This guide will help you get intentional about who’s in your own Familiar 5! 

Friends + Family are always the most popular and supportive way to initiate your founding business community, would you agree? Friends, Family, and Facebook: but this has little to do with strategy and a lot to do with happenstance. You’ve got a lot to learn about how you operate and what you are selling during this initial time, but once you are past this round, you can start to multiply your impact and income in a more powerful way.  

Going back to the days of accessing my own “Facebook,” it was 2010 and I was starting my photography business. I’d use the tools that were BRAND NEW such as boosting posts for a few dollars with lookalike audiences, mastering the pixel, and integrating the concept of tagging and making my content public to share and expose my work to others. Also, using hashtags to find people I have never met before and creating 2nd or 3rd-degree connections with my friends along the way. 

t was tiring work and I had no realy way to expect results or people to “bite” from the things I was sharing. However, it got me started and worked until it didn’t.

Have you tried to use this approach in the past? How did it work out for you?

I want to share with you what happens after this, a more strategic way to build a stronger, more impactful community! 

A ‘Familiar 5’ consists of 5 supportive partners that you touch base with every 5 days (one person per week to follow up with) and they need to be familiar with these 5 concepts: 

Familiar with your Growth plan.

Share where you are now, where you are headed, and what some immediate next asks you have for this week, this month, and this year may look like. If you are outward and communicative about your growth and what it looks like, you are painting a picture in others’ minds about what they can be aware of to support you.

Sharing your plan to grow with others not only allows you to be heard and understood, but receive feedback, receive referrals, and receive the abundance that comes with putting your growth vision out there into the universe! 

Familiar with your ASK pertaining to what you want to sell (clear on your offerings) for the week. 

Believe it or not, I work with so many entrepreneurs who know what they do and what offering they provide, but fail to get specific on what they are asking for this week or this month alone.

If I asked you, “what are you promoting this week,” is that clear for you? If you know this, are you sharing it with your Familiar 5 in a way that they can easily tell at least one other person that they would encounter this week who may be a good fit? 

Getting really clear on asking for who and what this week to help your familiar 5 give someone that first next step with you can be a huge, but easy-to-implement shift! 

Familiar with your Impact Statement & Mission

We just worked on this at the February 2023 CEO Days - are you being impactful enough?

If you would like the self-guided version of this, check out our CEO Days Workbook and dive a little deeper into the steps of creating an Impact Statement and Mission for your business.

Make sure your people know this, can amplify it and can help attract those who will rally your mission and build a community around the power of an impact statement! 

Familiar with your Network & who you need or don’t need to attract

If you are like me, you may network A LOT and have a lot of people you’ve reached out to or followed up with. But, how deep are your connections and how powerful is the relationship with this sum of people?

Take time to really know who is in your network and how they can mutually benefit from this connection. No one you meet is by mistake and everyone you have encountered is in your network and life for a reason. I hope you can take a moment to explore what that looks like and get more familiar with the win-win experience of the people you are already connected with!

Familiar with your Style & personal brand - some people just won’t like you for you! 

How familiar are you with a “good fit” person - how do you know if they are good/ bad for your future goals?
If you are clear and confident with your own personal brand, and how you can identify what your own spin on things looks like, it will help you to be specific with how you are bringing in folks and being like a magnet to build your own community, just the way you’d like to. Using a stronger palette of brand flair, go deeper into the repetition of your fonts, colors, and stylistic choices. The things we say without using words help to access parts of the brain that can really turn up the volume on the power of your brand and the impact that you are making on the right-fit people. 

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Side Note:  if you are in BNI (Business Network International) , you may think I stole this “gains” acronym, but it was completely by happenstance. It truly is an original Dana Magnus 3am thought! 

What is a growth plan? Let’s start there. This is where you are headed and what you see yourself growing toward. Your business has the potential to reach hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands of human beings over the next few years or even the next decade What does it look like for you to grow into your next level and how can you showcase the growth you want to experience with these people? 

Plan for JUNE with this recap of CEO Days!

Missed our MAY session because of Memorial Day? This guided recording will take you through CEO Days that you can utilize on your own time!

To access the document, please sign up for CEO Days below:

Have you ever gone to an event and wondered,

“WHY AM I HERE?”

“This is a waste of my TIME that I’d rather be doing anything else!”

With the increasing amount of webinars, workshops, and free meet-up’s, let’s get one thing straight- your time is your TIME & money is waiting for you somewhere else!

If you find yourself looking back on your week, month, or year having spent the time to show up, but just in the wrong spaces, places, and conversations, here is a list of questions to ask yourself before committing your precious time to these events!

It seems to me that sometimes I attend something for the wrong reasons and quickly regret being there.

I’ve spent over a decade as a well-liked, but not as highly paid entrepreneur as I’d like to be. After feeling defeated and frustrated one too many times, I realized that I was just putting myself in the wrong rooms due to a lack of intentionality or alignment with the result I was hoping for.

For the sake of you being able to sleep in, not be so drained, and pay yourself more in both time, energy, and money as a CEO day, I hope that these questions are part of your regular routine to make a bigger difference in the way you are operating your business!

When looking at the event invitation:

Do I understand what this event is really about?

Am I helping myself or doing a favor for someone?

Is it crucial that I am there? 

What is expected of me to be fully present at this event? 

On a scale of 1-10, what priority is this on my list of commitments?

What is the cost to show up (financial, time, commitment, energy)?

What is the actual opportunity for me to be there?

Is there something besides this event that at the time, is a better use of attaining my goals?

If I were to go to this event: 

What will I be experiencing?

What will I be gaining?

Who will I be serving?

What pockets am I adding money to?

Who will be there?

Who will I be associated with if I attend?

Who will I meet? 

What will I say to the people I meet?

What do I want to be known as when I leave the room?

When preparing for the event:

What should I wear (in my branding for this group)?

What should I bring? 

Will I have time before the event to mentally charge myself with an intention and reflection?

Will I have time after the event to reflect on it and make any necessary follow up?

Ultimately, who do I want the result to be out of attending this event?

Each month, CEO’s & brand influencers of their movements and enterprises meet with me regularly to get more intentional about where we spend our time and how we grow our businesses. If you’d love to be part of this community, find more resources for working ON your business at CEO Days!

Let's be honest, the way we've been taught to 'network' may be keeping you from landing deals.

Don't you agree?

You know what I'm talking about: the nerve-wracking '30 second commercial' that only 2% of the room really nail. Or being asked constantly and awkwardly within 120 minutes of an event, "So.... tell me what you do." and the person is pretending to listen but really already thinking about the next victim of person to ask before they grab your business card and move on. OHH and my favorite- the pushy business card exchange. Over and over and over again every event you go to.

Can we just not!?

You will see me asking really aggressive questions to sort out who is worth my time or not at a networking event and I am very strategic.

Okay, so I'm just going to throw it out there now, I am an enneagram type 8, also known as "The Challenger" and I was born and wired to think a little differently and act immediately when there is something that doesn't sit well with me. We learned even more about the personality types of the Enneagram at this morning's Sunnyside Chat 06 (which is one of the few networking groups I attend in Chicago) and I couldn't have found myself in better timing for today's rant than with this discussion.

If you don't know your number, take the free 5-min test and let me know what you are!

Anyways, I had a lovely Jumpstart Strategy Session with the fantastic Keasha Lee Ince (have you met this incredible woman?!) today and we talked all about a new kind of networking strategy. It really got me onto something here that I want to share with you...

Add into your 2020 marketing goals how to network at live events in your #NextLevel:

1. Know who you are and what you want. Taking a test like the Enneagram will help you to move through a room of new people with ease and intention. You will be able to better manage the way you interact with others, receive their responses (non-verbal is even better to observe), especially during the making of a first impression.
   
   
   
   

2. Have an idea of characteristics in people that you are looking to invite into your circle. You know this as well as I do- there are just some people who bring a certain energy to your life that either makes you gain or lose, and this is important to protect yourself from people whose energies exhaust you.
   
   
   

   TIP: Remember, you can accept to decline to take someone's business card you don't really want to further talk to. That's perfectly okay and you can politely let them know you aren't interested in taking this conversation to the next step.

3. Just because you are clear about what you do, your call to action for what you are inviting people to take up with you has to be clear to them.

   
   This is where I work mostly with my clients because, to be honest, this is where most people have challenges.
   
   I have seen so many people talk at me without really understanding that I have no clue what they are asking about. I don't even know what you do, let alone trying to take any action for you- c'mon! This all can be resolved with more questions.
   
   
   

4. Give an invitation like a human. This, I would argue, is the most important part of this list. Remember, we are in front of someone who is giving us their undivided attention.
   
   We can read their body language, pay attention to their posture, and feel a vibe from them, which you can't do by sending an email or marketing message to them.
   
   Feel them out and really connect before you start giving them instructions on taking further action with you. If they don't want your consultation, don't offer it to them- their body language will tell you!
   
   
   
   

5. Last and finally not least, if you aren't going to follow up with anyone from the event you are at, don't return back to a group like this. Or don't even go at all. Save yourself the cost to get there in time, money, and energy and find another way to grow your business. I promise you will be much happier marketing yourself more effectively if you stop forcing yourself to go to events just to 'check a box.'
   
   
   Please don’t forget that networking is a huge cost at the end of the day. Are you doing what you can to prevent yourself from the loss of time, money, and energy in 2020?