Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Posted: 29 Nov 2010 09:26 AM PST

Making connections is an important aspect of business and often crucial to being successful. Whether you’re schmoozing it up at a conference or making the rounds at an industry event, meeting and greeting people is definitely important. I thought I’d share 6 random networking tips to help increase your number of contacts and hopefully create lasting connections.

Use normal-sized business cards. Standard business cards are 3.5 x 2 in. While I think it’s fine to use shorter than 3.5 inches (I’ve collected the occasional business card that’s shaped like a stick of gum), I wouldn’t go higher than that or wider than 2 inches. The reason for this is because bulky, odd-shaped business cards don’t fit well in people’s pockets or card holders. Every once in a while I’ll receive some stupid huge business card that doesn’t fit in my business card holder, so I end up having to awkwardly fold it or jam it into my card holder to fit or I just throw it away out of irritation. Guess which one I end up doing?
Arrive late or stay until the end of events. This tip came from my employer and friend Jon Kelly, founder of Sure Hits and, most recently, This or That. He told me that when he first went to search conferences, he would show up towards the end of different mixers and parties because most of the people he’d most want to meet would be the ones sticking around until the end. A lot of the big industry names and influential people love to network, and they’re more likely to stay out having drinks and chatting with people, so if you either show up late to an event or stay until the end of it, you’ll probably run into these people than if you show up on time and leave after a couple hours.
Do some light stalking (but don’t be creepy). One of Shoe’s best posts about how to get press for your website, business, or service suggests getting as much intel as you can on a person by scoping out his or her Facebook profile, Twitter account, and LinkedIn credentials. When striking up a conversation with someone, it’s much easier and fun to chat if you have a common bond. Do your homework — if there’s someone you specifically want to meet, look up that person’s interests so that you’ll have a nice ice breaker when your paths eventually cross. I’m more willing to want to talk to you about Dexter or The Walking Dead than Internet marketing right off the bat if we were to meet and converse over some drinks.
Act happy and interested, duh. I’ve met a large number of people over the years who act sulky, bored, or like they have something better to do when I try to introduce myself and get to know them. When they contact me at a later point and ask for a favor, I’m less than thrilled and am not exactly jumping out of my seat to help them out. You have to at least feign interest when you’re meeting people. It kind of goes hand in hand with successful networking. If you don’t act happy and interested when you’re talking to someone, it’s going to show in your body language and demeanor, and later when you call upon that person to help you out in some way, you may have blown your chances simply because you were acting too good to talk to him/her a few months back. Be polite, smile, ask questions, nod your head, give firm handshakes — even if you’re bored out of your skull, you can suck it up and endure a few minutes of idle chatter because you never know if the boring dude you’re talking to will end up being someone you need to contact in the future.
Send out unique follow up emails/social networking requests. When you follow up after an event, include a personal message. Don’t just send out a generic Facebook or LinkedIn request; customize the message that accompanies the request so that the person you’re reaching out to remembers you. When sending an email, include information about how/where you met and throw in a joke or reference from your conversation to show the person that you remember him/her. I’m more likely to recall follow up correspondence that includes personal details from our encounter (and maybe even kisses my butt a bit) than generic “It was nice meeting you at [insert event name here] and I hope our paths cross again soon” messages.
Don’t badger for favors. If you do meet someone and ask that person for a favor, don’t be pushy about it. Oftentimes people will make an empty promise or will say something they’ll forget when they’ve been drinking or have been up all night chatting with hundreds of different people. If someone says they’ll maybe hook you up with something, do a follow up about the favor but don’t badger the person. If you act like a leech about something that a person said s/he would maybe possibly perhaps look into doing for you, the more you bug that person, the more annoying you are and the less that person will want to help you out.

What other random networking tips do you have?

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If You Have a Pet, You Need PetFlow

Posted: 29 Nov 2010 08:00 AM PST

Note: If you are not a pet owner, this post will have little value to you. But if you are, your life is about to change for the better I receive ZERO compensation from any links or coupon codes in this post; however, I want to disclose I do have a good personal relationship with the founders of this company.

I have been a dog owner all of my life. When you have a dog, they are your responsibility… take them out to do their business, take them on walks, and feed them. We have dealt with most of these things fairly easily:

Our nanny during the day takes our dog on a walk.
We have a doggie door at the house so our dog can feel free to come and go in our back yard at any time, day or night, should he feel the urge.

The one thing that sucks is going to Sam’s Club once a month to get those giant bags of 50 lb dog food. You pet owners know what I’m talkin’ bout. They are too heavy for the nanny or my wife to get and I’m busy (and lazy) … and it’s going to take a good 1-2 hours out of my day for this trip to get dog food. I dunno about you, but I would much rather spend that 2 hours with my kids or working.

Another huge issue that really sucks is my dog is on this special diet and needs special food. I would venture to say 1/3 of the time we go to Sam’s Club to get dog food for him they are out of his special kind, so we have to purchase it and wait for them to call us when it’s in. Sure, I could call ahead but that’s another pain in the ass.

You know what would be really awesome is a service that would deliver my special dog food to my door…

Well my friends and fellow pet owners, Alex Zhardanovsky and Joe Speiser (AzoogleAds founders) started up a new company to solve that exact problem. They call the company PetFlow. It does everything I ever wanted with some really cool features I did not even think of:

The biggest feature (to me) is that they deliver the dog food to your door.
Shipping is very cheap… a flat $4.95 shipping fee no matter what the weight.
They have also teamed up with the biggest brands to go direct and give you better prices than what I have ever seen in stores.
You have full control over your delivery schedule. You can add/remove products and change your delivery schedule around. There is no “contract” — you can cancel your deliveries at any time, and there are no fees.
You only get charged when your products actually ship.

They launched with a bang on TechCrunch and within a few months with all the press quickly gained tens of thousands of new customers.

Whenever I tell other dog owners about the service they all have the same reaction. “What?!? That sounds awesome!” Especially those that live in big cities where transporting big bags of dog food sucks.

Now, it should be mentioned that Petco and Amazon both do online delivery, but everyone I knew of that was using those says that not only are Petflow’s prices lower, but they only charge a small flat rate where the others charge $20+ PER DELIVERY!

I am always a HUGE fan about automating services that improve your quality of life, and every one of my friends that I have referred to this service thanks me for it.

Much like with AzoogleAds (now known as Epic Direct), Alex and Joe pioneered and really re-invented affiliate marketing as we know it. Will PetFlow be the hundred+ million dollar company that AzoogleAds has turned into? I think it’s well on its way!

Postscript – I told Alex and Joe I would be writing about this and they said they would give ShoeMoney readers a coupon for FREE SHIPPING FOR LIFE to the first 100 to sign up. Just use code SHOE when you schedule your order.

Go here and sign up now. You can thank me later