did.
Matt Stone: Yeah. Yeah. And be more yourself.
Heidi Medina: Yeah. I mean, was there intention and strategy? Of course there was. Do I have more to it than that? Yeah. But at the end of the day, that's what we did.
Matt Stone: That's a great example. Thanks for sharing. Um, okay. This may also put you a little on the spot, [00:09:00] but one of the things we want to do with this show, our intentions, is to explore the things that maybe we're not talking about enough or at all that we should be. So what's a topic around relationships in business that isn't getting enough of a spotlight from your point of view?
Heidi Medina: Um, realizing that everything we do aligns actually a conversation. Content is you speaking to them about a topic you wanna talk about? Comments are, say you're commenting on someone else's content, that's you replying back to them at the start of the conversation. And we're not, we're not focused on that.
Heidi Medina: Instead, we're focusing on checking off a tick box. Let's comment because we need it for reach and algorithms. Let's put up content because hopefully the algorithms will deliver the right people to us. But we're not looking at the fact that all of this is an actual conversation. I mean, it's just huge for me on that one because when we do that and we change that when we're actually talking to people, we get to [00:10:00] build real relationships.
Matt Stone: Alright. You've heard a little bit about the show, uh, behind the scenes and what we're planning. I wanna bring a unique entertaining edge, a little Daily Show quality,
Heidi Medina: I love it.
Matt Stone: To business conversations, because honestly, one of the things that, uh, is important to me is bringing people together. And right now, especially with the polarization in our culture, I think comedy is one way. anyway, I'm going on too long. What is exciting for you about the launch of this show?
Heidi Medina: I think that it is that you're trying to bring that different aspect to it. I mean, because we have all these conversations and I love being able to bring some fun to it. I mean, actually even for my clients, having a sense of humor is a requirement, but at the end of the day, these are serious topics in a sense, but, you know, we're kind of done with that.
Heidi Medina: We, we need a little more entertainment out of it too, and make it fun. Making people actually wanna be like, oh, I wanna be there. So I, I'm excited you're bringing that aspect to it. And [00:11:00] it's not just a podcast. You're actually wanting to be a, bringing out a, a show that is gonna help change lives in a good way.
Heidi Medina: You know what I mean? And that it's something good that's coming out. I mean. I actually was looking at my media the other day that, you know, AI spit out on my phone and, and it was negative, negative, negative. And I'm just like, I want good stuff in my feed because there was still so much good happening in the world.
Heidi Medina: And I truly believe that your show is gonna help bring some more of that. And we need it.
Matt Stone: Yeah. Thank you. that is our intention, and I think it's gonna be so important that we have people like yourself in the family of the show, in the orbit of the show, participating as a panelist, as a guest, in the conversations that we have. And because, people with a good sense of humor and a rich perspective, who are authentic in the way that they present.
Matt Stone: I think you're all of those things. It's immediately, when I met you, I was like, okay, [00:12:00] this is somebody who's definitely got something important to say and the way that you say it, I think, uh, brings a lightness to it too, and optimism,
Heidi Medina: oohh
Matt Stone: So
Heidi Medina: Thank you.
Matt Stone: Thank you in advance for all the yeses you're gonna give me
Heidi Medina: Did, did, did my head just blow up a little bit?
Matt Stone: Let me get that on landscape on the view there. Portrait's not big enough.
Heidi Medina: Thank you.
Matt Stone: Heidi, thank you so much. I really appreciate you having this short conversation. And it will be, I'm sure the first of many.
Heidi Medina: Looking forward to it, Matt. Thank you so much.
Matt Stone: All right, so thank you for listening or watching to this pre-launch episode of the Building Business Relationships Show. This pre-launch phase is all about discovery. So if something sparked your interest, we'd love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts, ideas, or guests suggestions, and help us shape the conversations to come. And of course, please subscribe so you'll be the first to know when we officially launch. And in the meantime, [00:13:00] when new content drops, especially on YouTube, subscribe to YouTube. That's where everything will get posted on in video. So until next time, take care. Bye-bye for now.