Episodes

Episode 6 finds me speaking with Speaker, Author, Podcast Host, Networking Coach, and Business Development Strategist: Julie Brown. Julie is one of the few guests I’ve interviewed that I had never met in person. In fact, we were never formally introduced, nor have we bumped into each other at an event. After learning she was a fellow networking guru, I bought her book, did some research, and very soon realized I wanted to bring her on to the show. Tune is as we chat about our common passion, share networking tips & more.

Show Transcript

Each Connect and Bloom episode is transcribed using Otter.ai. While our team is busy correcting typos where possible, it’s inevitable that some mistakes will be missed. (We’re only human!) With this in mind, please forgive any errors when reviewing transcripts, and feel free to report any issues here.

Despina Zanganas  0:07
Believe it or not, I used to be absolutely terrified of networking. No way. You. Yeah. I’m the host of connections. A transformative podcast designed for women looking to harness the power of networking, make life-changing connections and improve their personal and professional lives in ways that they could have previously only imagined. Because I truly believe that inside each of us is a social butterfly, just waiting to bloom.

Julie is a sought after speaker, networking expert, business strategist, Author of This Sh!t Works: A No-Nonsense Guide to Networking Your Way to More Friends, More Adventures, and More Success, as well as the host of the This Sh!t Works podcast dedicated to all things business and entrepreneurship. Julie’s advice and tips strike the perfect balance of humour and expertise gained from more than 20 years of networking, mentoring and self-advocacy.

Despina Zanganas  0:11  

Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me on the Connect and bloom podcast. My guest today is Julie Brown. Julie is a sought after speaker networking expert business strategist, author of this shit works a no nonsense guide to networking your way to more friends or adventures and more success, as well as the host of the shit works podcast dedicated to all things business and entrepreneurship. Julie’s advice and tips strike the perfect balance of humor and expertise came from more than 20 years of networking, mentoring and self advocacy. Julie, thank you so much for joining me today.

Julie Brown  1:24  

Thanks for having me excited to be here.

Despina Zanganas  1:27  

So you are actually the first guest that I never actually met. You know, nobody introduced us or anything like that. And how we met is because I found you on a website called podcast collaborative. And you know, I did a little search on networking and I was like, Oh my God, who is this woman and I got super excited. I started like stalking you online. And I saw that. I saw that you had a book and I immediately bought it and I absolutely loved it. So I was like, oh, I want this woman on my show for sure. You know, and I’m such a fan. So why don’t we just dive right in? Why don’t you tell me about the business and work that you do.

Julie Brown  2:09  

So my company is six years old prior to starting my own company. I worked for 16 years in I’m based in Boston so I work for 16 years in major corporations in Boston doing business development, lead generation client relationship management. And then in 2016, I decided to go out on my own and do that as a consultant for multiple firms. So larger firms can afford to have a full time person in house smaller firms still have a need but they can’t afford a full time person. So I started a company to fill that void in the marketplace. And quickly after I started my company, I started being asked to give speeches or workshops on networking and business development. And that’s how that part of my company started the professional speaking and then the podcasting and writing the book about networking. So I still do two kinds of things. Now I do the consulting for for clients, but also this you know intellectual property around networking. And business development through professional speaking.

Despina Zanganas  3:19  

That’s amazing. So why did you decide to specifically write a book about networking?

Julie Brown  3:24  

Well, because I’m because I’m a one trick pony. No, the most. That is what I do. It is I am not a big fan of the word passion, but it is what I do. I think that the people that you meet will change your life. And I think networking is how you meet those people. Also, because you know 86% of companies know that their relationships affect their profitability affects their bottom line. affects how successful they are. And yet only 24% of companies have an active plan to manage their relationships and actually grow allow relationships. So it’s needed, and also because there were not any and my book is for men and women but I hadn’t really found any business books that spoke the way I did about networking that were written by women. Most of the networking books were written by men and I, I have spent 22 years in a male dominated industry. So I just felt like I had a different take on networking that I wanted to express and then in my speeches in my professional speaking career, I was getting to ask the same questions over and over and over again. And so I said if I’m getting these questions over and over and over again, then people I need to write a book to answer the questions that everybody has all the time.

Despina Zanganas  4:45  

Yeah, that’s the same thing for me, people are constantly asking me the same questions about networking. You probably hear this too. They’re like, I’m so bad at it. Right. And so you definitely want to help them along that process. So you know, let’s, let’s step back a bit and why don’t we define what networking is like? I think we’ll have an idea what it is, but what’s your definition of networking?

Julie Brown  5:06  

is really simple. Networking for me is just relationship building. It’s building relationships with people around you where they are invested in your success and you are invested in their success and by being in a relationship with each other and being connected to each other. You help each other out professionally and in and personally. Yeah, absolutely. Notice I didn’t mention sales or anything like that, because that’s that networking is just relationship building and everything. That comes afterwards is a result of the strength of that relationship.

Despina Zanganas  5:46  

And I think it’s different kinds of network. It doesn’t have to be business like you said, it can be just like, building friendships where you’ve talked about that a lot in your book. It’s just about making friends right? I don’t mean thing.

Julie Brown  5:57  

Yeah, I don’t separate. So many people. I hear the term work friends, like these are my work friends, and these are my real friends. Well, are they your friend or not? Like why are we categorizing people? Like I don’t say oh, these are my college friends. These are my ski friends. These are like my real friends. These are like, you know so I think if we have a practice of saying friends or friends, whether they are our friends in a professional capacity, or whether they are our friends through our Collegiate years, or we grew up with them, friends are friends and we need to stop siloing people into work, you know, our work life and our professional life. And this comes harks back to this whole bull about you know, work life balance that somehow we’re supposed to be able to separate our lives. Well, I don’t know about you, but more people are stressing out about the fact that they don’t have work life balance than actually just saying okay, this is my life. And like let’s blend it all together. And my work friends can be my real friends and my real friends. I can actually do business with like, I don’t believe that you don’t mix business and pleasure. I just don’t believe it.

Despina Zanganas  7:05  

Absolutely. I made such great friends from the business you know? That I’m done. So I absolutely agree with you. So let’s talk about your book a little bit. You know, you talk about the concept by Robin Dunbar he’s this British anthropologist and evolutionary evolutionary psychologist says that people can only maintain 150 human relationships. And you actually disagree with that. I mean, you divide it into four circles. Can you like explain that whole concept and what that means the four different circles?

Julie Brown  7:38  

Yeah, so I’m gonna go back to the beginning. So Robin Robin Dunbar a lot of people have heard of Dunbar’s numbers so Dunbar’s number is 150. And it came from his studies of non human primates. So within us studies of non human primates in their natural habitats, he discovered that non human primates can maintain stable social relationships of about 50 other non human primates in their natural habitat. And he discovered that the number of stable social relationships that we can maintain is directly related to the size of the neocortex in the brain. And non human primates. They have a much smaller neocortex than humans. So when he applied that theory to the human neocortex, knowing that non human primates couldn’t manage 50 relationships, and the size of the human neocortex, he said, we can manage 150 stable social relationships as humans. Now the reason why I disagree with this is because this these studies were done in 1992. In 1992, we don’t have the means and methods of staying connected that we do now. We don’t we didn’t have any social media, reliable internet, email, robust CRM databases that keep us on top of our relationships. So I’m saying if without any help, we know we can manage 150 stable social relationships. Then with all of the things that we have at our dystopias disposal to stay connected 150 is the minimum you should have. So then I break it down into the circles. So the four circles are 515 50 and 100, or more so the circle of five and we’ve all heard this, I’m not saying anything your listeners haven’t heard before that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. So if you think about your network, and you look at the people you spend the most time with in your network, you have to ask yourself one, is this a homogenous group of ideas? Am I being challenged by this group? Do they help me think outside of the box? Are they invested in my success? Do they want to see me succeed? And then for the people who are in relationships, Warren Buffett wrote an article a number of years ago that said the most successful people in the world have one thing in common now one thing is a husband or wife or a life partner who is invested in their success and helps them be successful. So is there a parity in your relationship? Are you allowed to be as successful as your partner? So within that top five Yes, your partner should 100% be in your top five and allow you to be successful and want you to be successful and not be intimidated by your success. And then the other four people you have to think about it like are these people challenging the way I do business? Are they helping me be better and do they are they invested in my success? So that’s the top but the 15 is what I call the party people because if you’re gonna throw a party for your business, who are the next 15 people that you are going to invite and we can no normally rattle those people off? Those people are you know, they’re they’re, they’re the nice hug around us that we get from the people that who loves us and want to see us succeed. The number 50 is super important. So 50 is called the robust relationships. Do you have 50 robust relationships? Do you have 50 people in your network that if you need information about something, you can email them, call them, text them? If you are working on a project and you’ve come up against something and you need help with something? Do you have 50 people that you could reach out to and say, Hey, can I bend your ear about this? Do you have 50 people you could say hey, I really want to meet this person. I know they’re connected to you. Good. Would you make a strategic introduction for me because strategics introductions are one of the best and easiest and fastest and most awesome way to grow your network. So you have 50 robust connections, and then the outer circle of 100 or more. Lots of studies have been done about the power of weak ties. So this outer circle of 100 is super, super important. 72% of projects that win awards are people who are collaborating with this outer outer circle 85% of jobs are filled through networking. 72% of those jobs are filled through people in the outer network connections from the outer network. The outer network is yeah, the outer network is super super important. So do you have this do you have 515 50 100 If you don’t, don’t freak out about it be don’t be like oh my god, I don’t have that number, like just saved yourself. Where does my network need help? Where do I need to start growing relationships? Or wait? Where do I need to start strengthening relationships?

Despina Zanganas  12:23  

Yeah, you know, after I read that, in your book, I actually went down and I started listing out all those people and it made me think about my network differently because I realize there’s people who are always there. To support me. And there’s a lot of people in that like, you know, the last circle that you have that they’re the ones who are also kind of liking my posts on LinkedIn and you know, Instagram and all that. So they’re kind of like loose supporters and we don’t we’ve talked maybe once at a networking event or something like that. So I can totally see how how that kind of works. I mean, I don’t know if I actually counted 250.

Julie Brown  13:05  

Just to give you a frame of reference, you know, you don’t have to be like I have 149 Shit, I gotta meet somebody. No I mean, it’s just to give you a frame of reference, you know,

Despina Zanganas  13:15  

right. Absolutely. So, you know, let’s dive into some really practical networking. So, you know, a lot of people just hesitate to go away to a networking event because they think you know, they’ll have nothing to talk about or you know, they’re just not interesting people how to adjust that people kind of overcome that fear.

Julie Brown  13:35  

Okay, so, I created this thing called the list yourself approach. A number of years back because I had gotten this comment from a number of people in when I had been giving speeches. I don’t have anything to talk about. I’m always nervous that there’s going to be dead air and like uncomfortable silences when I’m trying to network people. I never have ways of connecting. So the list yourself is exactly what it sounds like. You just take a list of you know, a piece of paper and you write down all of the things that make you you but you cannot put what you do for work. So my wish list would be okay, so I’m a wife. I’m a dog mom. I have two rescue dogs. I’m a marathon runner. I’m a skier. I’m a mountain biker. I’m a world traveler. I’m very into true crime podcasts. That’s all I listen to, besides my you know, having to edit my own podcast, True Crime podcast. I love binging shows, on Netflix or whatever. I just filmed that if you haven’t watched it, I just finished only murders in the building on Hulu with Steve Martin and Martin Short and it’s one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen. Oh, I’ve I’m a peloton. addict. I had a peloton way before the way before the pandemic like I was like, I’m like oh gee peloton like all these things. Lead me to say you have way more to talk about than you think you have to talk about just no one’s ever given you permission to talk about things that don’t have anything to do with work. So there’s a couple of things behind this. Number one, in America, we are consumed we’re consumed with defining ourselves by what we do. So when you meet someone in America, the first question you ask them doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you’re a networking event or a dinner party at your friend’s house and there’s somebody that you have met the first question you always ask is What do you do? Because we’re consumed by defining ourselves by our nine to five job or eight to six or whatever, however many hours you work. We’re in Europe, when you meet somebody you don’t know. You ask who are you is a fundamental difference on way we can have conversations with people and start building relationships. So the list yourself approach allows you to think about having conversations with people in a different way. coming at it from WHO ARE YOU versus what do you do now? That list serves a second purpose. Now, there’s, we all know what dopamine is. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain sits in the pleasure center in your brain and helps us a lot of different things, feelings of happiness and social connection. And you can elicit a dopamine spike in the brain of a person you’re talking to by asking the right questions by asking dopamine inducing questions. There are questions that would cause a dopamine crash in the brain. And they were the questions that you always ask, what do you do and who are you? Those actually are the least. Oh, they are the most hated questions. Listen, I love what I do. I absolutely wig in love what I do. And when I’m out somewhere and somebody asks me what I do, I want to shove a pen in my eye. I’m like, oh my god, I’m so sick of this question. Because I there’s so many other amazing things to talk about and build relationships on. So if you can take your list and then say how can I create dopamine inducing questions out of this list? So okay, do you have you have any dogs do you do? Where was the last trip you took prior to the pandemic? Where’s the first trip you’re going to after the pandemic? What’s the best podcast you’ve listened to lately? What’s the best book you’ve read lately? What is the best show you binge lately? You know, and what are your favorite hobbies? Are you were scared, do you like like, whatever, like all these different things that increase the surface area with which you can connect with people are the ways to build relationships. So when you start connecting with people and you have all these things in common and their dopamine is like, oh my god, I can’t believe we have this thing in common. That is when because we all know, people do business with and refer business to people they know like and trust. Right? That is your that is your train Chugga chugga to know like and trust and that’s when they’re like, What do you do? I want to work with you. How do we work together? That’s how you that is the order that you should do it in?

Despina Zanganas  18:06  

Yeah, I so agree. I mean, you talked about how your dog mom, you know, that I find is the one that kind of pulls everybody together if you’re into dogs. Yeah, people just want to talk about their dogs and the silly things that dogs do. And it just connects you immediately. I mean, yep, you know, just before this podcast, you had to shoot your dog out. You know, we had a little conversation about your dog. Today we ate it and my dog. So it’s, it really does pull people together and I so agree like you know, get underneath the surface of like, what people are doing and what they’re they really love and what drives them in their personal life. So yeah, for sure. So let’s move along a little bit. So, um, you know, you talk about networking events. Obviously, we’re in COVID right now, so it’s a little bit more difficult but how would you find a networking event and how do you prepare for network networking events when you’re there?

Julie Brown  19:01  

Well, whatever, whatever industry you’re in, there are industry organizations that you can become a part of. So for me, I mean, my home. What I grew up in is architecture, engineering and construction. That’s what I grew up in. And there are no shortage of industry organizations. There’s, there’s organizations for architects for facilities managers, for real estate people, for engineers for construction owners for women in construction for women engineer, like there’s no shortage of organizations for me to look at and say, I want to be involved in this one because I like what this organization is doing. So first, look at your industry and say what organizations serve this industry. That’s one that’s super easy peasy. The second is, are there other tangental organizations like you can always look at your you know, your chamber of commerce or for women, you can you know, the Junior League. There’s lots of different organizations around that you can look at and say, Okay, do I agree with the mission statement of this organization? Look at the events that they hold are these events that I think are ones that I would want to attend, or these people that I should get to know? So always just start with looking at organizations that serve your industry. You can also look at peer groups. So for example, I’m a professional speaker. So there’s the National Speakers Association. So I’m a part of that just specifically, so I can have a peer group of people who do exactly what I do. I’m not going to find clients there, but what I’m going to do is find people who do what I do so I have somebody to show I have a group of people who I can go to for information to help with contracts. What do you what are you seeing in the industry? Are you getting booked? What’s happening with pricing like that’s super important. And you can look at your alumni groups, so whatever college you went to, or even if you went to a private high school, what alumni groups are available to you my husband went to a private an all boys private high school and his Alumni Association is very robust. And he went to Notre Dame. And that Alumni Association is very robust, and we’re actually headed to Indiana on Friday to go to a Notre Dame game. And so you just have to think about it what organizations serve my industry or or are from my past as far as alumni groups, or are specifically for women. I don’t know if you’re organized if your audience is mostly what organizations are for women that I can join. Um, that’s what you have to do. You have to do the research into the organizations.

Despina Zanganas  21:52  

I think that’s a great point. A lot of people have told me that they got their MBA and sure they got an education, but what they really got out of it was the network. You know, I’ve heard so many people just get jobs from there and refer different people so sure, education was nice, but it was really that connection. That was really amazing. So you know, we’ve talked about networking about what about conferences, do you think that they’re different in the way that we network?

Julie Brown  22:23  

Um, I think yes, they are different in the sense of, okay, a networking event is a very short period of time. Say it’s two, three hours. That’s your time you have, you can prepare before the event. You can go to the event and then you do your follow up afterwards. The o’clock I love conferencing I prior to starting my own business conferencing was where I got a lot of clients for the companies that I was working at because you are in number one, there’s a shared experience of going to a conference. So conferences generally take place and like really fun locations and you have shared experiences there’s there’s a building relationships through shared experiences is such a special way to build relationships, but also conferences or multi day events. So you have the opportunity to see people over and over and over again within the two or three days that a conference takes place. And I just think they’re they’re great little you know, like incubators or relationships because you are in this space together experiences this this space together on for multiple days. You have the opportunity to have multiple conversations and conferences happen year after year. So I like conference families where we see each other at the conference every single year and we look forward to it so um yeah, they’re different. I mean, they’re different beings on but I mean again, relationships so you have to work networking relationships the same way after work conference relationships. It’s It’s It’s time.

Despina Zanganas  24:08  

I’m actually wondering as you’re speaking, were you always good at networking, or is it something you kind of learned along the way? No, um,

Julie Brown  24:15  

I don’t think I was I. I guess the, you know, it’s hard to say because I was always good at going into events and striking up conversations and being able to introduce myself to strangers, but that’s like literally like not what networking is. Networking is being prepared to go to an event understanding who you might meet there understand like doing that was yourself apart. I didn’t create the list yourself approach to I started my own company. And I kept getting those questions about oh, I have nothing to talk about. So networking is so much more than just being able to go into a room and have a conversation. I don’t think I realized that till I was deep. I was deep in my career saying okay, why why do people why are people invested in my success? Why are people gravitating towards me? And it was because I had a way of building very human relationships. And being very curious about other people and wanting to learn about other people and not Who are you not what you do way so getting to know a potential client I didn’t jump right into what projects do you have coming? How could we be working it was tell me about your family. Tell me about how you grew up like tell me about what you do on the weekend. Like i i built relationships from a very Who are you stand for it the same way and that always led to work? But I don’t think I understood it until I was probably I had to have been at least eight or nine years into my career before I was really like, oh, geez, this is this is the golden ticket, you know?

Despina Zanganas  26:00  

Yeah, I think for me, it’s when I turned 35 I think that’s when I had something switched. I had a cold. Yeah, told me how to do it. And then I actually found something work from an event. I was like, Oh, I see this. Now. You know what I mean? And I had, I had developed a great relationship with this person first. We never really tried to do business. It’s funny. We shared a story about crashing a wedding. We crushed a wedding, and we bonded over that right

Julie Brown  26:26  

I’ve only crashed one I’ve crashed one in my life. And I paid for my drinks it was it was the cash bar and I I wouldn’t have kept I wouldn’t have crashed it if it was an open bar. I would have felt too guilty. I would have my Irish guilt would have just but I paid for my drinks. Me and my girlfriend, Jan. We did it and we danced the night away. And we had so much fun. Yeah, that’s

Despina Zanganas  26:51  

a great way to bond over something. Right? So. So once

Julie Brown  26:55  

again, that’s a shared experience. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t share that experience together. Yeah. That’s why alumni groups work so well because even if you graduated 10 years apart from each other you have the shared experiences is why grief groups work really well like sharing an experience of like, you didn’t experience the same loss but you shared that experience. So shared experiences are a great way to build relationships.

Despina Zanganas  27:21  

Yeah, that’s a that’s a great point. You know, one of your talks is networking your way to increased influence and success, especially for women. So why didn’t you want to have a talk that’s specifically for women?

Julie Brown  27:36  

Because studies show that the biggest one of the biggest limiting factors for women in business is lack of a network because women network completely differently than men. We’ve been fed this bull line that men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, and we build relationships completely differently. And it’s a bunch of hogwash. There is no scientific difference in the way that men will build relationships versus the way women build relationships. But because we’ve been fed this narrative that we’re so different, we end up building completely different networks. Now, women tend to build smaller social networks, meaning we build relationships with people who are at the exact same career level as we are. We’re very comfortable with people who are in the exact same career level as we are and we build social relationships with them, meaning non transactional meaning we don’t ask for work from them. Yeah, we are men so many times. Yeah. Yes, men build large rod deep networks of people who are at a higher level than them their career and also people who are just starting out in their career, and they have no qualms about asking for what they want. They have no qualms about having a transactional relationship with people in their network where women don’t like it that makes them feel achy. They feel like they’re taking advantage of people. They don’t want to bother people. And this is why we have a hard time getting ahead in business because we tend to not ask for business where men ask for business and if they don’t get it, they’re like, Okay, no worries. I’ll just ask the next person. You know, they don’t take it personally. So women, this emotional network that we’re creating, yes, is wonderful in the sense that we are emotionally connected to people, but it is a hinderance for us asking for business and growing our businesses.

Despina Zanganas  29:35  

After I’ve heard the same thing so many times, why don’t you move on to COVID is COVID affected the way you network? I mean, you know, we’ve been isolated all this time. Has it changed at all for you?

Julie Brown  29:49  

I hate to say this, it’s been wonderful. I’m on a couple of different levels. Number one, it forced me to slow down. I was I was a hustle and grind. Slay slay slay kind of person have to be at everything can’t miss a can’t miss any events. And I don’t think I realized how tired I was until COVID happened and then about two months into COVID I was like how what I was doing was completely unsustainable. How did I even do it? How did I do it? How was I out four nights a week when I was that even possible? Now I think about it. I’m like, well, if I’m out four nights a week, I can’t watch Netflix, like you know, so it was wonderful in the sense that it made me step back and say am I doing things that actually I are not, um, are not doing anything to enhance our relationships. Yes, I was I was doing things to be seen. And I wasn’t doing things that were enhancing my relationships were COVID actually made me step back. Reach out to people and say, How are you doing? What can I do to help? Do you know anybody who has been affected? How was your job? What can I do for you? It went from a very sort of surface level with some people to being very, very intimate with them and asking how they were doing and seeing them through this. The second thing is, I was a very geographical person. I’m from Boston, all of my clients, all of the events I went to were in Boston, and suddenly because of COVID I was going to events in California. I was going to events in Texas virtual events obviously, I was meet by my network went from New England in New York and tri state area to a completely global network, in the mat in the manner in the matter of the of the pandemic. And it’s just I I can’t even like it’s so amazing. Like I have clients in Seattle now which I never would have had like again Queen cross the country. For my pot. I started a podcast during the pandemic and I talked to people I just talked to a woman in Australia and a woman in the United Kingdom. And it says it just for me. I don’t think I’ll ever look at my network as something that is bound by geography ever again.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Despina Zanganas  0:11  

be terrified of networking. No way. You. Yeah, that was I’ve just been a host of connections. A transformative podcast designed for women listen to harness the power of networking, make life changing connections, and improve their personal and professional lives in ways that they could have previously only imagined because I truly believe that inside each of us is a social butterfly, just waiting to bloom. So let’s connect Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me on the Connect and bloom podcast. My guest today is Julie Brown. Julie is a sought after speaker networking expert business strategist, author of this shit works a no nonsense guide to networking your way to more friends or adventures and more success, as well as the host of the shit works podcast dedicated to all things business and entrepreneurship. Julie’s advice and tips strike the perfect balance of humor and expertise came from more than 20 years of networking, mentoring and self advocacy. Julie, thank you so much for joining me today.

Julie Brown  1:24  

Thanks for having me excited to be here.

Despina Zanganas  1:27  

So you are actually the first guest that I never actually met. You know, nobody introduced us or anything like that. And how we met is because I found you on a website called podcast collaborative. And you know, I did a little search on networking and I was like, Oh my God, who is this woman and I got super excited. I started like stalking you online. And I saw that. I saw that you had a book and I immediately bought it and I absolutely loved it. So I was like, oh, I want this woman on my show for sure. You know, and I’m such a fan. So why don’t we just dive right in? Why don’t you tell me about the business and work that you do.

Julie Brown  2:09  

So my company is six years old prior to starting my own company. I worked for 16 years in I’m based in Boston so I work for 16 years in major corporations in Boston doing business development, lead generation client relationship management. And then in 2016, I decided to go out on my own and do that as a consultant for multiple firms. So larger firms can afford to have a full time person in house smaller firms still have a need but they can’t afford a full time person. So I started a company to fill that void in the marketplace. And quickly after I started my company, I started being asked to give speeches or workshops on networking and business development. And that’s how that part of my company started the professional speaking and then the podcasting and writing the book about networking. So I still do two kinds of things. Now I do the consulting for for clients, but also this you know intellectual property around networking. And business development through professional speaking.

Despina Zanganas  3:19  

That’s amazing. So why did you decide to specifically write a book about networking?

Julie Brown  3:24  

Well, because I’m because I’m a one trick pony. No, the most. That is what I do. It is I am not a big fan of the word passion, but it is what I do. I think that the people that you meet will change your life. And I think networking is how you meet those people. Also, because you know 86% of companies know that their relationships affect their profitability affects their bottom line. affects how successful they are. And yet only 24% of companies have an active plan to manage their relationships and actually grow allow relationships. So it’s needed, and also because there were not any and my book is for men and women but I hadn’t really found any business books that spoke the way I did about networking that were written by women. Most of the networking books were written by men and I, I have spent 22 years in a male dominated industry. So I just felt like I had a different take on networking that I wanted to express and then in my speeches in my professional speaking career, I was getting to ask the same questions over and over and over again. And so I said if I’m getting these questions over and over and over again, then people I need to write a book to answer the questions that everybody has all the time.

Despina Zanganas  4:45  

Yeah, that’s the same thing for me, people are constantly asking me the same questions about networking. You probably hear this too. They’re like, I’m so bad at it. Right. And so you definitely want to help them along that process. So you know, let’s, let’s step back a bit and why don’t we define what networking is like? I think we’ll have an idea what it is, but what’s your definition of networking?

Julie Brown  5:06  

is really simple. Networking for me is just relationship building. It’s building relationships with people around you where they are invested in your success and you are invested in their success and by being in a relationship with each other and being connected to each other. You help each other out professionally and in and personally. Yeah, absolutely. Notice I didn’t mention sales or anything like that, because that’s that networking is just relationship building and everything. That comes afterwards is a result of the strength of that relationship.

Despina Zanganas  5:46  

And I think it’s different kinds of network. It doesn’t have to be business like you said, it can be just like, building friendships where you’ve talked about that a lot in your book. It’s just about making friends right? I don’t mean thing.

Julie Brown  5:57  

Yeah, I don’t separate. So many people. I hear the term work friends, like these are my work friends, and these are my real friends. Well, are they your friend or not? Like why are we categorizing people? Like I don’t say oh, these are my college friends. These are my ski friends. These are like my real friends. These are like, you know so I think if we have a practice of saying friends or friends, whether they are our friends in a professional capacity, or whether they are our friends through our Collegiate years, or we grew up with them, friends are friends and we need to stop siloing people into work, you know, our work life and our professional life. And this comes harks back to this whole bull about you know, work life balance that somehow we’re supposed to be able to separate our lives. Well, I don’t know about you, but more people are stressing out about the fact that they don’t have work life balance than actually just saying okay, this is my life. And like let’s blend it all together. And my work friends can be my real friends and my real friends. I can actually do business with like, I don’t believe that you don’t mix business and pleasure. I just don’t believe it.

Despina Zanganas  7:05  

Absolutely. I made such great friends from the business you know? That I’m done. So I absolutely agree with you. So let’s talk about your book a little bit. You know, you talk about the concept by Robin Dunbar he’s this British anthropologist and evolutionary evolutionary psychologist says that people can only maintain 150 human relationships. And you actually disagree with that. I mean, you divide it into four circles. Can you like explain that whole concept and what that means the four different circles?

Julie Brown  7:38  

Yeah, so I’m gonna go back to the beginning. So Robin Robin Dunbar a lot of people have heard of Dunbar’s numbers so Dunbar’s number is 150. And it came from his studies of non human primates. So within us studies of non human primates in their natural habitats, he discovered that non human primates can maintain stable social relationships of about 50 other non human primates in their natural habitat. And he discovered that the number of stable social relationships that we can maintain is directly related to the size of the neocortex in the brain. And non human primates. They have a much smaller neocortex than humans. So when he applied that theory to the human neocortex, knowing that non human primates couldn’t manage 50 relationships, and the size of the human neocortex, he said, we can manage 150 stable social relationships as humans. Now the reason why I disagree with this is because this these studies were done in 1992. In 1992, we don’t have the means and methods of staying connected that we do now. We don’t we didn’t have any social media, reliable internet, email, robust CRM databases that keep us on top of our relationships. So I’m saying if without any help, we know we can manage 150 stable social relationships. Then with all of the things that we have at our dystopias disposal to stay connected 150 is the minimum you should have. So then I break it down into the circles. So the four circles are 515 50 and 100, or more so the circle of five and we’ve all heard this, I’m not saying anything your listeners haven’t heard before that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. So if you think about your network, and you look at the people you spend the most time with in your network, you have to ask yourself one, is this a homogenous group of ideas? Am I being challenged by this group? Do they help me think outside of the box? Are they invested in my success? Do they want to see me succeed? And then for the people who are in relationships, Warren Buffett wrote an article a number of years ago that said the most successful people in the world have one thing in common now one thing is a husband or wife or a life partner who is invested in their success and helps them be successful. So is there a parity in your relationship? Are you allowed to be as successful as your partner? So within that top five Yes, your partner should 100% be in your top five and allow you to be successful and want you to be successful and not be intimidated by your success. And then the other four people you have to think about it like are these people challenging the way I do business? Are they helping me be better and do they are they invested in my success? So that’s the top but the 15 is what I call the party people because if you’re gonna throw a party for your business, who are the next 15 people that you are going to invite and we can no normally rattle those people off? Those people are you know, they’re they’re, they’re the nice hug around us that we get from the people that who loves us and want to see us succeed. The number 50 is super important. So 50 is called the robust relationships. Do you have 50 robust relationships? Do you have 50 people in your network that if you need information about something, you can email them, call them, text them? If you are working on a project and you’ve come up against something and you need help with something? Do you have 50 people that you could reach out to and say, Hey, can I bend your ear about this? Do you have 50 people you could say hey, I really want to meet this person. I know they’re connected to you. Good. Would you make a strategic introduction for me because strategics introductions are one of the best and easiest and fastest and most awesome way to grow your network. So you have 50 robust connections, and then the outer circle of 100 or more. Lots of studies have been done about the power of weak ties. So this outer circle of 100 is super, super important. 72% of projects that win awards are people who are collaborating with this outer outer circle 85% of jobs are filled through networking. 72% of those jobs are filled through people in the outer network connections from the outer network. The outer network is yeah, the outer network is super super important. So do you have this do you have 515 50 100 If you don’t, don’t freak out about it be don’t be like oh my god, I don’t have that number, like just saved yourself. Where does my network need help? Where do I need to start growing relationships? Or wait? Where do I need to start strengthening relationships?

Despina Zanganas  12:23  

Yeah, you know, after I read that, in your book, I actually went down and I started listing out all those people and it made me think about my network differently because I realize there’s people who are always there. To support me. And there’s a lot of people in that like, you know, the last circle that you have that they’re the ones who are also kind of liking my posts on LinkedIn and you know, Instagram and all that. So they’re kind of like loose supporters and we don’t we’ve talked maybe once at a networking event or something like that. So I can totally see how how that kind of works. I mean, I don’t know if I actually counted 250.

Julie Brown  13:05  

Just to give you a frame of reference, you know, you don’t have to be like I have 149 Shit, I gotta meet somebody. No I mean, it’s just to give you a frame of reference, you know,

Despina Zanganas  13:15  

right. Absolutely. So, you know, let’s dive into some really practical networking. So, you know, a lot of people just hesitate to go away to a networking event because they think you know, they’ll have nothing to talk about or you know, they’re just not interesting people how to adjust that people kind of overcome that fear.

Julie Brown  13:35  

Okay, so, I created this thing called the list yourself approach. A number of years back because I had gotten this comment from a number of people in when I had been giving speeches. I don’t have anything to talk about. I’m always nervous that there’s going to be dead air and like uncomfortable silences when I’m trying to network people. I never have ways of connecting. So the list yourself is exactly what it sounds like. You just take a list of you know, a piece of paper and you write down all of the things that make you you but you cannot put what you do for work. So my wish list would be okay, so I’m a wife. I’m a dog mom. I have two rescue dogs. I’m a marathon runner. I’m a skier. I’m a mountain biker. I’m a world traveler. I’m very into true crime podcasts. That’s all I listen to, besides my you know, having to edit my own podcast, True Crime podcast. I love binging shows, on Netflix or whatever. I just filmed that if you haven’t watched it, I just finished only murders in the building on Hulu with Steve Martin and Martin Short and it’s one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen. Oh, I’ve I’m a peloton. addict. I had a peloton way before the way before the pandemic like I was like, I’m like oh gee peloton like all these things. Lead me to say you have way more to talk about than you think you have to talk about just no one’s ever given you permission to talk about things that don’t have anything to do with work. So there’s a couple of things behind this. Number one, in America, we are consumed we’re consumed with defining ourselves by what we do. So when you meet someone in America, the first question you ask them doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you’re a networking event or a dinner party at your friend’s house and there’s somebody that you have met the first question you always ask is What do you do? Because we’re consumed by defining ourselves by our nine to five job or eight to six or whatever, however many hours you work. We’re in Europe, when you meet somebody you don’t know. You ask who are you is a fundamental difference on way we can have conversations with people and start building relationships. So the list yourself approach allows you to think about having conversations with people in a different way. coming at it from WHO ARE YOU versus what do you do now? That list serves a second purpose. Now, there’s, we all know what dopamine is. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain sits in the pleasure center in your brain and helps us a lot of different things, feelings of happiness and social connection. And you can elicit a dopamine spike in the brain of a person you’re talking to by asking the right questions by asking dopamine inducing questions. There are questions that would cause a dopamine crash in the brain. And they were the questions that you always ask, what do you do and who are you? Those actually are the least. Oh, they are the most hated questions. Listen, I love what I do. I absolutely wig in love what I do. And when I’m out somewhere and somebody asks me what I do, I want to shove a pen in my eye. I’m like, oh my god, I’m so sick of this question. Because I there’s so many other amazing things to talk about and build relationships on. So if you can take your list and then say how can I create dopamine inducing questions out of this list? So okay, do you have you have any dogs do you do? Where was the last trip you took prior to the pandemic? Where’s the first trip you’re going to after the pandemic? What’s the best podcast you’ve listened to lately? What’s the best book you’ve read lately? What is the best show you binge lately? You know, and what are your favorite hobbies? Are you were scared, do you like like, whatever, like all these different things that increase the surface area with which you can connect with people are the ways to build relationships. So when you start connecting with people and you have all these things in common and their dopamine is like, oh my god, I can’t believe we have this thing in common. That is when because we all know, people do business with and refer business to people they know like and trust. Right? That is your that is your train Chugga chugga to know like and trust and that’s when they’re like, What do you do? I want to work with you. How do we work together? That’s how you that is the order that you should do it in?

Despina Zanganas  18:06  

Yeah, I so agree. I mean, you talked about how your dog mom, you know, that I find is the one that kind of pulls everybody together if you’re into dogs. Yeah, people just want to talk about their dogs and the silly things that dogs do. And it just connects you immediately. I mean, yep, you know, just before this podcast, you had to shoot your dog out. You know, we had a little conversation about your dog. Today we ate it and my dog. So it’s, it really does pull people together and I so agree like you know, get underneath the surface of like, what people are doing and what they’re they really love and what drives them in their personal life. So yeah, for sure. So let’s move along a little bit. So, um, you know, you talk about networking events. Obviously, we’re in COVID right now, so it’s a little bit more difficult but how would you find a networking event and how do you prepare for network networking events when you’re there?

Julie Brown  19:01  

Well, whatever, whatever industry you’re in, there are industry organizations that you can become a part of. So for me, I mean, my home. What I grew up in is architecture, engineering and construction. That’s what I grew up in. And there are no shortage of industry organizations. There’s, there’s organizations for architects for facilities managers, for real estate people, for engineers for construction owners for women in construction for women engineer, like there’s no shortage of organizations for me to look at and say, I want to be involved in this one because I like what this organization is doing. So first, look at your industry and say what organizations serve this industry. That’s one that’s super easy peasy. The second is, are there other tangental organizations like you can always look at your you know, your chamber of commerce or for women, you can you know, the Junior League. There’s lots of different organizations around that you can look at and say, Okay, do I agree with the mission statement of this organization? Look at the events that they hold are these events that I think are ones that I would want to attend, or these people that I should get to know? So always just start with looking at organizations that serve your industry. You can also look at peer groups. So for example, I’m a professional speaker. So there’s the National Speakers Association. So I’m a part of that just specifically, so I can have a peer group of people who do exactly what I do. I’m not going to find clients there, but what I’m going to do is find people who do what I do so I have somebody to show I have a group of people who I can go to for information to help with contracts. What do you what are you seeing in the industry? Are you getting booked? What’s happening with pricing like that’s super important. And you can look at your alumni groups, so whatever college you went to, or even if you went to a private high school, what alumni groups are available to you my husband went to a private an all boys private high school and his Alumni Association is very robust. And he went to Notre Dame. And that Alumni Association is very robust, and we’re actually headed to Indiana on Friday to go to a Notre Dame game. And so you just have to think about it what organizations serve my industry or or are from my past as far as alumni groups, or are specifically for women. I don’t know if you’re organized if your audience is mostly what organizations are for women that I can join. Um, that’s what you have to do. You have to do the research into the organizations.

Despina Zanganas  21:52  

I think that’s a great point. A lot of people have told me that they got their MBA and sure they got an education, but what they really got out of it was the network. You know, I’ve heard so many people just get jobs from there and refer different people so sure, education was nice, but it was really that connection. That was really amazing. So you know, we’ve talked about networking about what about conferences, do you think that they’re different in the way that we network?

Julie Brown  22:23  

Um, I think yes, they are different in the sense of, okay, a networking event is a very short period of time. Say it’s two, three hours. That’s your time you have, you can prepare before the event. You can go to the event and then you do your follow up afterwards. The o’clock I love conferencing I prior to starting my own business conferencing was where I got a lot of clients for the companies that I was working at because you are in number one, there’s a shared experience of going to a conference. So conferences generally take place and like really fun locations and you have shared experiences there’s there’s a building relationships through shared experiences is such a special way to build relationships, but also conferences or multi day events. So you have the opportunity to see people over and over and over again within the two or three days that a conference takes place. And I just think they’re they’re great little you know, like incubators or relationships because you are in this space together experiences this this space together on for multiple days. You have the opportunity to have multiple conversations and conferences happen year after year. So I like conference families where we see each other at the conference every single year and we look forward to it so um yeah, they’re different. I mean, they’re different beings on but I mean again, relationships so you have to work networking relationships the same way after work conference relationships. It’s It’s It’s time.

Despina Zanganas  24:08  

I’m actually wondering as you’re speaking, were you always good at networking, or is it something you kind of learned along the way? No, um,

Julie Brown  24:15  

I don’t think I was I. I guess the, you know, it’s hard to say because I was always good at going into events and striking up conversations and being able to introduce myself to strangers, but that’s like literally like not what networking is. Networking is being prepared to go to an event understanding who you might meet there understand like doing that was yourself apart. I didn’t create the list yourself approach to I started my own company. And I kept getting those questions about oh, I have nothing to talk about. So networking is so much more than just being able to go into a room and have a conversation. I don’t think I realized that till I was deep. I was deep in my career saying okay, why why do people why are people invested in my success? Why are people gravitating towards me? And it was because I had a way of building very human relationships. And being very curious about other people and wanting to learn about other people and not Who are you not what you do way so getting to know a potential client I didn’t jump right into what projects do you have coming? How could we be working it was tell me about your family. Tell me about how you grew up like tell me about what you do on the weekend. Like i i built relationships from a very Who are you stand for it the same way and that always led to work? But I don’t think I understood it until I was probably I had to have been at least eight or nine years into my career before I was really like, oh, geez, this is this is the golden ticket, you know?

Despina Zanganas  26:00  

Yeah, I think for me, it’s when I turned 35 I think that’s when I had something switched. I had a cold. Yeah, told me how to do it. And then I actually found something work from an event. I was like, Oh, I see this. Now. You know what I mean? And I had, I had developed a great relationship with this person first. We never really tried to do business. It’s funny. We shared a story about crashing a wedding. We crushed a wedding, and we bonded over that right

Julie Brown  26:26  

I’ve only crashed one I’ve crashed one in my life. And I paid for my drinks it was it was the cash bar and I I wouldn’t have kept I wouldn’t have crashed it if it was an open bar. I would have felt too guilty. I would have my Irish guilt would have just but I paid for my drinks. Me and my girlfriend, Jan. We did it and we danced the night away. And we had so much fun. Yeah, that’s

Despina Zanganas  26:51  

a great way to bond over something. Right? So. So once

Julie Brown  26:55  

again, that’s a shared experience. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t share that experience together. Yeah. That’s why alumni groups work so well because even if you graduated 10 years apart from each other you have the shared experiences is why grief groups work really well like sharing an experience of like, you didn’t experience the same loss but you shared that experience. So shared experiences are a great way to build relationships.

Despina Zanganas  27:21  

Yeah, that’s a that’s a great point. You know, one of your talks is networking your way to increased influence and success, especially for women. So why didn’t you want to have a talk that’s specifically for women?

Julie Brown  27:36  

Because studies show that the biggest one of the biggest limiting factors for women in business is lack of a network because women network completely differently than men. We’ve been fed this bull line that men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, and we build relationships completely differently. And it’s a bunch of hogwash. There is no scientific difference in the way that men will build relationships versus the way women build relationships. But because we’ve been fed this narrative that we’re so different, we end up building completely different networks. Now, women tend to build smaller social networks, meaning we build relationships with people who are at the exact same career level as we are. We’re very comfortable with people who are in the exact same career level as we are and we build social relationships with them, meaning non transactional meaning we don’t ask for work from them. Yeah, we are men so many times. Yeah. Yes, men build large rod deep networks of people who are at a higher level than them their career and also people who are just starting out in their career, and they have no qualms about asking for what they want. They have no qualms about having a transactional relationship with people in their network where women don’t like it that makes them feel achy. They feel like they’re taking advantage of people. They don’t want to bother people. And this is why we have a hard time getting ahead in business because we tend to not ask for business where men ask for business and if they don’t get it, they’re like, Okay, no worries. I’ll just ask the next person. You know, they don’t take it personally. So women, this emotional network that we’re creating, yes, is wonderful in the sense that we are emotionally connected to people, but it is a hinderance for us asking for business and growing our businesses.

Despina Zanganas  29:35  

After I’ve heard the same thing so many times, why don’t you move on to COVID is COVID affected the way you network? I mean, you know, we’ve been isolated all this time. Has it changed at all for you?

Julie Brown  29:49  

I hate to say this, it’s been wonderful. I’m on a couple of different levels. Number one, it forced me to slow down. I was I was a hustle and grind. Slay slay slay kind of person have to be at everything can’t miss a can’t miss any events. And I don’t think I realized how tired I was until COVID happened and then about two months into COVID I was like how what I was doing was completely unsustainable. How did I even do it? How did I do it? How was I out four nights a week when I was that even possible? Now I think about it. I’m like, well, if I’m out four nights a week, I can’t watch Netflix, like you know, so it was wonderful in the sense that it made me step back and say am I doing things that actually I are not, um, are not doing anything to enhance our relationships. Yes, I was I was doing things to be seen. And I wasn’t doing things that were enhancing my relationships were COVID actually made me step back. Reach out to people and say, How are you doing? What can I do to help? Do you know anybody who has been affected? How was your job? What can I do for you? It went from a very sort of surface level with some people to being very, very intimate with them and asking how they were doing and seeing them through this. The second thing is, I was a very geographical person. I’m from Boston, all of my clients, all of the events I went to were in Boston, and suddenly because of COVID I was going to events in California. I was going to events in Texas virtual events obviously, I was meet by my network went from New England in New York and tri state area to a completely global network, in the mat in the manner in the matter of the of the pandemic. And it’s just I I can’t even like it’s so amazing. Like I have clients in Seattle now which I never would have had like again Queen cross the country. For my pot. I started a podcast during the pandemic and I talked to people I just talked to a woman in Australia and a woman in the United Kingdom. And it says it just for me. I don’t think I’ll ever look at my network as something that is bound by geography ever again.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Despina Zanganas  0:11  

be terrified of networking. No way. You. Yeah, that was I’ve just been a host of connections. A transformative podcast designed for women listen to harness the power of networking, make life changing connections, and improve their personal and professional lives in ways that they could have previously only imagined because I truly believe that inside each of us is a social butterfly, just waiting to bloom. So let’s connect Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me on the Connect and bloom podcast. My guest today is Julie Brown. Julie is a sought after speaker networking expert business strategist, author of this shit works a no nonsense guide to networking your way to more friends or adventures and more success, as well as the host of the shit works podcast dedicated to all things business and entrepreneurship. Julie’s advice and tips strike the perfect balance of humor and expertise came from more than 20 years of networking, mentoring and self advocacy. Julie, thank you so much for joining me today.

Julie Brown  1:24  

Thanks for having me excited to be here.

Despina Zanganas  1:27  

So you are actually the first guest that I never actually met. You know, nobody introduced us or anything like that. And how we met is because I found you on a website called podcast collaborative. And you know, I did a little search on networking and I was like, Oh my God, who is this woman and I got super excited. I started like stalking you online. And I saw that. I saw that you had a book and I immediately bought it and I absolutely loved it. So I was like, oh, I want this woman on my show for sure. You know, and I’m such a fan. So why don’t we just dive right in? Why don’t you tell me about the business and work that you do.

Julie Brown  2:09  

So my company is six years old prior to starting my own company. I worked for 16 years in I’m based in Boston so I work for 16 years in major corporations in Boston doing business development, lead generation client relationship management. And then in 2016, I decided to go out on my own and do that as a consultant for multiple firms. So larger firms can afford to have a full time person in house smaller firms still have a need but they can’t afford a full time person. So I started a company to fill that void in the marketplace. And quickly after I started my company, I started being asked to give speeches or workshops on networking and business development. And that’s how that part of my company started the professional speaking and then the podcasting and writing the book about networking. So I still do two kinds of things. Now I do the consulting for for clients, but also this you know intellectual property around networking. And business development through professional speaking.

Despina Zanganas  3:19  

That’s amazing. So why did you decide to specifically write a book about networking?

Julie Brown  3:24  

Well, because I’m because I’m a one trick pony. No, the most. That is what I do. It is I am not a big fan of the word passion, but it is what I do. I think that the people that you meet will change your life. And I think networking is how you meet those people. Also, because you know 86% of companies know that their relationships affect their profitability affects their bottom line. affects how successful they are. And yet only 24% of companies have an active plan to manage their relationships and actually grow allow relationships. So it’s needed, and also because there were not any and my book is for men and women but I hadn’t really found any business books that spoke the way I did about networking that were written by women. Most of the networking books were written by men and I, I have spent 22 years in a male dominated industry. So I just felt like I had a different take on networking that I wanted to express and then in my speeches in my professional speaking career, I was getting to ask the same questions over and over and over again. And so I said if I’m getting these questions over and over and over again, then people I need to write a book to answer the questions that everybody has all the time.

Despina Zanganas  4:45  

Yeah, that’s the same thing for me, people are constantly asking me the same questions about networking. You probably hear this too. They’re like, I’m so bad at it. Right. And so you definitely want to help them along that process. So you know, let’s, let’s step back a bit and why don’t we define what networking is like? I think we’ll have an idea what it is, but what’s your definition of networking?

Julie Brown  5:06  

is really simple. Networking for me is just relationship building. It’s building relationships with people around you where they are invested in your success and you are invested in their success and by being in a relationship with each other and being connected to each other. You help each other out professionally and in and personally. Yeah, absolutely. Notice I didn’t mention sales or anything like that, because that’s that networking is just relationship building and everything. That comes afterwards is a result of the strength of that relationship.

Despina Zanganas  5:46  

And I think it’s different kinds of network. It doesn’t have to be business like you said, it can be just like, building friendships where you’ve talked about that a lot in your book. It’s just about making friends right? I don’t mean thing.

Julie Brown  5:57  

Yeah, I don’t separate. So many people. I hear the term work friends, like these are my work friends, and these are my real friends. Well, are they your friend or not? Like why are we categorizing people? Like I don’t say oh, these are my college friends. These are my ski friends. These are like my real friends. These are like, you know so I think if we have a practice of saying friends or friends, whether they are our friends in a professional capacity, or whether they are our friends through our Collegiate years, or we grew up with them, friends are friends and we need to stop siloing people into work, you know, our work life and our professional life. And this comes harks back to this whole bull about you know, work life balance that somehow we’re supposed to be able to separate our lives. Well, I don’t know about you, but more people are stressing out about the fact that they don’t have work life balance than actually just saying okay, this is my life. And like let’s blend it all together. And my work friends can be my real friends and my real friends. I can actually do business with like, I don’t believe that you don’t mix business and pleasure. I just don’t believe it.

Despina Zanganas  7:05  

Absolutely. I made such great friends from the business you know? That I’m done. So I absolutely agree with you. So let’s talk about your book a little bit. You know, you talk about the concept by Robin Dunbar he’s this British anthropologist and evolutionary evolutionary psychologist says that people can only maintain 150 human relationships. And you actually disagree with that. I mean, you divide it into four circles. Can you like explain that whole concept and what that means the four different circles?

Julie Brown  7:38  

Yeah, so I’m gonna go back to the beginning. So Robin Robin Dunbar a lot of people have heard of Dunbar’s numbers so Dunbar’s number is 150. And it came from his studies of non human primates. So within us studies of non human primates in their natural habitats, he discovered that non human primates can maintain stable social relationships of about 50 other non human primates in their natural habitat. And he discovered that the number of stable social relationships that we can maintain is directly related to the size of the neocortex in the brain. And non human primates. They have a much smaller neocortex than humans. So when he applied that theory to the human neocortex, knowing that non human primates couldn’t manage 50 relationships, and the size of the human neocortex, he said, we can manage 150 stable social relationships as humans. Now the reason why I disagree with this is because this these studies were done in 1992. In 1992, we don’t have the means and methods of staying connected that we do now. We don’t we didn’t have any social media, reliable internet, email, robust CRM databases that keep us on top of our relationships. So I’m saying if without any help, we know we can manage 150 stable social relationships. Then with all of the things that we have at our dystopias disposal to stay connected 150 is the minimum you should have. So then I break it down into the circles. So the four circles are 515 50 and 100, or more so the circle of five and we’ve all heard this, I’m not saying anything your listeners haven’t heard before that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. So if you think about your network, and you look at the people you spend the most time with in your network, you have to ask yourself one, is this a homogenous group of ideas? Am I being challenged by this group? Do they help me think outside of the box? Are they invested in my success? Do they want to see me succeed? And then for the people who are in relationships, Warren Buffett wrote an article a number of years ago that said the most successful people in the world have one thing in common now one thing is a husband or wife or a life partner who is invested in their success and helps them be successful. So is there a parity in your relationship? Are you allowed to be as successful as your partner? So within that top five Yes, your partner should 100% be in your top five and allow you to be successful and want you to be successful and not be intimidated by your success. And then the other four people you have to think about it like are these people challenging the way I do business? Are they helping me be better and do they are they invested in my success? So that’s the top but the 15 is what I call the party people because if you’re gonna throw a party for your business, who are the next 15 people that you are going to invite and we can no normally rattle those people off? Those people are you know, they’re they’re, they’re the nice hug around us that we get from the people that who loves us and want to see us succeed. The number 50 is super important. So 50 is called the robust relationships. Do you have 50 robust relationships? Do you have 50 people in your network that if you need information about something, you can email them, call them, text them? If you are working on a project and you’ve come up against something and you need help with something? Do you have 50 people that you could reach out to and say, Hey, can I bend your ear about this? Do you have 50 people you could say hey, I really want to meet this person. I know they’re connected to you. Good. Would you make a strategic introduction for me because strategics introductions are one of the best and easiest and fastest and most awesome way to grow your network. So you have 50 robust connections, and then the outer circle of 100 or more. Lots of studies have been done about the power of weak ties. So this outer circle of 100 is super, super important. 72% of projects that win awards are people who are collaborating with this outer outer circle 85% of jobs are filled through networking. 72% of those jobs are filled through people in the outer network connections from the outer network. The outer network is yeah, the outer network is super super important. So do you have this do you have 515 50 100 If you don’t, don’t freak out about it be don’t be like oh my god, I don’t have that number, like just saved yourself. Where does my network need help? Where do I need to start growing relationships? Or wait? Where do I need to start strengthening relationships?

Despina Zanganas  12:23  

Yeah, you know, after I read that, in your book, I actually went down and I started listing out all those people and it made me think about my network differently because I realize there’s people who are always there. To support me. And there’s a lot of people in that like, you know, the last circle that you have that they’re the ones who are also kind of liking my posts on LinkedIn and you know, Instagram and all that. So they’re kind of like loose supporters and we don’t we’ve talked maybe once at a networking event or something like that. So I can totally see how how that kind of works. I mean, I don’t know if I actually counted 250.

Julie Brown  13:05  

Just to give you a frame of reference, you know, you don’t have to be like I have 149 Shit, I gotta meet somebody. No I mean, it’s just to give you a frame of reference, you know,

Despina Zanganas  13:15  

right. Absolutely. So, you know, let’s dive into some really practical networking. So, you know, a lot of people just hesitate to go away to a networking event because they think you know, they’ll have nothing to talk about or you know, they’re just not interesting people how to adjust that people kind of overcome that fear.

Julie Brown  13:35  

Okay, so, I created this thing called the list yourself approach. A number of years back because I had gotten this comment from a number of people in when I had been giving speeches. I don’t have anything to talk about. I’m always nervous that there’s going to be dead air and like uncomfortable silences when I’m trying to network people. I never have ways of connecting. So the list yourself is exactly what it sounds like. You just take a list of you know, a piece of paper and you write down all of the things that make you you but you cannot put what you do for work. So my wish list would be okay, so I’m a wife. I’m a dog mom. I have two rescue dogs. I’m a marathon runner. I’m a skier. I’m a mountain biker. I’m a world traveler. I’m very into true crime podcasts. That’s all I listen to, besides my you know, having to edit my own podcast, True Crime podcast. I love binging shows, on Netflix or whatever. I just filmed that if you haven’t watched it, I just finished only murders in the building on Hulu with Steve Martin and Martin Short and it’s one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen. Oh, I’ve I’m a peloton. addict. I had a peloton way before the way before the pandemic like I was like, I’m like oh gee peloton like all these things. Lead me to say you have way more to talk about than you think you have to talk about just no one’s ever given you permission to talk about things that don’t have anything to do with work. So there’s a couple of things behind this. Number one, in America, we are consumed we’re consumed with defining ourselves by what we do. So when you meet someone in America, the first question you ask them doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you’re a networking event or a dinner party at your friend’s house and there’s somebody that you have met the first question you always ask is What do you do? Because we’re consumed by defining ourselves by our nine to five job or eight to six or whatever, however many hours you work. We’re in Europe, when you meet somebody you don’t know. You ask who are you is a fundamental difference on way we can have conversations with people and start building relationships. So the list yourself approach allows you to think about having conversations with people in a different way. coming at it from WHO ARE YOU versus what do you do now? That list serves a second purpose. Now, there’s, we all know what dopamine is. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain sits in the pleasure center in your brain and helps us a lot of different things, feelings of happiness and social connection. And you can elicit a dopamine spike in the brain of a person you’re talking to by asking the right questions by asking dopamine inducing questions. There are questions that would cause a dopamine crash in the brain. And they were the questions that you always ask, what do you do and who are you? Those actually are the least. Oh, they are the most hated questions. Listen, I love what I do. I absolutely wig in love what I do. And when I’m out somewhere and somebody asks me what I do, I want to shove a pen in my eye. I’m like, oh my god, I’m so sick of this question. Because I there’s so many other amazing things to talk about and build relationships on. So if you can take your list and then say how can I create dopamine inducing questions out of this list? So okay, do you have you have any dogs do you do? Where was the last trip you took prior to the pandemic? Where’s the first trip you’re going to after the pandemic? What’s the best podcast you’ve listened to lately? What’s the best book you’ve read lately? What is the best show you binge lately? You know, and what are your favorite hobbies? Are you were scared, do you like like, whatever, like all these different things that increase the surface area with which you can connect with people are the ways to build relationships. So when you start connecting with people and you have all these things in common and their dopamine is like, oh my god, I can’t believe we have this thing in common. That is when because we all know, people do business with and refer business to people they know like and trust. Right? That is your that is your train Chugga chugga to know like and trust and that’s when they’re like, What do you do? I want to work with you. How do we work together? That’s how you that is the order that you should do it in?

Despina Zanganas  18:06  

Yeah, I so agree. I mean, you talked about how your dog mom, you know, that I find is the one that kind of pulls everybody together if you’re into dogs. Yeah, people just want to talk about their dogs and the silly things that dogs do. And it just connects you immediately. I mean, yep, you know, just before this podcast, you had to shoot your dog out. You know, we had a little conversation about your dog. Today we ate it and my dog. So it’s, it really does pull people together and I so agree like you know, get underneath the surface of like, what people are doing and what they’re they really love and what drives them in their personal life. So yeah, for sure. So let’s move along a little bit. So, um, you know, you talk about networking events. Obviously, we’re in COVID right now, so it’s a little bit more difficult but how would you find a networking event and how do you prepare for network networking events when you’re there?

Julie Brown  19:01  

Well, whatever, whatever industry you’re in, there are industry organizations that you can become a part of. So for me, I mean, my home. What I grew up in is architecture, engineering and construction. That’s what I grew up in. And there are no shortage of industry organizations. There’s, there’s organizations for architects for facilities managers, for real estate people, for engineers for construction owners for women in construction for women engineer, like there’s no shortage of organizations for me to look at and say, I want to be involved in this one because I like what this organization is doing. So first, look at your industry and say what organizations serve this industry. That’s one that’s super easy peasy. The second is, are there other tangental organizations like you can always look at your you know, your chamber of commerce or for women, you can you know, the Junior League. There’s lots of different organizations around that you can look at and say, Okay, do I agree with the mission statement of this organization? Look at the events that they hold are these events that I think are ones that I would want to attend, or these people that I should get to know? So always just start with looking at organizations that serve your industry. You can also look at peer groups. So for example, I’m a professional speaker. So there’s the National Speakers Association. So I’m a part of that just specifically, so I can have a peer group of people who do exactly what I do. I’m not going to find clients there, but what I’m going to do is find people who do what I do so I have somebody to show I have a group of people who I can go to for information to help with contracts. What do you what are you seeing in the industry? Are you getting booked? What’s happening with pricing like that’s super important. And you can look at your alumni groups, so whatever college you went to, or even if you went to a private high school, what alumni groups are available to you my husband went to a private an all boys private high school and his Alumni Association is very robust. And he went to Notre Dame. And that Alumni Association is very robust, and we’re actually headed to Indiana on Friday to go to a Notre Dame game. And so you just have to think about it what organizations serve my industry or or are from my past as far as alumni groups, or are specifically for women. I don’t know if you’re organized if your audience is mostly what organizations are for women that I can join. Um, that’s what you have to do. You have to do the research into the organizations.

Despina Zanganas  21:52  

I think that’s a great point. A lot of people have told me that they got their MBA and sure they got an education, but what they really got out of it was the network. You know, I’ve heard so many people just get jobs from there and refer different people so sure, education was nice, but it was really that connection. That was really amazing. So you know, we’ve talked about networking about what about conferences, do you think that they’re different in the way that we network?

Julie Brown  22:23  

Um, I think yes, they are different in the sense of, okay, a networking event is a very short period of time. Say it’s two, three hours. That’s your time you have, you can prepare before the event. You can go to the event and then you do your follow up afterwards. The o’clock I love conferencing I prior to starting my own business conferencing was where I got a lot of clients for the companies that I was working at because you are in number one, there’s a shared experience of going to a conference. So conferences generally take place and like really fun locations and you have shared experiences there’s there’s a building relationships through shared experiences is such a special way to build relationships, but also conferences or multi day events. So you have the opportunity to see people over and over and over again within the two or three days that a conference takes place. And I just think they’re they’re great little you know, like incubators or relationships because you are in this space together experiences this this space together on for multiple days. You have the opportunity to have multiple conversations and conferences happen year after year. So I like conference families where we see each other at the conference every single year and we look forward to it so um yeah, they’re different. I mean, they’re different beings on but I mean again, relationships so you have to work networking relationships the same way after work conference relationships. It’s It’s It’s time.

Despina Zanganas  24:08  

I’m actually wondering as you’re speaking, were you always good at networking, or is it something you kind of learned along the way? No, um,

Julie Brown  24:15  

I don’t think I was I. I guess the, you know, it’s hard to say because I was always good at going into events and striking up conversations and being able to introduce myself to strangers, but that’s like literally like not what networking is. Networking is being prepared to go to an event understanding who you might meet there understand like doing that was yourself apart. I didn’t create the list yourself approach to I started my own company. And I kept getting those questions about oh, I have nothing to talk about. So networking is so much more than just being able to go into a room and have a conversation. I don’t think I realized that till I was deep. I was deep in my career saying okay, why why do people why are people invested in my success? Why are people gravitating towards me? And it was because I had a way of building very human relationships. And being very curious about other people and wanting to learn about other people and not Who are you not what you do way so getting to know a potential client I didn’t jump right into what projects do you have coming? How could we be working it was tell me about your family. Tell me about how you grew up like tell me about what you do on the weekend. Like i i built relationships from a very Who are you stand for it the same way and that always led to work? But I don’t think I understood it until I was probably I had to have been at least eight or nine years into my career before I was really like, oh, geez, this is this is the golden ticket, you know?

Despina Zanganas  26:00  

Yeah, I think for me, it’s when I turned 35 I think that’s when I had something switched. I had a cold. Yeah, told me how to do it. And then I actually found something work from an event. I was like, Oh, I see this. Now. You know what I mean? And I had, I had developed a great relationship with this person first. We never really tried to do business. It’s funny. We shared a story about crashing a wedding. We crushed a wedding, and we bonded over that right

Julie Brown  26:26  

I’ve only crashed one I’ve crashed one in my life. And I paid for my drinks it was it was the cash bar and I I wouldn’t have kept I wouldn’t have crashed it if it was an open bar. I would have felt too guilty. I would have my Irish guilt would have just but I paid for my drinks. Me and my girlfriend, Jan. We did it and we danced the night away. And we had so much fun. Yeah, that’s

Despina Zanganas  26:51  

a great way to bond over something. Right? So. So once

Julie Brown  26:55  

again, that’s a shared experience. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t share that experience together. Yeah. That’s why alumni groups work so well because even if you graduated 10 years apart from each other you have the shared experiences is why grief groups work really well like sharing an experience of like, you didn’t experience the same loss but you shared that experience. So shared experiences are a great way to build relationships.

Despina Zanganas  27:21  

Yeah, that’s a that’s a great point. You know, one of your talks is networking your way to increased influence and success, especially for women. So why didn’t you want to have a talk that’s specifically for women?

Julie Brown  27:36  

Because studies show that the biggest one of the biggest limiting factors for women in business is lack of a network because women network completely differently than men. We’ve been fed this bull line that men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, and we build relationships completely differently. And it’s a bunch of hogwash. There is no scientific difference in the way that men will build relationships versus the way women build relationships. But because we’ve been fed this narrative that we’re so different, we end up building completely different networks. Now, women tend to build smaller social networks, meaning we build relationships with people who are at the exact same career level as we are. We’re very comfortable with people who are in the exact same career level as we are and we build social relationships with them, meaning non transactional meaning we don’t ask for work from them. Yeah, we are men so many times. Yeah. Yes, men build large rod deep networks of people who are at a higher level than them their career and also people who are just starting out in their career, and they have no qualms about asking for what they want. They have no qualms about having a transactional relationship with people in their network where women don’t like it that makes them feel achy. They feel like they’re taking advantage of people. They don’t want to bother people. And this is why we have a hard time getting ahead in business because we tend to not ask for business where men ask for business and if they don’t get it, they’re like, Okay, no worries. I’ll just ask the next person. You know, they don’t take it personally. So women, this emotional network that we’re creating, yes, is wonderful in the sense that we are emotionally connected to people, but it is a hinderance for us asking for business and growing our businesses.

Despina Zanganas  29:35  

After I’ve heard the same thing so many times, why don’t you move on to COVID is COVID affected the way you network? I mean, you know, we’ve been isolated all this time. Has it changed at all for you?

Julie Brown  29:49  

I hate to say this, it’s been wonderful. I’m on a couple of different levels. Number one, it forced me to slow down. I was I was a hustle and grind. Slay slay slay kind of person have to be at everything can’t miss a can’t miss any events. And I don’t think I realized how tired I was until COVID happened and then about two months into COVID I was like how what I was doing was completely unsustainable. How did I even do it? How did I do it? How was I out four nights a week when I was that even possible? Now I think about it. I’m like, well, if I’m out four nights a week, I can’t watch Netflix, like you know, so it was wonderful in the sense that it made me step back and say am I doing things that actually I are not, um, are not doing anything to enhance our relationships. Yes, I was I was doing things to be seen. And I wasn’t doing things that were enhancing my relationships were COVID actually made me step back. Reach out to people and say, How are you doing? What can I do to help? Do you know anybody who has been affected? How was your job? What can I do for you? It went from a very sort of surface level with some people to being very, very intimate with them and asking how they were doing and seeing them through this. The second thing is, I was a very geographical person. I’m from Boston, all of my clients, all of the events I went to were in Boston, and suddenly because of COVID I was going to events in California. I was going to events in Texas virtual events obviously, I was meet by my network went from New England in New York and tri state area to a completely global network, in the mat in the manner in the matter of the of the pandemic. And it’s just I I can’t even like it’s so amazing. Like I have clients in Seattle now which I never would have had like again Queen cross the country. For my pot. I started a podcast during the pandemic and I talked to people I just talked to a woman in Australia and a woman in the United Kingdom. And it says it just for me. I don’t think I’ll ever look at my network as something that is bound by geography ever again.

Despina Zanganas   

I think it’s changed for so many people in the same way like my network has grown geographically to you know, I would just go to events and trial and I met like a ton of people in trial. But yeah, now we’ve met people in like Puerto Rico and Fornia and and all that and I think it’s, yeah, I hate to say the same thing, but it’s been amazing and I think a lot of people are going to be rethinking the way that they network now. You know, I definitely want to go back to this event, so I definitely because I get energy. I don’t know about you, but I get energy from people do too. Yeah, so I can that’s the part I didn’t like, but definitely meeting other people has been great from around the world.

Julie Brown   

You know, I do there’s nothing will replace being in person and and hugging people and giving a handshake. But if you don’t think you can build relationships online, you’ve never seen an episode of catfish. Like, then people are like, sending 1000s of dollars people that they meet online like I’m not even kidding. Like this is a great medium for building relationships. There are people that over the course of the pandemic I’ve become very, very close to and I in there like you and me. I’ve never been in a room with them. Uh huh.

Despina Zanganas  

Yeah, for sure. That’s that’s the thing. I found that this podcast like, yeah, it’s first time I’ve ever seen your face, you know, even social media. Yeah, it’s been great. Yeah. Same thing with me. I started your podcast during the pandemic and it’s been great. It’s a great networking tool because people reach out to you. I assume the same thing. Yeah. Yeah, your podcast. So it’s also a different way to

Julie Brown   

network, right? Yes. 100%.

Despina Zanganas   

So let’s talk about connecting with people. Like let’s say you really want to connect with somebody, but you don’t know anybody in common, you know, search them on LinkedIn. And there’s nobody that really can provide you with his warm introduction, how would you reach out

Julie Brown   

so, the devils in the details on this one, like you have to understand why you want to connect with that person. Like why do i Why do I want to connect with this person? What are what are my motivations for connecting with this person? Why would I be a good addition to their network? Like, can I offer anything to them and in their network, so kind of figure that out? What are my motivations? Why would this person want to be connected to me? And then do your research on that person like Google them seven ways to Sunday? There is no buddy really, there’s hardly anybody out there who doesn’t have a digital footprint, where you can’t find out like do they have a company bio where they list you know what they do and also what they do on the weekends like their LinkedIn, where they go to school, are they part of any organizations that you both like are interested in? Is there a Facebook Page PAGE public? Is their Instagram page public? Like, is there a Twitter Republic like, you can find so much information on people? And then what you do is you take that and write a really thoughtfully crafted email about why you want to connect and the person is going to want to know why. Why does this person want to be connected? Yeah, what and also what do I get out of it? So you can put like, I I’ve heard your name however many times your name came up at this, like I Googled you, we have all these things in common. I just thought it would be great if we connected. I thought we could connect on this many things, or we have this in common or we have this many mutual connections or whatever I like, put as much information in there as possible so that the other person is like, Who is this person? You know, cuz that they’re not going to respond to that? Yeah,

Despina Zanganas   

for sure. So let’s say you connected with that person, you built a relationship, how do you nurture that relationship going forward?

Julie Brown  

Well, I mean, 80% of building and meaning maintaining relationships is just keeping in touch just following up and keeping in touch so have reasons why you would reach back out to that person so if you if you do the list yourself approach, and you can figure out how many things you have in common. You can send them i Hey, I read this article today. And it made me think about the conversation we had about underwater basket weaving. Or I heard this song today and I reminded me of the fact that you said that you go to every single Bruce Springsteen concert or, you know, I saw this today and it made me think like, any reason why you could just reach back out and tell that person that you were thinking about them like that’s like a nice warm hug, like to say, Hey, I was thinking about you today. So how many how can you do that? Like how can you do that on the regular and then make sure you’re having conversations with them. Make sure you’re either getting together over zoom or you’re getting together in person, like make sure you’re learning about their life and what’s going on with them and and what they’re struggling with or what they’re really happy about, you know,

Despina Zanganas   

that’s so true. What do you think some of the misconceptions about networking are?

Julie Brown  

That you have to do it all at once? You know, that you have to like go to an event and meet 15 People at an event and like somehow that’s a successful event. Like if you go to an event and you meet 15 people, if you ask me, you failed that event, because did you really have a conversation with those 15 people? Do you remember their name? Do you remember anything about them? Do you know how to follow up with them in a thoughtful way? So I think that the biggest misconception is that you’re like it’s supposed to happen all at once where I say if you go to a networking event, if you go to one networking event a week, and you meet two new people, just two, after a year, you have met 104 people and if we go back to our original conversation, like we’re starting with 150 people we’re not getting that much bigger than that. So if you’ve made 104 people in a year, like that’s a huge amount of people. Uh huh.

Despina Zanganas   

Yeah, so true. I found the same thing. Like you’ve, I’m sure you’ve gotten events when people are just kind of throwing their haters around. Yeah.

Julie Brown   

You know what I do with it? I throw it away. Yeah, exactly. Not the kind of person that person does not share my values on building relationships. If I go to an event, if you don’t even know my name, and you shove a business card in my hand, I’m putting my piece of gum in it.

Despina Zanganas   

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, that brings me to the next question like what mistakes do you think people make when it comes to networking?

Julie Brown   

That’s the thing like, like, assuming that people want to know what you want your business card and want and assuming that without even having a conversation to say, Do we even like each other or be the kind of person people who could work together? Like do I trust this person where I wouldn’t like, that is the worst. Like just assuming that everybody like that you’re just you can’t bully somebody into being in your network or doing business with you and so many people go at networking from this very aggressive standpoint. Yeah. From Oh, I got to get something out of this. Well, what you’re gonna get as bad reputation. So that that’s one of them. The second one is waiting for the other person to follow up. So say you have this great view and I went to an event we just met we have this great conversation. And then I go back to my desk and I wait for you to email me. Who am I? Why am I is this is this our fear of rejection? Like Where’s this coming from? Like, why are we waiting for the other person to email us because we want to feel wanted we’ll just go and make that other pill one. I was so great to meet you. I can’t believe we have this, this and this in common. Can’t wait to get together again. Do any of these dates work for you for a follow up, catch up coffee or zoom or whatever like that? Do you know how many like missed opportunities there are because people wait for the other person to be the person who follows up? Uh huh.

Despina Zanganas   

Yeah, that happens to me all the time. You know, like I remember I was at this one event and I met this woman and she was I mean, I’m grand. And I was like, I’d love to mentor her like she just I saw so much potential in her and I didn’t have any business cards. So I was like, are know what happened right here anyways, I think she didn’t have She didn’t give me her information or something. Yeah, I think that’s what it was. So I gave her my card. And I’m like, make sure to follow up with me. You know, I’d love to reach out and she never did. And I was disappointed because I was like, I could do so much more intentional. Yeah, absolutely. Because you just want to develop those relationships. Right. Do you think that everybody has to network?

Julie Brown 

Yeah. I mean, when you think about if we go back to the beginning of this conversation, we’re just thinking about relationships. You know, we’re not calling it networking. We’re calling it relationship building. Is there anybody you know, who doesn’t need relationships? Is there anybody you know who’s making it on their own all by themselves in their basement office? Like just fulfilling it like just taking over the world know? Everybody’s relationships? So you got it. You just have to change your mindset about it and say, this is this is relationship building and every people need people

Despina Zanganas  

ah, do you have a favorite networking story? Like has anything like really amazing happened to you that you want to share?

Julie Brown  

Ah, God, I was so mad. I wrote a book because I was so many networking stories, but I think Alright, so this is one of my favorite ones. And again, I have a bajillion of them. And my favorite networking story is in this is a lesson learned for your listeners about the power of strategic introductions. So I received I my there’s a guy in my network my friend John wonderful connector. He’s he’s one of those people who has a knack for connecting people who are like minds and personalities. And I got an email from him one day, that said, subject line, boom. And it was he and he said, Julie, I want to introduce you to Shannon Shannon. And I sat together at an event and she’s, you know, energy level. She’s just like you, she’s a go getter, you know, blah, blah, blah. She, she I asked her if I could do anything for her and she said, I want you to introduce me to a kick ass woman. And he said, you’re the first woman I thought of and then he said Shannon, Julie’s everything you asked for, like, just go for it. So we we made it appointment to have coffee, and we ended up having coffee and then realized it was lunchtime, and we’re like, oh my god, like we’d been there for three hours just talking and talking, talking. It’s so much in common. And this was only about four years ago. Yeah, probably four years ago, and we’ve become best friends. Our husbands are best friends. We went to a trip to California together and we had so much fun together that we went and spent two weeks in South Africa together. Wow. And Shannon and I strapped to each other’s bodies like in a harness and jumped off the Victoria Falls bridge together. And like I it is it all of it all that happened she’s she’s my one of my best friends. Again, no difference between work, friends and real friends. She’s one of my best friends. And it all happened because a gentleman in my network said you two women need to know each other. Can you do that for someone else? Like can you be that person who makes that connection for someone else? I’m forever indebted to John, for making that connection for me and those stories. Let me just tell you that’s not the only one I have. Those stories happen over and over and over again to me, because I just I don’t I just look at it as building relationships.

Despina Zanganas 

Ah, absolutely. I think I remember reading that in your book. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think you talked about how you met your husband at a bar too. That was an amazing story for you.

Julie Brown   

Through you know, and like this whole thing, like, we have this thing in America, which rightfully so, I mean, Stranger danger, but like we have this whole thing like don’t talk to strangers. Well, everybody, I love this a stranger to someone. Yep. You know. And so if you look at the possibility of what could happen to your life, if you talk to strangers, it’s it’s, I mean, it’s mind blowing, the people you meet will change your life.

Despina Zanganas  

It’s so true. So this is a question I asked all of my guests. You know, you’ve heard of that six degrees of separation. Yep. The concept that everyone in the world is six degrees away from each other. Is there anyone out there that you always wanted to meet? And I asked this question, you know, I know you’re an expert networker, so this is probably not so difficult for you, but it’s still like, you know, there’s got to be somebody out there that you’ve always wanted to meet.

Julie Brown  13:32  

Well, if I think about like a semi famous person, or maybe she’s famous, I don’t know. I’ve always love Whitney Cummings to know who she is.

Despina Zanganas 

I know the name. She is a comedian name.

Julie Brown   

She’s a comedian. She used to have the show on TV called Whitney now she’s, uh, she does stand up. She is. She’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever heard in my life. But I fell in love with her when she had her show Whitney and I was trying to rescue my first dog. And she had this whole episode on how like she literally could have had a baby faster than trying to get approved to rescue a dog. And I was going through it at the same time, like I was, I was and I was saying to my husband, like we could have had a baby by now, you know, trying to rescue this dog. And I just remember thinking afterwards like she’s just my girl like and then all of her stand ups. are so funny. And I’ve heard her on Howard Stern a couple of times. And she’s just she’s so salt of the earth and says it how it is and she’s she’s a potty mouth like me, and I just think she’s so so amazing.

Despina Zanganas   

That’s awesome. I’m gonna go check her out. I’ve definitely heard the name before. So yeah, yeah, I must have heard of her. But yeah, the reason I asked this question is if there’s anybody who’s listening to this podcast if there’s any way to connect you with Whitney Cummings, it’d be so cool. I’d love to to make that connection happen. She’s amazing. So you know before we close it out are there any final tips that you want to share with the audience or anything you’d like to reiterate about networking?

Julie Brown  

was something that we didn’t talk about and I think this is super important is people. There might be a misconception that you have to be you have to come from a certain kind of family or be born into a certain sort of, you know, a societal level to have a network that can change your life and it’s completely not true. At any stage of your life, you can build a network that will change your life and it doesn’t matter where it doesn’t matter where you come from, or for your your economic background. You can’t you have the tools. Everybody has the tools to build a network that can change their life and change their career and I just don’t want anybody to to they don’t know my backstory, but I don’t want anybody to look at me and say, well, she must have, you know, been able to have strategic introductions or influential people and it’s just not the truth. Like I started from knowing from literally like in my career zero and I just want people to know that where you come from, is not a determining factor in where you’re allowed to go or where you can go or who will be invested in you and and, and want to see you succeed.

Despina Zanganas  16:25  

I think that that’s a great point. That’s a great way to wrap it up. So you know, for anybody who wants to get in touch with you or learn more about networking, where can they find you?

Julie Brown   

So they can go to my website Julie Brown BD BD stands for business development. So Julie Brown BB comm they can email me at Julie Brown actually brown BD comm or if they want more of this voice, they can go to my podcast, this shit works or they can pick up my book. This shit works on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Despina Zanganas   

That’s amazing. Thanks so much, Julie. I’m so happy that you agreed to be on my podcast. I’ve learned so much from you today. So thank you so much was such a pleasure.

Julie Brown 

No, thanks for having me.

Thanks for tuning in to Connect and Bloom — a podcast that empowers women to master the art of networking and make life-changing connections. Got a burning question about networking? Share it below, or shoot me an email at despina@connectandbloom.com If you want to explore this topic further, head on over to the Connect and Bloom website, follow me on Instagram or Facebook, or — if you haven’t already — subscribe to this podcast. Be sure to connect ~ and bloom ~ with me again in our next episode!

Julie’s Links​​

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-brown-b6942817

Website: https://juliebrownbd.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliebrown_bd

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/juliebrownbd

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIwWVdayM2mYXzR9JNLJ55Q

Listen to Julie’s Podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-shit-works/id1528595881

Buy Julie’s Book

This Shit Works: A No-Nonsense Guide to Networking Your Way to More Friends, More Adventures, and More Success