6:30am got a text that I slept through. I was awake by around 7:15am. Last week I was supposed to meet with a business/life coach from the Thursday networking group but she cancelled. This morning she was asking if we were still on for today. I hadn’t assumed the meeting was going to roll over automatically to the next week. I suggested we could meet after she said she would be there early and after.
So I went in early and we met up. Interesting conversation. She has a background in tech sales and marketing and does insurance on the side to cover her bills while she is trying to get her coaching business going. She is looking to partner with someone local to take care of the technical side of client work that comes her way and she has a meeting tomorrow with a local company who contacted her for help. Do I want to come along? There was more to the conversation, other work I could potentially do for her own websites.
I of course said sure, I can go. We talked more. I don’t really have to have an opinion one way or another about whether this can work. There will be a meeting, it will go well or it won’t. There is an opportunity and there is a straightforward way to test if it will work or not with an easy to quantify result. I like things like that.
I did some research about the company we will be meeting tomorrow as well as some of their competitors. Research about their website as well as those of their competitors, how they run, what technology behind them, how well the operate and what they look like. Their direct across the street competitor has a pretty amazing website. It doesn’t look special but looking behind the scenes, they invested a LOT of money into what they have. If this company wants something like that, it will be an interesting conversation. And I’m glad I did some research because I feel prepared to speak on that a bit.
The networking meeting was ok. There was a surprise guest who gave a talk for most of the time so we didn’t have commercials except for the newcomers. I suspect this was a problem for many people there. Also, the speaker was part of the same MLM that the two guys who facilitate this group are part of. They assured us it would be ok that the guy wasn’t going to talk about that and he didn’t. But the motives for the change are still an issue. I’ll probably write a note to them about it.
However, since I am doing my sales letter this week, I just passed it with my business cards around the room so in some form my message got out there. I felt good about that. I’m enjoying exploring new ways to spread my message and work within different systems.
After the meeting, there was a guy from a different MLM who had wanted to talk to me. I previously emailed him, with no response, that while we could meet, I’m very happy doing what I’m doing and am not adding additional business models to my company right now.
I don’t think he read that message. We talked. He started out pretty oblique about what he does and how amazing his MLM is. I got in fairly early that, “as I said when I emailed you” (he looked a little surprised), my business is websites and working with marketing technology and if there is something I can do to help YOU with your business, I’d be happy to talk about that.
He was smart enough to not go harder on sales than he was and we continued talking. Interestingly the conversation did move into lead generation for him and Facebook Ads and Facebook Groups. In particular, he could use help making his Facebook Group run better and I know exactly what I would do to improve that. I suggest we talk more and maybe we will. Ethically I’m not sure I’m game to help him too much.
I also had a brainstorm of how he could probably be pretty effective using Facebook Ads to find leads for his MLM. It would probably work and I’m sure there are others doing it already. It isn’t rocket science but he obviously hadn’t thought of it already. I wasn’t willing to go into details and deflected his deeper questions. Again, ethically I’m probably not willing to go there.
Daughter Catherine likened this particular MLM to Scientology and I can see why. I can’t be 100% sure but I thought I saw in this mans eyes the same things you see when you are looking at Tom Cruz on Scientology. This guy didn’t slip me any notes or make covert indications that he needed rescuing so I’ll probably leave that line of thought alone.