Block Out Time to Network with Business Coach

In this transcript, Caleb Taylor (Thrive15 correspondent) and Clay Clark (Founder of Thrive15.com, the top business coach program) discuss the importance of blocking out time to network.

Clay:    Yeah. Business Coach yeah yeah

Caleb:    Clay, you understand that you’re speaking to entrepreneurs, that don’t have time. You got to convince us that is actually worth our business coach time. I mean, they’re busy with their pet party planning businesses, their fight club gyms for older people. Whatever it is you do, they’re busy, they don’t have time for this. Why is this worth our time?

Clay:    I don’t want to go on too big of a business coach tangent here, but I just want to stress this, because I care so much about you, when you’re watching this– I mean, the whole reason we’re making Thrive is to help you move beyond surviving. And I care about you more than you possibly could know, but here is the thing here. Last night, my brother-in-law is trying to call me at your birthday party–

Caleb:    Mm-hmm.

Clay:    You know what I do? I don’t bring my phone. Why? Because I’m time blocking. And when I’m with family I am not at work, and I time block, and I meet people, I’m telling you this. That’s why I hope on Thrive you can learn this. But having to spent time with millionaires, billionaires, everyday success stories, all of them are masters of time blocking.

    Last night I checked my voicemails, I checked the things when I get up. I look, I missed a call from a huge super producer last night. I missed a super big call from a person who is a very successful athlete. I missed a super important call from my brother-in-law who needed a business coach.

    But you know what I didn’t miss? I didn’t miss your birthday. I didn’t miss time with my own kids. I didn’t miss being in that moment. It’s so super important that we learnt to time block and we are a 100% where we need to be. We’re always focused on, as Lee Cockerell says, the Disney, the business coach who used to run Disney World, we always focused on what’s important now.

    So when we talk about time blocking, we’re talking about what’s important now. So we need to block off at least, like an hour chunk or a couple of hours, whatever time we devote. That means, we don’t check email, we’re not checking Facebook, we’re not trying to hit on our wife or their their husband, we’re not doing that. What we do is we’re focusing on networking for a set committed appointed time, and then big results will happen.

Caleb:    Good. And it’s worth the time. I read a businessinsider.com article. “Networking is one of the most powerful tools that you can use to grow your company and reputation.” And then business coach Robert Kiyosaki said, he’s the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad.

    He said, “The richest people in the world look for and build networks.” Everyone else just looks for work. This is important, I mean this is, when we look to the millionaires, the success stories, you’ve talked about it, their network is massive.

Clay:    Well one thing with Thrive, what’s amazing is when you subscribe for Thrive, you also get an opportunity to come to our Thrive events. And the network is massive. It’s amazing how the people you know will determine how large your net worth can grow. Now what’s deceiving is that we are out there initially looking for work.

    And I can tell you having been poor, “I’m just looking for the next DJ show. I just want to DJ the next event, I just want to book the next party. I just want, and we didn’t have air conditioning in the apartment and I just wanted to book the next thing. And I didn’t really want to go to your networking event because I just needed to pay the rent.”

    So you have to set a balance and you have to setup time to time block. And I would recommend at a minimum, everybody watching this, of a minimum that you would put four hours a month in your calendar for networking at first, and the after that you can expand upon it. But I would say a minimum of four hours a month–

Caleb:    Four hours month a business coach–

Clay:    Minimum.

Caleb:    You can do that.

Clay:    Yeah.

Caleb:    You can do that. When you were starting out DJ Connection, what did this, this time blocking for networking looked like on your calendar?

Clay:    What happened is I talked to my mom, and I’ll try– My mom has a sweet voice, but this is how I’ll [Crosstalk 00:04:56] my interpretation of my mom’s conversation. “Hey mom, I’m thinking about getting into Chamber. I know you used to worked with the Chambers. Is that a good thing?” “Well I think it’s a great thing. You should go and you should network and meet all these people–“

    And I’m like, “I don’t have time to network. I’m trying to sell something. Please ma, just …” “Well you need to go, you need you know people, you need to meet people.” “Whatever mom.” And then I bought the membership to the Chamber, because– [Crosstalk 00:05:18] And so I go to these events, and so what I did is I just took my calendar out.

    Most of us here, this is what’s going on on our calendar. We got this calendar going on. And I remember going, you know what I’ll go to this networking breakfast here, it was at 7 AM, I think it was on a Wednesday. And then I’m going to go to this after hours event at 6 PM on like a Wednesday. Then I’m going to go to this breakfast networking here on a Wednesday at 7.

    And then I’m going to go to this one at 6 PM, because I am paying, every single time I go into one of these events, it’s like $30, plus I think I paid like 500 for the year to be a member to even go to those events, to be a Chamber member. Now if you’ve never been a member of a Chamber you can usually pay a higher price for a breakfast, it’s like 50 bucks. But if you’re a member, you can pay like 30, something like that.

    And so I would go to these events, I’d put it in my calendar, 7 AM, 6 PM at these four events a month, and I would go there and I was just like, “I’m paying for this thing, and I have barely enough money to pay for this meal. I am going to get some contacts.”

Caleb:    Mm-hmm.