Are you ready to maximize the return on the investment of your time in networking? That's right, I'm going to share with you my secrets to 10xing your return on investment from networking, and I'm gonna do it on this edition of Your Daily Dose of Dave on the Inside BS Channel. Hey now, I'm Dave Lorenzo, I'm the godfather of growth, and today I'm recording a very quick podcast, and it's unedited, I'm gonna go straight through and keep it as short and as focused as I possibly can, and the reason for this podcast is because I am constantly asked how you can maximize your return on investment from the time you spend networking. And I get this question from members of the Provisors organization all the time.
So if you don't know what Provisors is, if you're a listener to this show, and you're not in Provisors, I'll explain briefly what Provisors is. Provisors is a networking organization currently in the United States only, and it's an organization of over 10,000 people and focused exclusively for professional service providers. So if you are a lawyer, an accountant, a banker, a financial advisor, a consultant, if you're in the real estate business, Provisors is the place for you to go to meet other people who are selling professional services.
And it's mostly business to business professional services. There are some professionals in there, a very small percentage of the Provisors population who sell directly to consumers, but I would say 95% of the professionals are B2B professionals. And when you join Provisors, you have unlimited access to groups of professionals that meet in regionally organized meetings all over the country.
You can attend 400 plus or minus meetings every month if you've got that kind of time. You can go in person. Some of the groups meet in person.
Other groups meet on Zoom. They have virtual gatherings on Zoom. So you can go to meetings right from your home or your office.
There are social events. People go out to dinner. They do activities like go to baseball games.
Or there are charitable organizations that spring up from Provisors where some of the groups will volunteer to work in a homeless shelter or they'll volunteer to build a house for Habitat for Humanity. There are all kinds of ways for these professionals to get together and get to know each other. The investment financially is very small.
Although, of course, any investment people will complain about, even if there was no investment, people would complain. But the financial investment is very, very small. It's maybe $2,500 a year.
And you get over 400 meetings every month that you have the possibility of attending for $2,500 a year. So there's really no way to complain about the financial investment. It's the investment of time that people are concerned about because it is true networking.
There's 10,000 people and they will all take your phone call if you're a member. Every Provisors member will take a phone call from another Provisors member. That's the nature of this organization.
It's a group of people gathered to build relationships based on goodwill. So the investment of time is what people are most concerned about. How do I get a return on my investment of time in Provisors? So there are five things that I have done for the last three and a half years that have netted me over $250,000 a year from Provisors.
Now, if you're making 25 million, 250,000 does not seem like a good return on investment. But if you're a brand new member to Provisors and you're investing 2,500 and you wanna 10X your investment, well, that would only be 25,000. If you wanted to 100X your investment, that would be 250,000.
So I'm not promising you that you're gonna 100X your investment, which is what I do. But I am promising you that you can 10X your investment of your money. But more importantly, I'm gonna share with you how you can 10X the investment of your time.
And these five habits in Provisors have netted me $250,000 a year from the organization. So number one, first Provisors networking habit number one is write five handwritten notes a day. That's not a lot.
Go out and get yourself some note cards. Put your brand on there. You can put your personal brand.
You can put your business brand on there. And handwrite a note to somebody that you were in a meeting with. If you're on Zoom and you're going to Zoom meetings in Provisors, you're gonna be put in breakout rooms, at least one every meeting, most meetings, two or three.
Pick five people that you met in these breakout rooms and write them a handwritten note afterwards. Spend a half hour after the meeting, or 15 minutes, it takes me 15 minutes after the meeting to write five handwritten notes and just say, I really enjoyed speaking with you today at the blah, blah, blah meeting. It was great hearing your story about reference, something that was said.
I would love to learn more about you and what you do. If you have time, reach out and let's spend some time together. Or if you don't wanna spend time with them afterwards, just say, thank you for sharing your story.
I loved meeting you. And then sign your name, handwrite the address on front, put a real stamp on the envelope and drop it in the mail. Write five of those handwritten notes every day to Provisors members.
If you didn't go to a Provisors meeting today, if it's a Saturday or a Sunday, let's say, or if it's a weekday and you didn't go to a Provisors meeting, go through the Provisors database. It's online. There's 10,000 people in there.
Pick a person maybe that you don't know and say, I was reviewing your profile in the Provisors database. It seems really interesting to me. I'd love to get to know more about you and see if I can help you be successful.
Please give me a call. Write your phone number, put a handwritten address on the front, put a stamp on it, mail it out. Watch what happens.
Five handwritten notes a day, every day to Provisors members. That's 35 a week. Seven times five is 35 a week.
That's the first habit. The second habit is send five emails a day. Again, different people.
You're gonna pick five different people and you're going to look through the Provisors database and you're just going to say to them, I was reviewing your profile in the Provisors database and I noticed that we have this in common. You're gonna highlight commonality. I'd love to talk to you about it and get to know you and see who I can connect you with.
Please give me a call. Let's schedule some time today. So you're going to email five people and you're going to ask them to schedule some time with you.
The third habit is you're going to have five 15-minute conversations every day with Provisors people. So you're going to spend an hour and 15 minutes. That's all you're gonna do, an hour and 15 minutes having conversations.
You're gonna be very disciplined and you're gonna say, I've got 15 minutes for this call. If we need to spend more time, we can schedule a subsequent appointment, but let's talk for 15 minutes and get to know each other. And you're gonna spend at least 10 of those minutes listening, asking questions about the other person.
I spend 12 or 13 minutes asking questions about the other person. And the other person says, well, we're out of time and I didn't find out anything about you. And you say, well, we can schedule something else and we can talk about me at a later date.
This was for me to get to know you, to see who I can connect you with. And you're going to schedule those 15-minute conversations as a result of the five handwritten notes that you've sent out and the five emails that you've sent out every day. So you're sending out 35 cards a day.
You're sending out 35 emails a day. At least five of these people are going to be calling you back every day. I schedule those people for a dedicated time period when I have all my conversations.
So I take a two-hour block every day and I have three 15-minute conversations over the course of two hours each. So the first hour, three conversations. The second hour, two or three conversations.
So I have five or six conversations with provisors members every day. And I give myself a little time in between so that I can relax, adjust, make some notes and put the notes in my CRM system. So you're going to have five 15-minute conversations with provisors members every day.
That's where the rubber's going to meet the road. You're going to ask who you can connect them to. And then after those calls are over, each day you're going to make five connections.
This is number four. You're going to make five connections to people. I'm not talking about five referrals because it's very hard to find a specific client for a person on the spot.
But you can refer them to someone who will be a center of influence for them. You can refer them to somebody who's going to connect them with someone who could potentially do business with them. You're going to connect them with a natural referral source or a center of influence.
You're going to make five connections to them each day. You're going to make five different connections to five people every day. Now these connections can come from people you had conversations with yesterday, people you had conversations with the day before, or they can come from conversations you had with people today.
But you got to make five connections every day. And then number five is you're going to schedule five appointments for these 15 minute conversations in the future. So when people respond to your emails, when they call you from their handwritten notes, or if you talk to somebody for 15 minutes and you need to have a subsequent conversation, you're going to schedule that 15 minute conversation as part of your five appointments that you're going to calendar that day.
So each day you're going to do these five things. This is Dave Lorenzo's five by five formula for success in any networking organization. But today I'm talking specifically to those of you who are ProAdvisors members.
You're going to write five handwritten notes. You're going to send five emails. You're going to have five 15 minute conversations.
You're going to make five connections, and you're going to set five appointments. The total amount of time that you're going to invest in this process every day, including the 15 minute conversations, is about three hours. So you're going to invest three hours every weekday.
On the weekends, you're only going to invest about half an hour to 45 minutes. Because on the weekends, you're probably not going to have the conversations with people. I'll have a conversation with a ProAdvisor's member on a weekend because I'm willing to take 15 minutes.
I'm willing to take a half hour. I'm willing to have two conversations if people will talk to me on the weekends. I don't mind.
Any day that ends in Y is a day that I'm here to help somebody. But if you're only having conversations on the weekdays, on the weekends you're going to send your five handwritten notes and write your five emails, and you're not going to have your conversations and you're not going to set your appointments. So you're only spending a half hour on this on the weekends.
But on the weekdays, you're going to spend about three hours. So five days a week times three hours is 15 hours. And then a half hour on the weekends is about 16 hours.
If you take a little bit more time, maximum amount of time, 17 hours a week. But this is how you get a minimum of $250,000 a year out of your investment in Provisors. So you're investing 2,500 to get back 250,000.
So look, if you do half of this, you're still going to get a 10X return on your investment. You're still going to get $25,000. But the point that I made at the beginning still holds.
If you want to get the most out of Provisors, you have to put the most into Provisors. I'm Dave Lorenzo. I'm the Godfather of Growth.
I'm here every day. Want more great info just like this? Join me tomorrow at 6 a.m.