Susan Biali

I know what you’re thinking: What could a doctor know about marketing? And how could a doctor, even if she’s a life coach, speaker, writer etc., know a “secret” guaranteed to work for any business?

I haven’t had any kind of formal business training, other than taking Economics 101 many years ago, so when I moved out of traditional medicine and into several other careers, I was hugely intimidated by the idea of having to promote myself and my work.  Networking and building a market seemed liked a painful, forced, exhausting process – until I learned this amazing secret.

The first time I heard it, or at least really registered it, was at a seminar given by my coach, Jill Lublin (author of Guerrilla Publicity and Networking Magic – www.jilllublin.com ).  How I met Jill is a story in itself – I was in Vancouver, working a rare medical clinic shift, when Jill, an internationally-renowned “master strategist” rolled into the clinic.  She was visiting from San Francisco to give several seminars, broke both of her ankles getting off the ferry, and rolled herself into my clinic.  She invited me to her seminar, and the rest is history. This happened the day after I said a prayer, asking for guidance with respect to moving to the next level with my career.  Can you say “miracle”?  I love life!

Anyway, during the seminar Jill has us do an exercise: every person would have a chance to stand up, and ask for something that they needed to advance their business.   Anyone who had any information or contacts that might help that person would write it down for them on a business card.  This was the first example I saw of networking by giving. 

I read more about this concept in a fantastic book I picked up at the airport, by Jeffrey Gitomer, “The Little Black Book of Connections” (www.gitomer.com).   I was surprised to discover that Gitomer described networking, and promoting your business, as a process of simply giving, and giving, and giving to others, expecting absolutely nothing in return.  Another thing he wrote was that “reputation is also built by providing and performing random acts of kindness”.  You don’t need a business degree to be able to share whatever skills, gifts and information you have, and you don’t need to be much more sophisticated than a 5-year-old to practice kindness.

What an amazing feeling, and how different, to walk into a conference of people with the intention of making connections in order to give away as much as possible, rather than being focused on what I might get out of it.  Can you feel the difference?  It’s revolutionary.

Finally, I’d like to share one more thing with you, which I just read and which inspired me to write this post.  Click on the link to read this great article called “Don't Keep Score”, by Keith Ferrazzi.   He's an expert in sales, but I think this applies to pretty much everyone.  I found it to be really interesting and a real wake-up call.

Now get out there and get giving!

If you have any personal stories about how your own giving produced amazing results, I'd love to hear about them.  Write to me below in the space for "Comments". You can even send me a private message this way, if you'd rather not "go public" - comments come to me first, before getting posted, so if you'd like to write me but would prefer that I don't post your comment, just let me know!

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