Author: Trevor Mauch

I was sitting in my office with 2 of my team members here at Carrot spitballing ideas… and Alex on our team asked a simple question that inspired this post. It’s funny where brainstorming sessions can lead sometimes. This one made me look back and connect the dots on what took me from a financially broke introvert, to well connected, to my first million dollars (and beyond).

We produce a lot of content here at Carrot. Sometimes 4+ hours of video content and at least 1 solid article a week.

But the type of writing I enjoy the most is writing about the things I’m passionate about. 

Entrepreneurship. Leadership. Mindset. Passion projects. Lifestyle.

Those things absolutely fire me up.

But the problem is…

… I sometimes hit writers’ block. And this day was no different.

So Alex shot a question (and an idea) at me…

“You’re pretty well networked… how did that happen and what role has that played in success so far?”

So I got to thinking and jotted down a “quick” map of some of the key people I’ve met and built relationships with over the years that have accidentally led to amazing things in business in life… then figured out how I met and connected with them along the way.

Really, luck played a role.

But ultimately I found some ways to crack through and stand out to influential people and how to surround myself with amazing people that inspire me every day.

Here we go.

11 Practical Tips I Used To Network My Way To My First Million Dollars

1. Networking isn’t about an elevator pitch or an exchange of cards.

First off, stop using the word networking. It makes me cringe when people invite me to “networking” meetings. Networking sucks. One of the official definitions of the word “networking” is to “interact with other people to exchange information and develop contacts, especially to further one’s career.”

Networking as most people know it (and do it) always has a self-serving mission behind it.

Instead, change your mindset to “serving others with my unique gifts” and just focus on that. It’s way more fun and a lot less pressure.

Networking usually ends up not working.

You don’t want to be “that guy” (or gal).

2. Collect people and ideas, not cars.

I drive a 2014 Chevy pickup. My family and I live in a modest house. I actually semi-despise “things”. Yes, I’ve got some pretty nice things that I splurged on like our vacation home and trips and things like that. But I don’t collect things.

What I truly have grown to love is collecting great people and amazing ideas.

So in your goals for this year jot down some goals for amazing people you want to meet and relationships you want to strengthen as much as you focus on accumulating cash in your bank account.

These awesome people and ideas increase the amount of “luck” you’ll experience in your life.

3. Make ’em feel like the most interesting ones in the room.

You’ll be able to talk soon enough. Just genuinely give a crap about THEM before you even think about talking about yourself. As an example, I was at an event and met a very successful businessman for the first time who had been an executive at some companies you’ve heard of and founded several very successful companies as well. The conversation started out the same way they normally do…

HIM: “Hi I’m [name], nice to meet you”

ME: “Hey [name], great to meet you too… I’m Trevor”

HIM: “What do you do Trevor?”

Then this is where I always shift the convo off of me and onto them. So they can talk about themselves, the great stuff they’re doing, and their passions. Listen. To. Them. As this Forbes column on charisma says on tips #4 and #5… “Make the conversation about the other person” and “Be a good listener”.

I knew this person had a really cool background at some amazing companies you’ve heard of and I was genuinely curious about the cool stuff he’d experienced in his years leading those amazing organizations and how he landed in Roseburg, Oregon where I live.

ME: “Oh, haha, I’ve got some good stories that I’d love to dive into on what I do and what brought me here.. but first… you’ve gotta tell me… how was it being able to help lead all of those amazing companies you were a part of? That had to be an absolute hoot… I’m sure you learned a lot”.

Bam… the conversation started and I spent most of the lunch really just listening to his story and asking questions. It was fascinating and I had a lot of fun. But you could tell he really enjoyed it… so much so that without knowing hardly anything about me he reached out to me by email a month later and said he wanted to connect again because he wanted to learn more about what I do.

If I would have blabbed on about myself in that first meeting, he may not have felt that same connection. I genuinely cared and listened.

4. Money can be like a boomerang if you let it be.

Selflessly guide money to others who you want to build a relationship with and it’ll come roaring back to you.

You know that moment when you see that opportunity to finally make that quick buck or cash in?

Yep, we all do.

Our gut reaction is to take the cash.

It could be keeping that commission on a sale when you could pass it on to someone else in the deal that you want to build a tighter relationship with.

It could be paying your key employees better than they could get paid elsewhere at the expense of your own paycheck.

In 2008 I decided to give up about $15,000 (it was a lot of money for me then) in commissions and pass it over to an amazing entrepreneur I wanted to get to know better.

At the time he ran a company that did around $10mm/yr… and the email I got from him after I voluntarily passed that $15k commission to him was flat out awesome.

Within hours he emailed back and said (I’m paraphrasing),

“Trevor, I wanted to reach out because I’ve never seen anyone do anything like that before. It shows a lot of character and I respect and admire that. You’re the type of person I want to get to know better. Let’s hop on the phone this week. What’s your cell?”.

And we hopped on the phone and had an amazing conversation and I met him several times in person after that. Now, that guy’s company is doing over $100mm/yr and I’ve got this great connection with him all because I looked past my pocketbook in the short-term and invested in standing out to this guy in a way he’d never seen by selflessly helping money flow to him.

And you bet your butt I follow up from time to time with postcards with that CEO, and to this day he replies back and thanks me almost every time.

5. Consistently mail out “doses of gratitude”.

One thing I learned from a mentor of mine is that as soon as you cross from the digital world to the physical world and deliver your appreciation and gratitude to people through the mail… the impact is lasting and huge.

So about 5 or 6 years back I started buying 10 postcards everywhere I traveled. Then I’d put those postcards from all around the world in a pile on my desk and every Thursday I’d write out a “dose of gratitude” on a postcard to whoever popped up in my mind.

I’d usually write 3-5 a week and then mail them out to those people.

I’d never ask for anything. It was usually really simple… just letting them know I was thinking about them and then I’d congratulate them for a big “win” they’d recently had that I heard about or just thank them for being awesome.

Over the years I’ve sent out hundreds and hundreds of them.

Amazing things started to happen and you’d be floored at the doors that opened up over the years, relationships tightened, and what it did for me personally expressing that gratitude to people every week in a very personal way.

Go ahead. Do it.

Send out 10 postcards this week to anyone who pops up in your mind. See what happens. You can thank me later :-)

6. Surround yourself with people who inspire you every day.

I got bit by the “work from home” solo-entrepreneur storyline early on. Hook, line, and sinker.

Somehow we think that working from home is a great thing. In 2010 after we had our first daughter, I decided that it wasn’t for me.

No matter how many digital “friends” you have it doesn’t compare to surrounding yourself with awesome people who inspire you every day.

I couldn’t find a good entrepreneur co-workspace in town… so in 2010 I found an 8,000 sq.ft. building downtown and created an amazing space for entrepreneurs to work myself called the Loft.

Now, theLoft is full (with a waiting list in an area that struggles to rent office space all around our building) and I get to work around people doing really awesome things who inspire me every day.  That inspiration and those connections open up doors you never predicted would open up. And a cool byproduct is many of us have done business together and added multiple six figures to my bottom line.

(By the way, I don’t make a profit by running the loft. I set rents to a spot just so I could attract the exact people I wanted in there. Nothing more. For me, it’s about the long-term. And it’s paid off in spades. Refer back to #4)

7. Don’t put your idols on a pedestal.

You know those people you look up to?

Those people who feel untouchable and like superhuman?

Well, they’re not.

They’re just regular people like you and me.

When you get a chance to meet your idols or people in “high” positions talk to them like you would a good friend. The second you put your idols on a pedestal is the same second you demote yourself to a 2nd class person. People in powerful positions respect when people can just be REAL and candid with them.

I remember back in 2012 I got an email out of the blue from big-time author Robert G. Allen.

He’s written tons of books and you may have read some of them. Anyhow, a client of his was a member of an industry association I created (see #7) and told Robert he needed to connect with me to get in the group. I charged $299 a year and Robert emailed to see if he could get added to the group.

Because of his status, I got the feeling he was assuming he’d get a free pass into the group. I could have read it wrong, but that was the feeling I got.

Most people probably would have given it to him just to have someone of his status in their group. But I stuck to my guns and treated him like I would anyone else. And part of the process to get into that association was to pay the $299 and get on a phone call with me.

You never know where a phone call and that initial connection can lead…

… so I make it a point to hop on the phone with anyone who I feel is a mover and a shaker at least that first time.

He respected that move so much that he invited me to his mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, CA to brainstorm marketing. A month later I was in his home office in a 3-hour one-on-one brainstorming session. It was pretty damn cool. That never would have happened if I treated him special and put him on a pedestal.

8. Be a constant connector.

My last 3 business partners, some of my best entrepreneur friends, and 90% of any financial successes I’ve had are because of connections I’ve made with people… not necessarily because I’m smarter than the average.

Carrot’s CTO, Chris, was an introduction from a guy I’d met a year before.

I can’t imagine where we’d be without that connection alone. (Thanks Chris!)

One thing I’m always looking for the opportunity to do is to help connect people with others who can help them. In return, people introduce me to amazing people all of the time.

In 2008 I saw an opportunity to better connect the industry for real estate educators and did it by creating an industry association. Now it’s the largest and most active online mastermind for real estate educators with over 400 industry experts and CEO’s and hundreds using the service daily.

In 2010 I saw the opportunity to better connect our local entrepreneur community here in Roseburg and started the Loft and the Young Entrepreneur Society. Also, I just wanted to surround myself with great people that inspired me.

Both of those situations created huge value for those groups of people, helped them connect with people who could help them in their businesses and lives, and in return, I’ve become the “connector”. When you’re the connector people go out of their way to introduce you to other amazing people they know.

Heck, my younger brother (and former Carrot team member) Kyle took that strategy and created a sports marketing networking group in L.A., then he moved to Phoenix… and along the way, he met Olympians, professional athletes, hall of famers, executives at professional sports teams, and other amazing people. Being the connector led to him starting Athletes Brand, a clothing company, that now works with professional athletes… much of who he can trace back to relationships he made by connecting with others.

Be the connector for others and others will seek out great connections for you. You never know where those connections will go.

9. Always have a big vision, and share it.

People are inspired by and love to follow people with a big vision.

Especially other big thinkers.

When I was 23 and fresh out of college, I had a big vision.

I had no darn clue how or when I would make it happen… but I had a huge vision. People much wiser and more successful than me caught onto that and put time, energy, and trust into me at an age that looking back… most people would have dismissed me as too young.

But my positivity and vision sucked them in and made them realize that I was for real.

Don’t hide your big vision from others. Share it loud and proud so everyone you come across hears it. It’ll attract amazing people and amazing opportunities that can change your life.

As a real-world example, Adrian on our team has been an entrepreneur working for himself for the last 7+ years and at one time said “I’ll never work for anyone ever again”.

But now he focuses almost full-time on Carrot because he saw the vision I have for this company and felt that he needed to be a part of it.

Create a vision for the future that hits you in your core. Believe it. Then share it every chance you get. You never know who it’ll hook who can help you fulfill that vision.

10. Stop sending generic mail-order wine baskets and stuff.

Sending people things over the mail is amazing. But in my book, not all things are created equal as far as the power to truly build bonds that can be life-changing.

So if you want to truly wow that partner, or client, or friend… stop sending out generic mail-order gifts.

Wine baskets with random wine and cheese that you have no connection with.

Boxes of chocolates from those big mass candy producers.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE getting those kinds of gifts and I appreciate it a ton.

But the impact and emotional connection are nowhere near as strong as a more personalized gift from the heart.

As an example…

… I bought 100 quote books called the “Little Book of Big Quotes“.

They’re cheap as far as cost… but then what I’ll do is send them a bottle of local wine and locally made chocolate with a book of quotes and I’ll highlight and note a quote that reminds me of that person.

Sometimes it’s just a quote book and a personal note.

Those $1.50 quote books and a genuine note and taking the time to circle a few quotes that you feel will resonate with that person has made a massive impact on those I’ve given them to.

In the past, I’ve also sent out…

• Customized Christmas ornaments when someone had a baby (with the baby’s picture on it that I swiped from Facebook). I borrowed this idea from a friend, Danny… because he sent me one. To this day that ornament still gets hung on our tree and is always a reminder of Danny and his awesomeness.
• “baby Carrot’ orange onesie to some of our amazing Carrot clients who recently had babies.
• Remote control military helicopter to a business colleague and friend who was taking helicopter lessons and who was a Green Beret.
• A giant box of Cheeze-It’s (like really big) to a business CEO and friend as an inside joke for Christmas.
• Local wine from the Umpqua Valley (amazing wine region by the way) so it connects them to my own story

A really cool and meaningful gift I received from a business partner and friend was this amazing original painting by one of my favorite artists.

A little thought goes a long way.

Get creative with your gifts and ditch the generic “easy and quick mail order gifts”.

11. Remember that money has no loyalty. But the right relationships do.

Money will pick up and leave you at a moment’s notice and not give a crap that it did.

So don’t put your loyalty to money. I can guarantee you that when we’re on our deathbed the last thing we’ll be thinking about is “Man I wish I made more money”.

It’s the relationships, the connections, the love, the experiences, the contributions we’ve made in life that matter.

And the cool thing is, the better you get at those things… the more easily money flows to you.
http://www.slideshare.net/carrotly/eleven-tips-to-network-your-way-to-your-first-million-dollars

It’s Not Impossible To Make Your First (or next) Million By Yourself…

… but it’s a whole lot faster and more fulfilling to make it part of your everyday living to connect with others and help them achieve their goals. In turn, your network will grow like crazy and your goals will be in your hands a heck of a lot sooner than you think.

Most of these aren’t “tips” or “networking hacks”… but a flat-out different way of thinking about life and connections.

Shift from “what can I get?” and “what fancy words should I say to this person?” to “I really wanna learn about you, what makes you tick?” and “If there’s anything I can help you with any time please don’t hesitate to reach out”.

Once you make that shift, doors will open for you and people will almost magically appear in your life that you never expected.

So, you’re starting to grow your company and you’re hitting those growing pains that come with too many things to do but not enough time to do it. You hire a VA or two… or maybe even some part-time or full-time employees. But if you’re not all working in the same office together… how do you make sure the team works together smoothly when you’re hundreds (or thousands) of miles away?

Here’s how we do it here at Carrot and some of the tools that we use every day as a remote team.

Making A Remote Team Work

There are some amazing things about building a “remote” team.

If you’ve never heard of that term, it’s basically where all or most of your team members are separated by a distance (usually in different cities, states, or even countries).

This is a pretty darn common thing these days with the technology we have access to that makes working from a distance a lot easier.

Now, on the flip side, there are some things about building a remote team that makes building a great company harder.

You have to work harder to build a great culture that your team loves being a part of.

You have to be more self-driven since your time is usually more flexible and it’s easier to slip into bad habits.

You have to make sure you still find ways to build personal connections with your team members so they’re not just a person doing a task… but a person that’s part of the mission that your company is on.

How does the Carrot team look?

At Carrot, we have a small staff of full-time team members that work here out of our headquarters in Roseburg, Oregon.  Another set of of full-time team members are in other cities throughout Oregon.  Then the rest of our company is all over the United States, working remote.  Utah, California, North Carolina, you name it.

So what tools do we use the most that we couldn’t live without?

Here are our top 6.

Slack – The Way We Communicate Every Day

Look at all of the places you’re currently sending and receiving messages.

Odds are you’re using multiple programs to communicate with your team. And it’s costing you time and a big hassle for everyone.

When we first started this company and had just a few people, we’d basically send each other a lot of emails and if we needed something fast we’d fire up a Google chat.

Those worked, but what happened was my inbox would get filled with emails and I’d find myself in my Gmail account all day long. I’m easily distracted, so being in my email account all day long really opened me up to let other people control my agenda with their emails.

At times I’d have 150+ unread messages in there.

Plus, if we wanted to send a file or a video, or look up a conversation we had in the past it would take me forever to do it and I could hardly ever find past conversations when I looked for them.

In the end, we were using all of these systems and I had to be logged into Skype, Gmail, Google Drive, and several other systems.

Enter Slack.

Slack seems like a totally unnecessary tool when you first hear about it.

I thought the same thing when my CTO said that we should try it out.

“Arg, another thing I’ve got to log into now?”

But now I can’t imagine running our business without it.

How do we use Slack to save time and build a better culture?

• It’s our home base for all communications now. I rarely check email now.
• We completely stopped using Skype because it’s so darn easy to launch a Google Hangout directly in Slack
• We can have group chats, one-on-one private chats between team members… or even create channels for specific projects.
• We can integrate it with most of our other systems we use. A new customer comes aboard Carrot… it pings our General Slack channel to let us know who they are and where they came from so we can celebrate! A task gets marked off in our project management software… it quickly tells us in Slack.
• Oh… and also it’s our company water cooler. There won’t be a day that goes by without some funny carrot pictures, celebrating something awesome a customer or team member experienced, or even just the normal morning and evening “check in”.

I can’t imagine running our business without Slack.

You can use the free account for quite a while. We currently pay about $100/mo. 

Asana – For Managing Our Projects

So, once you decide you have to get a project done, what do you use to make sure that project actually… well… gets done?

The pad and paper or the checklist on a digital notepad on your computer just don’t cut it as your company grows.

Yes, it may work just fine when the company is just you.

But as you add people to your team (especially when it’s more than 2-3 people) you need to add in some organization and some systems to make sure your projects don’t just start… but more importantly… they finish. 

We’ve tried Basecamp… we’ve tried just doing it all in Google Drive… and we switched to Asana about a year ago.

Asana is pretty darn robust and may be overkill for lots of teams. But we were finding that Basecamp just didn’t give us some of the flexibility that we were looking for and it didn’t let us manage subtasks and projects the way we wanted to.

How do we use Asana to better organize our projects?

• Manage our content marketing schedule and writing team
• Handle our big projects and the “to-do” lists for those projects
• Hold our planning in an organized way
• Help us collaborate with as many people as we want on our projects

With Asana we organize not just our projects in there, but as you can see from the screenshot above… we also build out our agendas for company meetings (we do a daily huddle, monthly planning sessions, and in-office days at our headquarters in Roseburg).

All of our goals and objectives along w/ the projects and tasks that will help us reach those goals are in Asana. No longer in some notepad, whiteboard, or stuck in our heads.

Asana is free for most teams and you can upgrade if you want to add more features. 

Google Drive – For Storing & Collaborating On Files

Now that you’ve streamlined your team communication and made your “home base” with Slack, you’ve organized your projects with something that works best for your company, now you need to have a place to put documents and files that you want to save.

We’ve tried Dropbox and Google Drive. Both are great, but we found that Google Drive was just the best fit for us because it integrates easily with Slack, we all have Gmail accounts, and Google Drive is insanely robust and simple to use.

How do we use Google Drive?

• Storing Contracts (both templates and signed)
• Storing research we do on SEO / PPC keywords, markets, products, etc
• Have writers upload articles before our edit team rolls them out to the system
• Storing company assets like our branding files, team docs, company vision, video files, etc.
• Storing testimonials and case studies so we always have an archive of amazing experiences our members have
• … and more!

Basically, you’ve got to have a place that your team can store and collaborate on files.

Get them darn things off of your computer and into the cloud. Google Drive is crazy easy and cheap.

We’re currently on the 1TB plan and pay about $100/yr. 

Google Meet – For “Face-to-Face” Meetings

When you’re not working in the same office as your team, you can lose that personal connection that you get by being able to see each other every day.

So, we make it a habit of seeing each other’s smiling faces and hearing each other’s voices daily.

Even if it’s just for a quick 5-10 minute daily huddle at the start of the day to chat about what we have on tap that day.

How do we use Google Hangouts Meet?

• Our daily huddle where we “check in” and hit the team with questions we have and our priority for the day
• Scheduled meetings between team members and our contractors (I can’t remember the last time we did an actual phone call)
• Launch a hangout directly from inside Slack with a quick and easy “/hangouts” (and hit “enter”), and it launches!

The great thing is that Google Meet is free! 

Grasshopper – Our Virtual Phone System

A landline… what’s that?

These days you don’t need a landline with a phone in an office to run a great company.

There are many virtual phone systems, some of them specialize for real estate investors and have people who can answer for you… while some just handle the technology side of routing phone calls to your virtual team.

We use Grasshopper, which is the system that is our voicemail box and routes phone calls to our team members no matter where they are.

How do we use Grasshopper?

• To receive calls and voice mails
• To receive fax messages (I can count on one hand the faxes we’ve received at Carrot)
• To route calls to the best team member anywhere they are in the world
• To handle our toll-free number

It really helps us have that flexibility of not having to have someone sitting next to a physical phone in an office in order to provide amazing experiences to our customers.

We pay about $35/mo for our Grasshopper account. 

In-Office Days – For Building Culture And Having Fun!

Last, this isn’t a techie tool… in fact, it’s as low-tech as you can get.

But we make it a point to get together in person as much as possible somewhere in Oregon at least once a month (sometimes twice) to work together for a day.

Our in-office days are usually at our headquarters in Roseburg, but sometimes we head up to Portland, Eugene, or Salem so our Portland team members don’t have to make the long haul drive every time.

We always get the work done that makes the most sense to collaborate on in person plus we make sure to have some fun, grab some great food and brews, and hang out a bit.

In the end, relationships are the #1 most important part of growing a company.

So don’t be afraid to have fun, connect with your team in person as much as possible, and grow a great team for the long-term.

Now, you may be saying… “But some of my team lives in another state, how can we do in-office days?“

I have a good friend with a company in Florida, which has a team of full-time team members in the Philippines. He’s traveled to meet with them 2-3 times over the last few years to build a better bond with the team. Don’t fall in the trap of treating overseas outsourcers like second rate citizens.

They’re people just like you, working hard to put food on their families tables, and they like to have a great company culture and feel they’re a part of something too.

Now, Get Out And Grow That Company And Leverage Some Of These Tools To Help Your Remote Team CRUSH It This Year

Do you have any other remote working tools you’re using to work with your team that you love and can’t live without?

Put them in the comments section below! We’d love to find new tools too!