Creating a sale or a connection is not an easy thing. You have been there before, been frustrated and been disappointed. I have been there myself and have been working to improve on my ‘people skills’, because actually making a sale is a people skill.
There are a number of things that establish a meaningful connection, a ‘clicking’, a bond that builds trust and a relationship whereby a sale is the natural consequence. I have been working on it for a long time. When I was asked to come up with a talk on how to establish a meaningful connection, I was a bit daunted because I realized I don’t have a recipe for that, nor a 5-step model or a checklist. I didn’t know quite how to go about it, what to focus on and what to avoid.
Yet I wanted to help my audience, so I came up with my 5-step model from https://freeopinionist.com/ that will help you connect with others and with businesses. Throughout this talk, I will share key learnings, tips and practical examples that you can implement to strengthen your business network and generally develop your network and your business.
Foothold or strong connections
So, for those of you who already have a foothold or strong connections, you will be motivated and encouraged. If you perhaps don’t have the same level and strength and need a little bit of a kick, I can teach you how to kick it out and how to connect with those that you aspire to connect with.
I am a postgraduate researcher at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Lately I have been working as a mentor to some startup businesses from around the world within the StartupBus, a global entrepreneurship competition where teams from around the world travel to one city, pitch their business idea to investors and mentors and build a business plan as part of the competition. I am a speaker, a content creator and a mentor. I am a researcher and a writer. I am a business strategist, a business development consultant and a thought leader.
Specialization in non profit organizations
Several of these hats that I wear have a name – a vocation – a day-job. Therefore, this is my day-job. This is my profession that I have been doing for almost 10 years now. I have been working within the startup ecosystem, however, my formal education is in the non-profit sector. I have one master’s degree in social enterprise management with a specific focus on social enterprise, with a specialization in non profit organizations. My second master’s degree is in entrepreneurship, with a specialization in social entrepreneurship.
I have been using my master’s degrees in particular to build startups and scale startups. I have scaled companies for the past 10 years. I have also worked with companies outside of the startup ecosystem, such as Apple and Sony. I am a specialist at scaling and growing businesses, firms and firms.
Number of clients
I have a number of clients, a number of clients from a range of industries, which you will hear about in my talk. I also run my own consultancy business, Portland Media Group, which is focused on digital grassroots grassroots marketing, social media marketing, digital grassroots marketing, social media marketing and thought leadership for startups.
And today I am sharing 10 key learnings. First two are critical to brand development and influence. They are because people follow leaders. Ten is because you win the game by accumulating many small wins.
And finally, if you are somebody that develops your personal brand, you need to be your authentic self, your authentic self online. This is because your personal brand is who you are to the world. This is who you are to the world through your business, through your work.
You cannot fake your personality online
You cannot fake your personality online. This is because now the domain where you are now is now the world, right? All your digital footprint, your identity is now linked to that. This is because it is now not just your domain where you are now, it is now the world. The world now knows you. The world now knows everything about you. The world now knows everything about you. So you need to be your genuine self.
As a business-person and as a brand, this is very important to do. This is because if you are not genuine and authentic and personal and genuine, people will see that you are not trustworthy, you are not authentic. This is because people connect through authenticity. They connect through realness.
Real and authentic
So if you are not real and authentic, people will see that as a lack of credibility and authenticity, as a lack of trustworthiness, as a lack of trust. This is because you cannot fake it and you cannot fake character, and you cannot fake character and integrity, and you cannot fake integrity and credibility, and you cannot fake credibility and trustworthiness.
So all of this is very critical for you as a business-person. Brand development, the first is to be your authentic self. Be present, authentic, real, clearly mentally present, mentally present, physically present. And this is particularly relevant online because now is the digital domain, now is your domain.
You may or may not realize it, but now you have a digital footprint. It has been building since 1998, with the first digital connection, the first email account. It has been building and building and building, and now it is exponential.
