Chapter 4

4. Don’t drive to the wrong coffee shop

There are only three high-level aspects of Content-Based Networking: goals, people, and content. The goals section is a pretty short read, but this section is crucial to ensuring you start off in the right direction. Why? Well, because of how many times you’ve probably ended up at the wrong place. Think about meeting your friends for coffee. If they say, “Let’s meet at Starbucks,” it takes about two seconds to double-check if it’s the downtown Starbucks or the uptown Starbucks. Those of us who’ve gone to the wrong location and waited for half an hour for our friends know how important that two-second question can be.

Let’s take those two seconds right here and just make sure we are plugging in the right location into our Goals Positioning System. (See what I did there? G-P-S. Was that way too cheesy? Sorry.)

Here’s what we think our goals are—we tend to confuse them with our high-level dreams. We dream of owning our own company, and we make that our goal. But that’s not exactly what we’re looking for in Content-Based Networking. The important thing here is to narrow your goal as specifically as possible. You want to take that wild idea about becoming a politician, starting your business, or landing your dream job and tame it into something slightly narrower that becomes a more tangible idea you can focus on. Namely, and in this context, goal will refer to the specific relationships you are trying to create. Basically, we’re going to boil your high-level dream down to a relationship you need to build.

Sound good? OK. Great. Here’s how to narrow down your dream to a goal.

Let’s say your dream is: “Become a politician,” “Start my business,” or, “Be a world-renowned chef.” We would start to peel off one layer to arrive at something like: “Become the state representative for Colorado,” “Start a B2B software company,” or, “Land a job as a sous chef at a high-end restaurant.” Perfect. You’re literally halfway there. But we want to take it further. We want to keep drilling down to a relationship. This concept is a little easier to illustrate with examples than it is with a bunch of theory, so I’m going to give you three examples of how people might find their goals.

Amy, the political hopeful

Let’s start with the politician who wants to be a state representative for Colorado. We’ll call her Amy. Amy has dreams of reforming education, improving the economy, and serving the homeless.

To become a state representative, she needs votes, and she needs them from people within her district. Amy already has 45% of the votes, because that segment typically votes for Amy’s party. What she really needs is to get votes from undecided voters, those who don’t normally vote, or from new voters in her district. So, Amy does some research.

She finds that a good amount of the urbanites in her area have recently moved into town, and no one knows how they vote yet. This provides a great segment of possible new voters.

After pounding the pavement, Amy discovers that these new urbanites are hanging out at cool mom-and-pop food joints. You know the ones we’re talking about—avocado toast, slow-drip coffee, and acai bowls.

That’s where she finds her new, hyper-focused goal:

Connecting with new urbanites at local mom-and-pop shops.

See? It wasn’t rocket science, it didn’t take too long, and now Amy has a concrete new goal.

Here are two more examples of the same process, but with different industries:

Jeremy, aspiring sock entrepreneur

Jeremy’s goal is to quit his day job and go full time with his clothing company. Specifically, Jeremy makes comfortable, hilarious socks based on popular memes (OK, maybe this is a little over the top, but this is a fictional story, so go with me for a minute).

Here’s what Jeremy has going for him: His socks are phenomenal, and everyone who’s worn them says they’re incredibly comfortable—and, of course, super funny.

Here are his liabilities: Jeremy has no retail space of his own, and his online orders are only so-so.

With his assets and liabilities in mind, Jeremy believes his best course of action is to sell his socks at retail outlets who have national distribution and multiple locations, like Macy’s. But how on Earth do you actually get your clothing product into Macy’s? Well, Jeremy does his research. After asking around, he discovers that he’ll need to get the sign-off from the people with enough authority to make vendor-related purchasing decisions. These people have a variety of titles, usually along the lines of “buyers,” “purchasing managers,” “procurement managers,” etc.

Taking that into account, Jeremy now has a new, narrower, and hyper-focused goal:

Connect with purchasing managers at chain retailers.

Kamal, future three-star Michelin chef

Kamal’s a chef. Well, not professionally (only his girlfriend and his family know how talented he is), but he’s essentially Michael Phelps in the kitchen. Currently, Kamal’s a junior in college, and he’s getting ready to graduate with a degree in culinary arts.

Kamal is applying for internships as a sous chef…just like everyone else in his culinary arts program. He also has an incredible GPA…just like everyone else. He can even tell you that his family believes he’s the world’s next Gordon Ramsay…just like everyone else. (See a trend?)

But Kamal doesn’t think like everyone else. Instead, this thought floats across his mind: “There must be a better way than just crossing my fingers and hoping someone chooses my resume out of this huge pile.”

Kamal looks around and notices that the few lucky people who actually did get interviews for the best sous chef positions all had something in common: they somehow had connections with the head chef at the restaurant where they interviewed. He realizes that what he ultimately needs are a few head chefs to know him, like him, and trust him.

So, while his dream is “Become a three-star Michelin chef,” he has a new goal, that he drilled down to, as specifically as possible. His new goal is:

Create relationships with head chefs at top-tier restaurants.

***

That’s three examples of three different individuals all looking to fulfill different dreams. But the process to drill down to their as-specific-as-possible goal was the same. They started with the high-level view, then peeled off a layer or two, then did some research, then peeled off another layer, and they kept going until they understood the specific relationships they needed to develop to achieve their goals.

The possibilities are endless

Maybe you aren’t interested in being a politician, a fashionista, or a chef. No sweat. In reality, this process can be adapted to just about any context you can think of:

• To get a job, you may need to connect with hiring managers at companies where you want to work.
• To land speaking gigs, you could connect with event organizers.
• To make an impact in your local community, you could connect with city officials.
• To succeed in B2B sales, you could connect...