 So I love connecting people and I have made a big mistake over the years when I've tried connecting people and I've also been on the receiving end of this mistake that I'm about to share with you. The mistake is simply this. I connected two people before asking each of them privately for their permission to introduce them. Now you might say, well, George, why wouldn't two people that you think are perfectly wonderful, friendly people who you think you could see the benefit of these two people connecting? So why wouldn't you just quickly send an email or a LinkedIn message or a Facebook message to both of them saying, hey, Bob, meet Mary. I think you two would get along. So I used to think the same thing, like what's the big deal? I just connected, you know what I even did? Because I know a lot of different people's birthdays over the years, clients and friends and whatever. Sometimes I see two people have the same birthday. I'm like, oh yeah, I could see them maybe connecting about something with mutual interests maybe. So I just introduced them. Hey, you both have the same birthday. I don't know, maybe a few of you have done that too. Over the years I did that. And it was only when people started introducing me to other people more frequently that I realized, oh, I've been making a mistake. And so here's the thing. As I have gotten busier in my business as I've gotten more connections and just more requests for my time. So in other words, I'm kind of becoming an influencer just in a small way. I'm definitely not one of those big influencers, but I'm a small influencer. I realized that it's like the people that you want to most have on your side that can make the biggest difference in your business. If they promoted you, if they shared you, if they referred you, the influencers, right? You most need to be careful before making an introduction between them and somebody else. So let me help you to think through before you make another introduction introducing two people. Let me help you think through this. There are two points I want to help you think through. One is that actually three points. One is what type of person would be most beneficial to introduce to somebody else, especially if they're an influencer, okay? Or they have a business, they could probably benefit the other person. Okay, so number one, let's talk this through. Number one, let's say you're interested, I'm just gonna use myself as an example so that it's a clearer example. So let's say that you wanted to introduce somebody to me, all right? You have to think through what kind of person I want to be introduced to. And if you don't know, you should ask me. Well, you don't have to ask me because I'm going to tell you in this video, right? But the more successful someone becomes in their career or business, the more clear they have become structure in terms of the types of people they work with. So there are basically three types of people that I want to be introduced to or most people want to, most people with a business, established business want to be introduced to, three types of people. One, potential clients, okay? Potential clients at this point, yeah, so I'll just say this, potential client. So potential client, if you're introducing a potential client to me, I need two things to happen. One, do you know my business well enough to know what kind of person would be a potential client for me, right? So if you're not sure, you should ask that person and I'll just tell you what that is for me. Basically potential client is somebody who has gotten started in business, has a bit of a following, but would like to become much more systematic in how they are growing their following and growing their business. That would be my ideal client. My ideal client is not somebody who is just getting started. Although anybody who's just getting started would be my ideal students or potential students. They could take my courses, but they would not become my client, right? So I have clients versus students. Students are of all different levels, beginner, not even thinking about business yet, all the way to advanced, whereas clients are more intermediate slash advanced. Anyway, okay, so potential client is one type of person you would introduce to someone like me or another influencer that you know. Second type is resource. Resource means somebody who services you've used that you think would be great for my business too. So, oh, I didn't mention one thing. With the potential client thing, I said there's two things you need to know. One is who is my ideal client. And second, does that person, that potential client want to use my services? Because you can't just introduce a friend, your friend Mary to me. And Mary doesn't even barely knows me and has said that she likes my blog post, but now you're making the introduction saying, hey, George, Mary is a potential client. And that's not appropriate, right? You have to make sure Mary says, no, I do want to be introduced to George. I do want to use the services. I think I'm a good fit above all, right? So potential client is the first type. The second type is a resource. A resource is somebody that you think would be beneficial as a service provider for me, which means that you need to know what kind of resource I'm looking for, right? Like you can't just go, hey, George, I've been using the services of this tarot card reader and you should hire her. Do you know, do I even have, when have I ever told you I use tarot cards? I mean, I believe they can be beneficial, but I can't remember the last time I hired a tarot card reader and I'm not in the market for that right now. So you see what I mean? Like you wouldn't just introduce, just because you like somebody's service, doesn't mean I am even looking for it. And now you're just adding the burden, because here's the thing. If you introduce someone to me and I haven't been asked to introduce to that person, okay? Then you're creating a burden for me. You're actually making me look bad. You're painting me into a corner because now what I don't want to be introduced to this person and now what am I gonna say? Hi, sorry, you're not the right fit for me. I mean, one of my, it makes it awkward for me. Do you see what I mean? You're introducing me as an example. Think about it when you're introducing two people of, you know, in the future. So the second type is a resource. You have to know that the person, the resource you're introducing to the business owner, you need to know that the business owner actually is looking for this type of resource. And then that resource, you know is a good match for the business owner, okay? Like a vetted freelancer, right? Second type. Third type is referral source. Referral source is somebody who could refer business to me, could refer students or clients to me, right? So a referral source could be somebody who has an audience, probably has an audience already or is a very good networker and has a lot of people who listen to, you know, their recommendations. So referral sources. Now again, let's, referral sources are right now what I am most looking forward to be introduced to. So if you know somebody who has a similar sized audience as me and who also talks about business or marketing or possibly personal development but sometimes business and marketing introduce them to me. Now only if, only if there is a right match of audience. Let me explain. You know, I've had people introduce people to me who are just starting their podcasts or who have a small podcast. You have to realize that influencers like me have pretty much unlimited opportunities to be interviewed on podcasts. Like I could approach somebody because if someone interviews me on a podcast, right? I feel the natural obligation to share that interview with my audience. If you interview me on a podcast, I'm gonna share your podcast with my audience. That just a natural reciprocity because I'm a, well, because I'm a giver. I'm at least a matcher, if not a giver. I'm not a taker. Like I don't just go, yeah, you introduce me and then I don't care what happens to you. Of course I would want to introduce, I would want to at least share your interview of me to my people so that my people discover your podcast or your YouTube channel or whatever. But why would I let you interview me? Because that's actually, if you were just starting out and you said, George, I want to interview you. That's a bigger opportunity for you than it is for me because nobody's gonna hear, you don't have an audience yet. So what, you and your best friend and your mother are gonna find out about me, right? I could run Facebook ads for $10 and reach a thousand of the right people. Why would I want to spend half an hour even speaking to somebody and be introduced to three random people who are not even potential clients of mine, right? You see what I mean? So to an influencer, an influencer has unlimited opportunities pretty much to be introduced, but they have to vet them carefully. So someone like me has to be very careful what I say yes to in terms of who I want to spend time, even being promoted for, because then I feel the obligation to promote them back in some way, right? So that's why you got to think about the audience match. Now you might say, well, what's the right sized audience George, right? Well, a simple rule of thumb is 50% to 200% of someone's audience. So here's what you do. Go and look at both people. You want to introduce these two people. Maybe person one can introduce an interview person B or maybe they can swap interviews with each other. Look at both of these people and where they share interviews of other people, okay? So if this person does interviews, go look at where this person shares their interviews and then notice how many people are consuming that interview, how do you know how many people? You just simply look at how many likes they're getting for the interview or how many, if you go on YouTube, you can see how many views they're getting for interviews, right? So if you go to my YouTube channel, let me just show you an example. I'm actually gonna go to my YouTube channel on the screen right now, just if you're studying me, for example, and whether or not I have the right audience for you, right? If you go to my YouTube channel and click on videos, so you're looking at my recent videos, look at where I'm interviewing somebody. So here I interviewed Angela Johnson and I got her 130 views, okay? 130 views, great. Here I'm interviewing Caroline Leon and got her 174 views, right? Further down. Here I'm interviewing Tad Hargrave and got 94 views. I'm actually, that should be more, but anyway, 94 views, there it is. And Eric Ben-Susson, 100 views. So I'm in Rachel K. Albers, 54 views, okay? So if you average them together, maybe it's something like 100 to 120 views. Further down. Patty Kaye, 148 views. Jonah, 80 views. Dorota, 244 views, et cetera. So let's just say that if I interview you, I will get maybe an average of 120 views. So 120 of my people are watching and learning about you, okay? So then 50 to 200% audience means that it would be worth it for you and I to trade interviews. If you're, when you interview other people, if you can get between 60 to 240 views on average per video, then it makes sense. 60 to 240 is the within range of how many views I get for you. You see what I mean? So that's how I'm thinking through what's worth a collaboration or getting connected to somebody, right? Now, if somebody bigger than me wants to interview me, I'm so honored, right? If somebody usually gets hundreds or thousands of views when they interview people or listens on their podcast, podcast is a little harder because you can't tell if someone only downloaded it or they actually listened. On YouTube, you can see, and Facebook, you can see how many views a video got. That's very clear that they at least played the video for at least a few seconds. On a podcast, though, all we can see is download numbers. So if you got 300 downloads, you know, some, a lot of podcast software, they automatically download things, right? How do you know how many people listened? You only know the download numbers. You don't know the listen numbers. So it's harder for podcasts. It's easier to match audiences when you talk about views or if you're either promoting each other via social, would be an email list, how many opens on average per email. Anyway, so I'm talking through some of these are details, but the basic premise is to, here's the basic premise. I just want to end this video now. Do not introduce two people unless you have privately asked each person whether they would like to be introduced to each other. And if one of those people is an influencer, meaning they have more of an audience than the other person, you need to make sure you don't burden that influencer like me. Just like you have a hundred people you want to introduce me. Don't ask me about all a hundred people. You have to think carefully and maybe ask me about three people. Hey, I'd like to, George, I'd like to introduce you to these three people. I thought about this and I think these three would be good to introduce you. What do you think? Now, if you introduce good people to me and it's a really good match, I will remember you forever, right? Because it is such a big benefit to me when there's a right match. And some people have made very good matches for me and I'm so grateful to them, right? So anyway, I hope this helps you and maybe some of you know exactly how that feels to be introduced to somebody before they've gotten your permission. And so I welcome you to, I wrote an article that kind of explains everything. If you look above or below this video, depending on where you're watching this, there is a link to an article and I encourage you to share that article. I'm not just saying this because I want you to share my articles. I want you to share the article with other connectors that you know, like people typically who are enthusiastic, they're warm, but they haven't quite thought through these kinds of dynamics that are really important so that you don't create strain on relationships. That's the main thing. You wanna do net carrying. You wanna do thoughtful, wise net carrying, not just enthusiasm. Oh my God, these two people are wonderful. Let me introduce them to each other. No, no, don't do that. So I hope this is helpful. Share this article with the connectors you know so that they can make better connections and thereby really help others and thereby become more valuable, more useful to others in their network. So I hope this is helpful. I hope this is interesting. Any questions you have about any of this, please go ahead and comment below and let me know. And thank you for being in my community. Those of you who don't know, I'm George Kau, authentic business coach. I don't always, I'm not always this eco-centered talking about myself and how great I know. But I just use myself as an example because that's very obvious to me. But anyway, I usually talk about how do we build a business with heart, truly be of service to other people and to feel really good doing it. So anyway, I hope to see you in another video. Take good care.